I’m very grateful to the organizers of ATypI 2017 for the opportunity to talk about my work on film leaders. They also did a bang-up job of recording the talks.

Margaret Compton (archivist, Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection) continues to be a great supporter of the Lost Leaders project, especially in terms of locating historical examples of countdown leaders. Her latest find: an early 1970s NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) leader, clearly styled after the Society leader ‘standard’ from 1951. Found on a Kennedy Space Center 16mm film. See this wonderfully idiosyncratic example and others over on the Industry Examples page.

I’m delighted to report that my article ‘The Beginnings and the Ends of Film: Leader Standardization in the United States and Canada (1930-1999)’ has just been published in The Moving Image (Fall 2016, Vol 16 No. 2). This is the result of five years of research-creation exploring the fascinating worlds of moving image archives, cinema projection, and the technical accomplishments of AMPAS and SMPTE.

This direct animation, a major outcome of my Lost Leaders project, foregrounds the most ephemeral handwritten traces of film developers, printers, distributors, projectionists, and archivists, such as film titles and reel/print numbers. It is based on historical research into the first three film leader standards in the US (Academy (1930/1947); Society (1951); Universal (1965/1966)), together with discoveries in two major film archives: the nitrate film collection at the Packard campus of the Library of Congress in Culpeper, Virginia; and, Library and Archives Canada in Gatineau, Quebec.

Each section begins and ends with all the distinctive graphical elements of the identification and synchronization sections specified in each successive leader standard (Academy, Society, Universal). These have been drawn by hand, frame by frame, while the ‘actual content’ of each section is the text for that standard, handwritten, word-for-word. Put another way, the ‘paratextual’ metadata of film, ie the parts the audience rarely sees, has been turned into the visible content.

Inevitably, then, each of the three sections is longer than the last, as the particulars of each successive standard become more and more verbose. As might be expected, the handwriting is barely legible when projected, but no less evocative, as this cameraless animation celebrates each standard by foregrounding the hidden labour of film developing, printing, distributing, projecting, and archiving.

Since leaders are of course mostly silent, the work is augmented with specially commissioned audio, composed and performed by Montreal-based sound artist Jackie Gallant.

Academy / Society / Universal: 3 Handwritten Leader Standards (2016) premiered at the Orphan Film Symposium, Culpeper VA, April 2016. 

As I write, it’s actually -20C in sunny Montréal, but let’s call it Spring anyway. sigh

For better or worse, since last year’s Orphans, I’ve been chiefly focused on writing about leaders, rather than making with leaders: I have a major funding application under consideration; meanwhile, I’m very proud to report that my preliminary article on leader standards in the US and Canada is due out in The Moving Image sometime this year. I’ve also completed and submitted the first draft of a lengthy contribution about film leaders to the Routledge Companion on Obscolescent Media, edited by Dr. Mark Wolf (Concordia University, Wisconsin). 

The estimable Margie Compton, Media Archivist at the Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection, University of Georgia, has been an incredible resource, flagging wonderful examples of leaders as she encounters them in the BMAatUGA collection, or even on TV. Thanks also to my wonderful colleague and collaborator Professor Dayna McLeod for sending me some intriguing ‘pop culture’ examples, and an anonymous tipster (let’s call her the ‘singing detective’) for some very curious countdowns.

I’ve been itching to get back to making, so my studio is currently knee-deep in 16mm and 35mm found footage. Above: bipacked 16mm and 35mm found footage.

The 10th Orphan Film Symposium was held at the Packard campus of the Library of Congress, April 6-9, 2016. Organized by Dan Streible (NYU) and Mike Mashon (LOC), it offered another ‘packard’ program of screenings and presentations. The highlights were many, including a live choral accompaniment to Flotte Bursche (1908). As with the last gathering (Amsterdam, 2014), I was struck by the genial atmosphere, the astonishing array of archival and experimental material and insights, the shared thrill of discovery.

My own presentation was a brief update on my leader research, followed by the premiere of Academy/Society/Universal: 3 Handwritten Leader Standards (2016), a direct animation I’ve been working on for two years. I previously reported on the completion and screening of the first section here. The entire film, in three parts, was handwritten in pen and ink on clear 35mm leader and then digitally transferred by Frame Discreet in Toronto. For each section I traced the official head and tail of the standardized leader (Academy, then Society, then Universal); the ‘content’ of each section is the text of the standard itself, written out in full. My collaborator, Jackie Gallant, composed three wonderful pieces of experimental sound to accompany the film.

