ABSTRACT
The arrival of sound films presented an additional challenge: the synchronization of separate picture and audio sources. This was solved by the use of special timing marks on the area of the film reel immediately before the first frame of the movie proper, a section known since the early 1900s as the “leader”. As physical film leaders drift toward analog obsolescence, becoming less and less a central part of filmmaking and projection, we would do well to note how they nevertheless linger in the shared imagination. While the sound test film is full of portent regarding the momentous arrival of the talkies, the Society leader was formally proposed in 1951 to address an entirely distinct but no less momentous arrival: broadcast television. To marginalize archival catalogs, film canisters, labels, inspection sheets, color timing cards, and film leaders as paratextual, is to do a disservice to the ongoing cultural work of engaging with “the movie”.
