Your Purchasers Are Already Asking for HDR. They Simply Do not Know It But.

When discussing the subject of excessive dynamic vary (HDR) in movie and tv, it’s arduous to not be swept into the technical elements of this comparatively new expertise.

Step into any post-production discussion board, for instance, and also you’ll be strolling face-first right into a wall of specs, requirements, and (typically) conflicting views.

I’ve been a colorist on short- and long-form content material for many of my profession—to not point out an enormous evangelist for HDR—so I’ve been part of many discussions about what HDR truly is. However one factor that doesn’t get talked about sufficient, in my view, is what HDR is definitely for.

And that’s storytelling.

So I’m going to attempt to keep away from getting slowed down within the expertise of HDR on this article. However, if you happen to’re in search of a primer, this video is a good place to start out.

In your eyes solely

The elevator pitch for HDR is that it delivers the next visible high quality permitting audiences to expertise photos which can be extra vibrant, like what we’re able to seeing with our personal eyes. Extra lifelike. In the event you’re watching a film like Mad Max: Fury Highway, some may say the photographs are bigger than life.

Whereas it sounds easy, it’s an extremely lofty objective.

Think about a dice, sitting in your desk. This dice represents your entire vary of brightness and saturation you may match into the SDR photos we’ve been consuming for ages. Now flip your chair round. There’s a brand new dice behind you, solely this one’s so massive it simply punched a gap by way of your ceiling. That’s HDR.

In easy phrases, HDR is a container that may maintain extra brightness, extra shadow element, and extra saturation. However this can be a barely reductive view of what HDR is for.

What attracts most of us in direction of the sunshine of an HDR display is the promise that it’ll get us as shut as potential to the imaginative and prescient that the cinematographer, director, and colorist had inside their heads once they made the film or present.

It’s by no means in regards to the tech. It’s at all times in regards to the story.

The ability of sunshine

Let me provide you with an instance.

I just lately watched Dune (Villeneuve’s 2021 model) on HBO Max, and there’s a scene the place Paul stands within the nightfall of their house planet of Caladan, pondering the colossal transfer to Arrakis that he’s about to make.

He’s standing close to his grandfather’s grave, and although it’s getting darkish, you may see a lot element within the shadows and the costumes. There’s one lone star far off within the distance—it’s a really small object on display—however it was so shiny. There was such a stark visible distinction between the protagonist and his vacation spot.

It was such an extremely robust second, this glittering, inescapable dot within the body, that it gave me chills.

I can’t say for certain that this was intentional. For all I do know, that star simply fell the place it fell in an HDR setting. However I wish to assume that it was intentionally made very shiny to visually signify the heroes’ journey, and in a manner that was made out there as a result of HDR coloration grade.

For comparability, after I watched the identical scene every week later at an IMAX theater, the star wasn’t as shiny, and the emotional influence I had felt earlier than simply wasn’t there. Regardless of the display measurement and the immersive expertise that IMAX gives, the scene didn’t land as properly when the additional dynamic vary was lacking.

Crowning glory

Need one other one? Strive Netflix’s The Crown.

Each season of this sequence has been shot in some beautiful areas, like Lancaster Home (standing in for Buckingham Palace), Ely Cathedral (as Westminster Abbey), Balmoral Fort, Sandringham, and Kensington Palace, amongst others.

Admittedly, that is an extremely spectacular sequence in no matter format you watch it, however see it in HDR on a superb display and it’s breathtaking. These historic settings and costumes come alive. You expertise the feel and depth of the areas in a manner that actually conveys the themes of heritage and custom that run by way of every episode. After I watch this sequence in HDR, the environments are so vivid that I really feel the burden and weight of those characters’ selections, their conflicts, and the stress of a complete nation on their shoulders.

And it shouldn’t be stunning if you expertise this for your self.

We’ve identified for a very long time that coloration palette can fireplace up an emotional response, so it’s a logical assumption that having extra coloration will help elicit extra emotion.

However even when that’s not the case—emotional response may be very subjective, in spite of everything—HDR actually supplies the storyteller with a bigger canvas and a wider number of paints to create a extra nuanced engagement with the viewer. Listed here are a few of my favourite examples.

