Secretly A Demo

Listening to a celebrated DP explain HDR to revered colleagues on a popular podcast the other day was like overhearing a 17th-century explorer describing fantastical beasts to their monarch: 

“And you won’t believe this, but this “so-called HDR” actually has TWO color spaces! But sometimes they use the smaller one – a “hybrid”, so to speak – they’re using the primaries from this one and the transfer function from that one – a sort of stew, if you’ll pardon the analogy. And get this: one time, a post house got hold of this footage – mind you, it had been properly documented- and they didn’t pay attention to this hybrid color space – and everything was oversaturated – verging on vulgar, your Majesty!”

“Good heavens no! Really? How uncouth! Explain how you can possibly have a different color space. Because in our day, going back to analogue film, we didn’t have those kinds of variables – there was red, green and blue. Do tell us about this newfangled digital thing: but first, what exactly is a color space anyway?”

“Yeah, absolutely. [In a hushed voice] And by the way, your Majesty, my anti-HDR rant that’s supposedly about HDR kind of almost secretly is a color space demo more than an anti-HDR rant in a way.”

“Secretly a demo? How deliciously clever! Does this mean your ‘hybrid stew’ analogy was…”

“Improvised? Perhaps! And that brings up yet another one of these big pitfalls. TV manufacturers and salespeople and these places, they want everything to be amped up. They want it to look different. Which is crazy. Because there are three feet in a meter and so forth…”

“Different? How?”

“Well, to be honest, there’s Filmmaker mode…”

“Pray tell! So there’s televisions that have Filmmaker mode! I’ve never heard of that! On our 20-year-old CRT, nothing ever looks right.”

The explorer paused, adjusting his ruffled collar. “I must confess, Your Grace… In my bones, I know these HDR displays —offend nature!”