Blank film stock at the beginning of a reel before image material — protects first shot and allows threading and transport without damage.
Leader / Film Leader
At the beginning of every film reel, a specific length of unexposed material is wound off—approximately 1.5 to 2 meters depending on the format and lab standard. This leader (from the French "amorce" = primer, beginning) protects the first usable image material from damage during spooling, transport, and projection. Without this buffer, the film edge would suffer under pressure before the first shot even begins.
In practice, the leader functions as a wear zone. The lab technician deliberately leaves this length blank because it is exposed to mechanical wear during every handling of the reel—from developing and copying to projection. Edges break, emulsion scratches off, dust settles. All of this happens in the leader, not in your first valuable shot. On set, this is less relevant—the focus puller handles it. But in post-production, especially during DCP mastering or when editing analog prints, the leader becomes routine. The editor marks it, the colorist ignores it, and the projector needs it to safely spool the film.
The length varies depending on the projection format. For 35mm cinema, it is standardly about 6 to 8 feet (just under 2 meters), and for 16mm, slightly less. Digital workflows have theoretically made the physical leader obsolete, but in the production of DCP or the archiving of original negatives, the concept remains present—the editor still places a defined black frame buffer before the first action.
What is often confused: The leader is not the same as a film head bar (clapperboard or timecode leader). The leader is a silent, unlabeled strip of film. A bar is a printed or recorded information slate. Both are at the beginning of a reel, but the leader is a passive protective zone, while the bar is a metadata carrier. During editing and DCP creation, both are read, but only the leader is actually run through and never projected.