Tom Graham, Head of Dolby Vision Content Enablement, asked three top colorists working in film & television – all senior colorists at Picture Shop – how they felt their work looks on consumer displays.
TG: Some colorists will say, ‘I don’t watch my stuff on TV, I’ve already watched the show’, but how do you guys feel about the Dolby Vision consumer experience? Your stuff translating to an iPhone 14 or an LG home TV?
“I’ve been happy with it. Things I see at home look like what I see here [in the colorist bay]. I’m on an LG at home.” – Paul Westerbeck. Senior Colorist
“I remember on Fire Chasers [2017, TV mini-series], which was the first ever unscripted show for Netflix – the first HDR show I did – and I was like, ‘Hopefully, this works! It looks great in the bay and the trim looked right. I think we’re good.’ And my wife had a TV at the time she had gotten from FedEx points. So let’s just say it wasn’t the highest grade. And I was like, all right, let me just try it here first because this can only be the biggest bummer. And I turned it on, play it, and I was like, ’It works!’ It just looked incredible. And [ever] since, I always check on everything when I get a show. I do have some kind of Dolby Vision TV at home. I don’t know if it’s a Sony… but it really like it looks like it does in the [colorist] bay, it’s pretty impressive; especially like the iPads… the phones… you can even hold it up to the BVM-X300 and you’re like, ‘Alright, cool! That’s how it looks’. It’s very reassuring. I had a DP on Toscana [2022, Danish romantic comedy-drama] who was used to doing SDR projects with Danish colorists (I assume), and he called me after and he’s like, ‘Freddie, how is it that this project looks the same everywhere? I’ve never tried that before.’ And I was like you know, the power of Dolby Vision and how to use it. And he was like, ‘I’ve never seen a project look similar across every platform.” – Frederik Bokkenheuser, Senior Colorist
“I wish I could join the club and say that I’ve got this bitchin’ display at home that’s Dolby-ready and whatnot. I’m still using the plasma. And I will say, to the testament of what Freddie was saying, the shows that I grade here, even on the glass [displays] here – you know, OLED and these types of displays – it still holds up, plasma. Actually, it looks fantastic. It adds that extra bit of soft in the black where you get a little less of that stair-step black you get from an OLED display. You get that rich, deep plasma black. It looks fantastic. So here’s the thing: for me, like we used to say in the old days, too, like just SDR. You grade it on a professional Sony mastering display and you go home on your crap, whatever, $200 Best Buy special. Even if you dug deep in[to] your pockets and bought the best monitor you could buy, SDR never looked good at home, at least if you compared [it] with a professional display. And what’s happened, is that, as technology got better and better, the consumer displays got better and better. And in my opinion, we maxed out on the plasmas. I still don’t think there’s a home display that looks that fantastic. Basically, I’ve gotten to the point where I trust what I’m seeing here; technically they’re prosumer, the LGs that we’re using [at Picture Shop]. So really, I’m seeing what I’d see at home. I’m [just] waiting for that next step in technology.” – Tony D’Amore, Senior Colorist and Director of Creative Workflow
The Daejeon Chronicles 
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