The Shock of HDR

Annie Chang, VP/Creative Technologies, Universal Pictures, speaking at a SMPTE Hollywood panel discussion in 2023, talked about ‘the shock of HDR’.

“I think one of the issues is [that] we still have monitoring issues throughout the live action process, so it’s like maybe they have an HDR monitor on set so they can actually see some of the stuff, but then dailies and editorial, everything’s still in [Rec.] 709 and you end up with this problem where they maybe saw HDR on set but then they don’t actually have HDR throughout the entire process and the visual effects vendor is not working in HDR and then you end up with a whole bunch of VFX problems later on, like the plates are all clipped or something like that. So, I think even though it’s still 2023, we’re still struggling to have HDR monitoring for dailies, editorial, VFX and everything, so the problem is, by the time you get to the work that you [the panelists] all do, everybody’s used to the dailies SDR look, unfortunately. So that’s the shock of HDR.”