This is the first in a planned series of three or four (very) short ‘handwritten’ films created as part of the Lost Leaders project. Since handwriting is often in evidence on leaders, which are themselves hidden and bracketed off from ‘the film’ itself, I decided to try turning this convention on its head (or, more accurately, inside out).

Written annotations, most often the title of the film, are routinely added to leaders to help with identification as prints are prepared for distribution. These are often quite expressive, and even artful. (In isolated instances, they’re rather more interesting than the title as it appears in the opening credit sequence.) Here are four examples from the nitrate archives at the Library of Congress. Note that some of it appears to have been written by the same person, and the BEG (for ‘beginning’) has been duplicated each time.

Occasionally, the handwriting is quite playful, as in this sketch found on a recent (ie safety film) leader for Top Hat (1935). Lost Leaders #18 ‘Handwritten Universal (PH22.55-1966)’ is entirely hand-drawn, from the Universal leader at the head (and tail), to the forty feet of text constituting the ‘content’. This fancifully rendered pen-and-ink is a complete transcript of the Universal leader standard specifications, variously known as ASA PH22.55-­1966, SMPTE-­55, or UL35-­1966, and is a nod towards the technicians, projectionists, and archivists whose personal touches haunt most leaders. It’s more-or-less illegible when projected (QED). Sound design by Jackie Gallant.

Lost Leaders #18 ‘Handwritten Universal (PH22.55-1966)’ screened at Poetics & Politics 2 (UCSC, Santa Cruz, May 2015) and New Experimental Works (ATA/OtherCinema, San Francisco, May 2015).

Lost Leaders #1 was created by weaving together thinly cut strips of found footage into other, unrelated pieces, all of it scavenged from a bin at the Film Farm. I’ve been wanting to return to this method for a while, and the Banff residency provided a good opportunity to do so. It relies heavily on juxtaposition, and not a little serendipity. Working with what I had to hand, and the arbitrary contrast between mountain vistas and mundane road signs, I produced a couple of short test pieces, including this one.

My residency at the Banff Centre in October 2014 gave me an invaluable opportunity to start working with the materials I’d accessed in the nitrate film vaults at the Library of Congress in Culpeper VA, and during a day-long visit to Library and Archives Canada in Gatineau QC.

One of the most captivating discoveries I made was a lovely example of the Society Leader (aka All-Purpose Leader), easily identifiable by its countdown, featuring concentric circles with four arrows pointing to the tops and sides of the frame. (The numbers SIX and NINE are also spelled out in text only.) Originally proposed by C. L. Townsend in the May 1951 issue of the Journal of the SMPTE, the Society Leader, like the Universal Leader that followed it some fifteen years later, was intended to address the specific needs of the emerging television broadcast industry. (Appropriately, the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, founded in 1916, officially changed its name to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers in January 1950. This important industry organization is known colloquially as ‘SIMPTEE’.)

The particular 35mm example I found in Gatineau had a distinct colour caste, rendering the various elements in rich hues of yellow, orange and red. It was this instance I decided to work with, using photos taken on site, 3D modeling software (SketchUp), and my newly acquired Pixelstick.

The geometric character of the Society Leader was also suggestive to me of a three-dimensional profile akin to a highrise cityscape. This led me to create a digitized version in SketchUp that I could manipulate at will. The extruded elements, below, show one such experiment.

Note that all of these images are interpretations of the Society Leader (1951), and shouldn’t be used for archival reference.

In early 2014 I decided to try my hand at stained glass. I had already spent a couple of years creating photomontages using layered leaders, photographed on a lightbox. Some of these were mainly interesting for their contrasting areas of flat, bounded colour, and the idea of working in a completely different, non-digital medium was appealing.

I took a class with the estimable Yolanda Goulet at Studio du Verre in Montreal, and from there created the first of three initial pieces. Each one is approximately 12″ x 9″, and they were first presented at the Orphan Film Symposium in Amsterdam in March 2014.

Lost Leaders #15

Lost Leaders #16

Lost Leaders #17