I was at The Rebel Fleet in Auckland recently talking about HDR in an evening we titled ‘Netflix and Beyond.’
This was attended by 80 NZCS members and interested industry people, we ran out of chairs and beer!
David Paul NZCS lit a small set with willing model, colorist Javier Guevara and some high contrast highly saturated objects in frame. When I arrived in Auckland little did I know I would be soon be in a garden centre hunting for highly saturated flowers!
These flowers proved to be a great REC709 v REC2020 comparison.
Images from the Alexa were simultaneously fed to an HDR EIZO Prominence, Sony SDR OLED PVM and an Atomos Sumo.
DPs were encouraged to adjust exposure and ISO, watching the differences on all 3 monitors. What impressed me was the detail in the shadow side of the face, very clean and no need to lift with windows. The other big take out for me and David was the increased saturation in bright colors due to viewing in REC2020. This is an often forgotten advantage. We recorded a few different lighting sets ups then brought these clips into Resolve. Using a timeline Color Space of Rec2020 and a Gamma setting of ST2084 the images looked on the HDR EIZO very much like we saw them on set.
Things discussed as a group included
Q. What monitor should you be using on set to monitor HDR?
Not easy as cost is still a huge consideration. We looked at the Atomos Sumo, although not true HDR it is a solution. Will we get cheaper on-set HDR monitors?
Q. Would it be possible to revert to film days when no monitor was used on set and the results were only seen in dailies the next day?
The DPs liked this idea of taking back control of their images but felt they would always need an HDR check monitor. A brave DP would walk forward with a meter alone!
Q. Should we grade the HDR version first or the normal DCI Digital Cinema version first?
This question split the crowd and brought about great comments. The Dolby Vision method is to grade HDR first then trim for the SDR version. This is different to the way we have traditionally done things for the past 10 years which is grade the DCI version first then trim or use a transform LUT for the REC709 TV version. SDR first then trim up, or HDR and trim down? This has to be considered because for a Netflix commissioned show they require a Dolby Vision Master. This is one delivery that contains all picture versions HDR, SDR, languages, text, subtitles etc
Q. Will you embrace HDR?
The DPs and Colorists were both very enthusiastic but felt they need more education on all aspects.
The general feeling from the crowd was HDR is hear to stay. My recommendation to DPs and Colorists is to test as much as possible. Make friends with the HDR post house and test both grading and workflows.
Big thanks to Colorist Shane Mario Ruggieri CSI for his help with this presentation
http://www.languageofhdr.com/Language_of_HDR/Home.html
Warren Eagles CSI
Freelance Colorist and International Colorist Academy instructor
