HDR | GEAR
With HDR being hailed by many as the biggest development in the world of production, we talk to the experts and creatives at every stage of its use to find out where we stand – and what the future holds
WORDS LEE RENWI CK / P I CTURES VAR I OUS
We’re able to do that now because the contrast ratio of displays has expanded ridiculously. We’re now talking about contrast ratios of 1,000,000:1.” Few other people in production have such an involvement in HDR. Across productions like Series 2 of His Dark Materials , Soriano manages the colour pipeline from prep and shoot to VFX, grade and DI. “The role has a big technical implementation, but also a big artistic element. The main role in the artistic side is to maintain the artistic intent in all the different viewing environments,” he says. As an evolving technology, there’s some room for discussion on specifically how an image must be displayed to be considered HDR. For many, though, the gold standard is Dolby Vision, which necessitates a contrast ratio of 200,000:1 and a display brightness of 1000 nits. While brightness can vary, the constant here is the contrast ratio. Brightness could be impossibly high, but if the darkest parts of the image are almost as bright as the brightest parts, that ratio is shot. Soriano tells us more. “There are two ways of measuring dynamic range in terms of colours science: scene referred and display referred. The former is the input of light into a camera, measured in stops. The latter is what happens after, when this is transferred into a display-referred area, where dynamic range is measured in contrast ratio.
IMAGE DIT, Luke Williams, believes the Sony Venice was an excellent choice for His Dark Materials Series 2’s HDR workflow, thanks to its sensor and range
H DR has been an increasingly hot topic for a few years, but now it seems to be reaching a real fever pitch. Perhaps this is down to more recent advancements, or perhaps the slow yet inevitable takeover has finally crept up. While it’s clear that HDR is a new and exciting opportunity, exactly what that opportunity consists of is a slightly cloudier issue for those not directly involved in the process. The high dynamic range element itself is easy to conceptualise, but in fact, it’s a much more complex topic than that, particularly in practice. It’s a technology that’s shaping every step of film production and, of course, the final viewer experience. Each and every element of HDR has enough depth to fill countless white papers – and they’re certainly out there – so let’s consider the crucial elements.
What is HDR beyond the basic concept? And how does it shape the production and post-production workflow, as well as the manufacturers providing the tools used? EXPERT SUPERVISION “First, what we need to understand is that HDR is all about display technology,” explains Pablo García Soriano, managing director and colour supervisor at Cromorama. “Even very early films stocks were able to capture a dynamic range of around 13 stops, but what we couldn’t achieve was a viewing environment in which we could display all of that latitude.
I’d also say most of the beauty of HDR is in those better blacks, too, and it all links to our evolutionary perception
JANUARY 202 1 | DEF I N I T ION 15
Powered by FlippingBook