HDR | GEAR
ABOVE In His Dark Materials Series 2, the effect of hard sun beating through windows creates Cittàgazze’s atmosphere, but this light makes retaining detail in SDR a challenge. In HDR, desired looks like this can be maintained alongside all the detail that would otherwise be lost
“Working alongside David Higgs on His Dark Materials Series 2, we took full advantage of HDR. In the world of Cittàgazze, which has a bright, contrasty, Mediterranean feel, we were having to leave windows blown out in SDR, but in HDR we could maintain that feel and the additional detail. Yellows and browns, which were muted in Rec. 709, really came out more in the wider Rec. 2020 gamut, too.” Williams continues: “In my mind, viewers have never had it so good. HDR formats like Dolby Vision are bringing dynamic deliverables that use HDR metadata to adjust to different viewing environments. What’s really great about this is, if you update your TV in the future, you’ll actually see the same movie become visually better. I’d say it’s a much greater jump than when we went from SD to HD.”
“We used the Sony Venice for the recent His Dark Materials Series 2 shoot, and the camera’s modern sensor, with 15 stops of dynamic range across 16-bit linear Raw files, makes that HDR exposure far easier. Another great factor is that it supports colour-managed workflows like ACES right out of the box.” The Academy Colour Encoding System seeks to standardise the handling of colour through every stage of production. It’s a purely scene-referred workflow and assists in keeping the final product as close to the real, into-camera light sources as possible. “HDR has given us a new set of brushes to paint our canvas with – which ones are used is up to the artist,” says Williams. “We can make images hyperreal or bring them closer than ever to what we’d see with the naked eye. It’s the flexibility that’s exciting.
wide separation in objects like clothing is significant and certain dark skin tones are actually outside the boundaries of the Rec. 709 gamut. Now you can finally see those textures and tonalities.” He adds: “I’ve heard many directors say, after seeing an HDR pass, that they would have made a certain shot longer, because there’s so much more there than they thought. I’d say, eventually you’ll actually be able to read or visualise HDR moments within a script.” ON SET “A big part of that huge on-set change is with the role of the DIT,” Soriano points out. DITs just like Luke Williams, who works at Mission Digital. He explains: “It’s my job to make sure the digital negative is protected for HDR and SDR. This requires me and the cinematographer to monitor both outputs, as what would be clipped in SDR is present in HDR. It really is more important than ever to get the exposure right. HDR has given us a new set of brushes to paint our canvas with, and the viewer has never had it so good
LEFT Luke Williams’ Mission Digital DIT rig offers everything needed for on-set HDR monitoring during productions like His Dark Materials Series 2
JANUARY 202 1 | DEF I N I T ION 17
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