“There are filmmakers who I work with whose answer is identical: ‘I want the HDR to be identical to the SDR. I want it to have the same dynamic range. I want it to have the same color gamut. I want nothing whatsoever to change. All I want to change is the deliverable itself because that’s being required of me by the studio.’” – Cullen Kelly
“I know of a major — think $100 million+ — 2022 feature where the director came in and said, “ya know what… I prefer the SDR picture. Don’t make it much brighter than that. You can let the specular highlights stray up to 300, 400 nits, but other than that, keep everything about where it is.” Huge movie, already shipped, nobody cared or noticed. And this is a huge A-list director nobody was going to argue with.” – Marc Weilage
“You can make images on an HDR screen identical to the range you had in SDR, if you want. No one should, or will, as far as I’ve heard, force you to make the image higher in contrast than you are comfortable with. If your vision is to limit and roll off all highlights (to where they would be in the old SDR TV or even film print) you can. It’s your creative choice. A streamer may query it, but it’s unlikely they will force you to grade to a maximum brightness (or nit value as it’s known). My analogy of HDR grading vs SDR is this: If we think of HDR as sound and speakers, HDR is like having access to a big speaker cabinet with loads of speakers of various sizes, with the option of having a deeper richer sound in the bottom end/bass tones, or clearer treble in the highs when you are doing your final sound mix. As a colourist, I work with the DOP and Director to choose if we want to utilise this available HDR range, or not. If we don’t want to use those richer more layered shadows, or don’t want to have practicals or skies have more cloud detail (more akin to the real world), no problems, a colourist can roll them off You can make images on an HDR screen identical to the range you had in SDR, if you want.” – Thomas Urbye
“I know of a major (huge) A-list director who just told the post crew a few weeks ago, “I want the HDR master to basically be identical to the SDR, don’t change the essential grade, but you can let the highlights hit 200-250.” It’s a good question as to who will notice.” – Rajneesh Kassin
The Daejeon Chronicles 
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