PLEASE STAND BY

Four riffs on a film leader

China girls: animation

China girls were professional models who appeared on the screen for only a split-second. They were meant as a comparison for adjusting flesh tones on film to the rest of the spectrum. I am not sure how they did this in one frame (though it could be as many as four).  I worked on some animations a while ago, fascinated by the whole thing, then put a few of them on YouTube. I do remember seeing them just for a blink, and often wondered if they were really there. They were. But it must have been frustrating for them to have so little exposure (so to speak). 

Though every article I found about them said they were invisible to the public, I saw them. I know I did. Do I have a quick eye, or can I slow down time, being as how I am a time-traveller (revealed here for the first time)?

Lady wedge/China doll/girl head/leader lady

 

In the motion picture industry a China Girl is an image of a woman accompanied by color bars that appears for a few frames (typically one to four) in the reel leader. A "China Girl" was used by the lab technician for calibration purposes when processing the film (with the still photography equivalent being a "Shirley Card"). The origin of the term is a matter of some dispute but is usually accepted to be a reference to the models used to create the frames - either they were actually china (porcelain) mannequins, or the make-up worn by the live models made them appear to be mannequins.