During a Team Deakins podcast discussion about HDR, Steve Yedlin characterized established, mainstream HDR color spaces like P3-D65 as undocumented, unstable “hybrid” systems that entail substantial risk, citing an unverified anecdote about oversaturated deliverables.
“A lot of times the deliverables are done in sort of hybrid color spaces where they’re not using one of the standardized ones that’s in a document. They’re using the primaries from this one and the transfer function from that one.” Steve Yedlin
Reinforcing Yedlin’s “HDR = Chaos” narrative, Roger Deakins claimed that those kinds of variables were unthinkable with traditional analogue film: “In the film process, each lab followed a certain standard. You didn’t have those kind of variables” – positioning photochemical workflows as inherently more consistent than digital pipelines.
Ironically, Yedlin’s own display prep research undermines Deakins’ film-era nostalgia, demonstrating that vendor inconsistency plagued photochemical workflows as much as digital ones:
“So there’s no consensus even from top vendors on what the core starting point is. You get substantial variation in the look just by changing the display preparation of footage from the same camera while you get only negligible variation when using equivalent display preparations on footage from different cameras.” – Steve Yedlin
HISTORICAL REALITY: With traditional analogue film, variability was the norm, not the exception:
- Film Stocks: Film stocks differed between manufacturers: they had different color sensitivities, grain structures, and exposure latitudes. Significant variations could even occur between batches of the same stock from a single manufacturer.
- Labs: Film processing labs varied in their equipment, chemicals, and procedures. This meant that the same negative processed at different labs could yield markedly different results.
- Printer Lights: Printer lights were used to control the exposure of the print film during the printing process. These lights were adjusted to compensate for the variations in the negative and achieve a consistent look across scenes. However, printer light calibrations and the interpretation of “correct” exposure differed between facilities and technicians.
- Color timing required manual adjustments. Technicians interpreted scene-by-scene corrections subjectively. Results varied between labs and sessions.
Deakins’ podcast idealization of film’s consistency is starkly contradicted by his own firsthand experience, as reported in Variety (2016), describing significant technical failures during Hail, Caesar!:
“We had some stock issues and stuff like that, which was really disconcerting. I’ve heard that’s happened to a lot of people lately.“
He explicitly cited infrastructure concerns:
“I don’t think the infrastructure’s there.“
His conclusion was unambiguous:
“Just the technical problems with film, I’m sorry, it’s over.”
Takeaway: Film required constant mitigation of variability. Digital workflows actually increase consistency. Deakins’ podcast remarks idealize film’s consistency. His firsthand experience confirms its unreliability. The historical record dismantles both Yedlin’s HDR workflow alarmism and Deakins’ idyllic film-era nostalgia—using Yedlin’s own evidence as the wrecking ball.
Industry Perspective
“I don’t even need to read this to know what it says. Film was never consistent. Our modern view of film is very nostalgic. Getting an accurate answer print from the lab wasn’t easy and then the comments would typically be “well, this the only time it will look like this.” I owned a densitomer. I read 440 grey patches all the time. Elements are so much more consistent and reliable now.” – Matt McFarland, Digital Intermediate & Mastering Colorist | LinkedIn Comment
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