Evolution of Tech & HDR, a segment from the YouTube series ‘Color Masterclass with Joshua Pines and Maxine Gervais’ produced by Portrait Displays, coincided with Netflix’s release of The Brothers Sun, which was graded by Maxine Gervais.
Joshua Pines claims that when HDR was in its infancy, all studios endeavored to make the brightest grades possible, to the point of actually causing people harm, and that over time, as studios began to make their grades dimmer, HDR just became another part of creatives’ tool set.
Joshua Pines: Every year there’s some new technological thing that’s going to change the world. Like, you know, when sound entered, or color. So you know, it’s like, ‘Oh! digital cameras!’ Like, yeah, right. Or you know, digital projection, 3D stereoscopic. Uh, you know. And some of them have legs and stay, and some of them are Smell-O-Vision. You know, they’re a gimmick. And so there’s always that ‘Oh, here’s the new thing on the block.’ And oh, HDR is another one, right? It’s like when high dynamic range first came out, every studio wanted… ‘We want our high dynamic range version of this show to like, you know, go up to 11 and hurt people!’ And you know, over time, if it’s something that benefits the creatives, they’ll adopt it, but then it tones down. Then it just becomes part of their tool set.
Maxine Gervais says that half of her clients aren’t open to HDR.
Maxine Gervais: Right, cuz I remember seeing a bunch of people at the ASC a while back where HDR was not quite there, and there was a lot of like fiery discussion and everyone was like, you know, kind of like almost upset, I would say. Like, you know, about like this HDR. And you could say that now, like there’s half of like DPs that kind of embrace it, and the other half that it’s kind of still like uh, resistant. And I know like um for you, I think you know in all the ways you can do the mapping and all that. Like you had to adjust to that as well, right? You’ll do different mapping depending if somebody wants something big and bold or [unintelligible]. How do you go about that, like mathematically-wise, or how do you map things?
The decision in post-production to constrain the levels in the HDR pass to maintain consistency with the SDR version is just one of many obstacles preventing HDR from reaching its true potential:
Joshua Pines: Well yeah, when high dynamic range first came out… It’s like look, everyone is still looking at stuff on their regular TVs – except for those that could afford the you know thousands of dollars high dynamic range displays. And then, they get cheaper and more people get them and you know, um and it’s similar to when digital cameras first came out, you know, and a lot of DPS were like, ‘This thing looks like crap!’, Which they did. You know, and then over time, we begin to figure out how to get them to look the way they want them to. And I think with HDR, it was the same way about, you know, high dynamic range. One of the problems is they look different. So, if you’re doing a movie or an episodic, it’s like, can you simultaneously think about making two things that look different? You know, usually there’s a vision, right? There’s a creative intent that you want preserved across all the things. So what we wound up having to do is to sort of cater to both. So if there’s a new project that comes in, part of the look development would be, well, here are two different ways of approaching high dynamic range: one is very similar to your SDR, and here’s another one that looks like a a party at a rave out in the desert. And we could of course go between them but it really is driven by the content and the creatives. And I think over time, they’re really coming back closer together. The HDR and the SDR, they really don’t look like they’re in different worlds.
Maxine Gervais says she appreciates how Joshua Pines helps her to prevent the image from becoming too contrasty.
Maxine Gervais: Yeah, I mean I kind of agree with that, although like, I mean I’ll have like a similar… that’s why like, you’re so crucial to my work and the sense of like, there was a time where maybe like if somebody wanted to bring, at the beginning I’m talking about, you know, somebody wanted to bring them more closer, there was so much massaging and so much like, you know like fighting like tools a little bit you know cuz then you’re constrained into like that Dolby, which is great for many reasons, but it also can be handcuffing in other you know scenarios. Basically, what I was saying is some people like kind of stretch and I think like when I tell you I want something, um you know like I have like the clients I want something closer or if I say hey I’m going to embrace it. I like the way you map things in the way that it lifts everything together instead of over-stretching and getting something too contrasty.
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