The HDR Rebel Who Never Was

“This is really about hitting the audience in the head with a tremendous amount of light that you get in HDR. You know, which is kind of an unappreciated advantage of the format, because you can use it for dramatic effect. It’s not about detail. You can actually use it as a storytelling tool, which is what we’re trying to do here.” – Erik Messerschmidt, ASC Discussing Mindhunter lighting | ASC Insights, Episode 2 (30:00)

The HDR Rebel Who Never Was  

Erik Messerschmidt positioned himself as a cinematographic radical, preaching HDR as a revolutionary creative force. His sermons – “HDR should hit people in the head!”, “It’s all about the shadows!”, “Lighting ratios must change!” – framed him as a visionary battling SDR conservatism. A forensic examination of his HDR output – from Mindhunter to Bono: Stories of Surrender – reveals a startling contradiction: Messerschmidt’s practice consistently defaulted to SDR norms. His embrace of Apple TV+’s flattened aesthetic isn’t a betrayal – it’s the unmasking of a traditionalist cosplaying as a rebel.

Debunking the Doctrine: “Headshots” & The Shadow Fallacy  

Messerschmidt’s core philosophies collapse under scrutiny – and directly oppose HDR’s strengths:

1.  “Hitting Audiences in the Head” is Physiologically Bankrupt:

“The blinding, flashing lights feel like an obstacle to get through before we get to enjoy the next segment where we hope the lightshow will calm down.” – Collin Souter

Retinal assault (his stated goal) triggers instinctive aversion – the opposite of immersion. The “headshots” technique utilized in Bono: Stories of Surrender—where banks of flashing stage lights pummel the viewer—manages to disorient but serves no narrative purpose.

2.  “HDR Is All About Shadows” Misreads the Medium:

Steve Yedlin’s ‘Debunking HDR’ demonstration eviscerated the industry’s shadow fetish: extreme shadow manipulation in HDR (e.g., lifting blacks 1000x) is just a “minor, minor decision in the rendering”. So why cling to shadows? It excuses unchanged SDR workflows, protects ‘film look’ nostalgia, and masks creative stagnation.

The Heart of HDR: Spatial Contrast (Not Blinding Lights)  

Messerschmidt’s fixation overlooks HDR’s chief strength: preserving spatial contrast relationships that SDR compresses. Yet despite his lectures, Messerschmidt’s core contrast sensibility remains stubbornly aligned with SDR aesthetics.  

Dope Thief: The Aesthetic Contradiction Laid Bare  

The creative choices behind Dope Thief sabotage both its gritty narrative and HDR’s potential. Writer Peter Craig’s admission is damning evidence:  

“Erik and I talked about this ‘eternal dusk’… Gray skies, soft light… Ridley loves to work fast, with existing light.”

Decoded:

• Highlight Avoidance: “Gray skies” = no specular highlights; “soft light” = compressed dynamic range.
• Logistical Surrender: “Works fast with existing light” = prioritizing speed over HDR lighting design.
• Narrative Contrivance: Revising scripts for “10 pages of dusk” exposes dogma overriding realism (even Philadelphia has sun!).  

HDR thrives on exploiting luminance extremes. Dope Thief’s “eternal dusk” exemplifies a systemic retreat from this challenge.  

Why the Facade? Industry Complicity & Creative Inertia  

Messerschmidt’s trajectory is symptomatic of deeper forces:  

1.  Streaming’s “Convergence” Mandate: Platforms demand HDR/SDR parity, actively neutering HDR with highlight ceilings and flattened shadows for workflow ease.  

2.  Economic Pressures: Dope Thief’s troubled production made “safe” SDR-lit workflows attractive. Rethinking lighting for HDR requires time, money, and creative courage – resources Messerschmidt didn’t champion when tested.

3.  Self-Sabotaging Workflows: He preached “bullet-proof ACES pipelines” and on-set HDR monitoring, yet deliberately clipped highlights on set. This single act: 

• Sabotaged ACES’s scene-referred data preservation.
• Made monitoring pointless for highlight decisions.
• Forced post into reactive salvage ops.  

The ultimate irony? His “disorient the viewer!” rhetoric caused the very inefficiencies his workflow gospel claimed to prevent.

HDR isn’t a spec – its a language

Response from Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt

Following the publication of this article, cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt provided a response. His key points are summarized as follows:

Creative Choice vs Format Potential

Messerschmidt rejects the notion that HDR dictates aesthetic choices: “…using its full dynamic range is a creative decision, not a mandate. It belongs to the filmmaker, not to the format.” He defends his restrained approach in projects like Mindhunter (capped at 400 nits) as “deliberate restraint” serving the narrative.

While cinematographers absolutely retain the right to make creative choices about dynamic range and contrast, HDR’s core strength lies in its ability to render superior spatial contrast. Consistently choosing techniques that actively undermine this potential (e.g. clipping, SDR-era lighting ratios) reduces HDR to a container for LDR aesthetics. This contradicts Messerschmidt’s own advocacy for HDR workflows (e.g. on-set monitoring, ETTR) designed to unlock the format’s capabilities. 

The Clipping Fallacy

Messerschmidt firmly rejects the criticism of clipped highlights, calling it a deliberate creative tool: “what you call ‘damaging,’ I call deliberate… Contrast, and its management, is arguably the most critical decision a cinematographer makes… clipped highlights are a creative choice. They always have been.” He cites historical SDR examples like Klute and The Godfather Part II as precedents.

Invoking clipped highlights from the classics ignores a crucial reality – the harsh transition of HDR clipping creates abrupt, unnatural voids – jarring viewers and destroying immersion. HDR’s higher luminance demands preservation of highlight gradations to maintain spatial contrast integrity. This isn’t dogma – avoiding harsh highlight clipping remains a near-universal best practice among HDR colorists because it objectively disrupts viewing comfort. 

Systemic Failure

Messerschmidt highlights the complex realities of production that shaped creative decisions on Dope Thief: “We are embedded in a highly complex ecosystem of competing agendas, egos, logistical realities, and financial pressures… Dope Thief… was a project with multiple studio expectations, HDR least among them.”

This highlights what is really at the heart of the whole discussion- a systemic industry disconnect where major studios like Apple mandate Dolby Vision without fostering the creative intent, providing the resources or the time necessary for filmmakers to explore HDR’s potential. 

Mischaracterization of “Control”

He strongly objects to the implication he lacks control or understanding of HDR contrast: “your assertion that I lack control over contrast ratios or the final dynamic range with respect to HDR is not only incorrect, it is absurd. You may disagree with my choices, but do not confuse that with an absence of deliberate choice.”

The critique explicitly acknowledged that the restrained aesthetic of works like Mindhunter was an intentional decision by the cinematographer. 

Taste vs. Technical Standard

Messerschmidt frames the critique as a difference of subjective taste: “Your criticism is a taste issue, not a technical one… confusing your personal taste with a technical standard lowers your credibility.”

Framing criticism of destructive clipping and the persistant use of SDR lighting ratios as mere ‘taste’ ignores the underlying perceptual realities. It’s not about personal preference for brightness, but about leveraging HDR’s core strength – spatial contrast – to create more immersive, powerful, engaging stories. 

The Path Forward

The industry’s got to move beyond mandating HDR as a checkbox and instead foster collaborative frameworks where cinematographers, studios and postproduction houses take advantage of HDR’s enormous potential.