China girl (filmmaking)

When making a movie, sometimes the people making it need to show a close-up of something, like a character's face or an object. Instead of using the actual person or object, they might use something called a "China Girl".

A China Girl is a small picture of a lady's face that is used to help make the film look better. The lady in the picture is usually smiling and has different colors on her face, like black and white or reds and greens.

The China Girl is usually shown for a short time at the beginning of a reel of film. This helps the people making the film see what the colors should look like and how bright or dark the film should be.

Even though it's called a China Girl, it doesn't have anything to do with the country China. Instead, it's because the film used to be made from a thin piece of plastic called "celluloid". This plastic was also called "nitrocellulose", which is sometimes shortened to just "nitrate".

In the early 1900s, when these pictures were first made, the nitrate film was very flammable and could easily catch on fire. To keep the film from burning, special "safety film" was made that used a different kind of plastic. This new plastic was made in Asia, which is why it was called "safety China".

Nowadays, we don't use nitrate film anymore, but we still use China Girls to help make films look better. So next time you see a close-up of someone's face in a movie, you might just be seeing a China Girl!