In past years, certainly up to the late 1960s, cue marks were applied to the composited camera original negative, but no longer.

On many home video releases these cue marks have been digitally erased.

They are not to be confused with cue marks, which are black or white circles usually in the upper right-hand corner of the frame.

As the reel being shown approaches its end, the projectionist looks for cue marks at the upper-right corner of the picture.

Cue marks are now applied to the printing internegative, only, and these marks appear to be black, because the mark is made on a negative image, suitable for release print making, only.

In these cases, the cue marks are manually applied to the finished film prints, and these marks appear to be white, because the mark is made on a positive image suitable for direct projection.

Conventional release prints, which are made from timed internegatives, usually contain black motor and changeover cue marks as the printing internegatives are "punched" and "inked" for this specific purpose.

Cue marks - Where those marks, usually circular for non-Technicolor titles and "serrated" for Technicolor titles to indicate a reel changeover are animated for a humorous effect.

A pair of cue marks is used to signal the projectionist that a particular reel of a movie is ending, as most movies come to theaters on several reels of film lasting about 14 to 20 minutes each.

The 1996 novel Fight Club and its film adaptation of the same name drew attention to cue marks, referring to them as "cigarette burns"; this term may not be used in the industry and might not be a standard term.

EKs, being made from the composited camera negatives, which are never "punched" nor "inked", have white motor and changeover cue marks as these marks are punched (or are scribed) directly on the prints, by hand, in the lab.

Another film, a 2005 episode of Masters of Horror, is titled "Cigarette Burns", directed by John Carpenter; its plot revolves around film collection and distribution, with the lead character hallucinating cue marks, which he deemed was a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Most cue marks appear as either a black circle (if the physical hole is punched out on the negative used to make the projection print of the film), or a white circle (if the mark is made by punching a hole or scraping the emulsion on the positive film print).