What’s stopping us?

So if HDR helps you to inform your tales extra successfully and precisely, why aren’t all of us doing it?

The apparent reply is worth, however that’s not the entire image.

Even in high publish homes in NYC or LA, you’re not going to see a Flanders XM312U or Sony BVM-HX310 on each workstation. Whereas they’re getting cheaper on a regular basis, these are costly merchandise that include a value element that may appear arduous to justify.

And till the purchasers begin demanding it, then there’s no urgent must make that funding. Proper? They’re those protecting the lights on, and in the event that they’re not asking for it, why exit of our method to make investments numerous cash in it?

Effectively, right here’s the irony: your purchasers could already be asking for HDR. They simply don’t understand it, but.

Popping sweet

Let me provide you with a private instance.

For the previous few years, I’ve been coloration grading commercials for a theme park belonging to a widely known sweet firm.

Throughout that point I’ve needed to carry out all types of bizarre methods to push the colours of the model so far as potential. Making the colours “pop” whereas staying inside broadcast-legal limits. It’s a problem!

As you may think about, numerous these very saturated model photos are already screaming to be let loose of the field and breathe the best way these colours wish to breathe in the actual world, which is ultra-bright and ultra-saturated.

So whereas the consumer hasn’t explicitly requested for HDR, it’s clear that what they need…is HDR.

However so long as consumer (and company) expectations are outlined by the boundaries of cable TV, we’ll be confronted with a tough restrict on the luminance and chrominance of the photographs that we are able to present. So what can we do to kick issues up a notch?

Give it a shot

Similar to the shift from SD to HD to 4K, change isn’t going to occur in a single day, however numerous the instruments to democratize HDR are already in place.

Whereas {many professional} colorists reside and die by a bonafide HDR reference monitor from Sony or FSI that’s paired with a devoted I/O card designed for HDR output, you technically don’t want one to start working in HDR.

For instance, in DaVinci Resolve, now you can get a 10-bit 4K HDR sign despatched to an HDR-compatible laptop monitor over a easy Thunderbolt 3 connection, which is a a lot smaller funding.

So our modifying, coloring, VFX, and compositing software program is already HDR-compliant. Screens that may deal with HDR have gotten inexpensive and extra extensively out there, and we are able to even shoot and consider HDR materials on our iPhones.

Viewing platforms like YouTube and Vimeo help HDR playback, and you may construct your HDR collaboration and approval workflows rapidly and simply in Body.io.

On the subject of getting that content material to your purchasers, all they want is an HDR-compatible iOS system and so they’ll get to see it because it was meant to be seen utilizing Frame.io’s HDR-enabled app (which may be Airplayed in 10-bit 4K HDR to the closest TV).

So actually, it boils down to 2 issues. Are you prepared to supply HDR content material, and does your consumer truly need it? Assuming that the reply to the primary query is “sure,” how do we alter the second?

Some numbers

In the event you’re a numbers individual, you may wish to hit them with some market analysis first.

In response to Statista, international shipments of HDR TVs are on the rise, with 136.5M items shipped to this point this yr (with America main the cost).

On the cell entrance, over 100 million iPhone 12s are in circulation, with iPhone 13 fashions poised to sell even more, and that’s not even counting the Android phones with HDR screens. (Nor does it issue within the results of consoles just like the Xbox Collection X and Ps 5, each of which have been bought with the promise of HDR gaming.)

Then you may bundle in all of the key streaming providers (Netflix, Prime, Apple TV, Hulu, YouTube, HBO Max, and Disney+) that help HDR to a point. Most are selling it; some are even making it mandatory.

Add all of those up, and also you’ve acquired your self a big viewers that’s hungry for HDR content material.

Present, don’t inform.

If the numbers aren’t sufficient to get your consumer over the road, possibly take a extra direct method.

This may be as daring as taking a 20-second slice of the job you’re at the moment engaged on and presenting an HDR model of it. Or you may let different folks do the give you the results you want.

Take this HDR pattern on YouTube.

In the event you play this again in a browser on a non-HDR system, it seems to be actually good. It was shot in Blackmagic RAW on an Ursa Mini professional 12K with a 55mm Zeiss Otus f1.4 prime. The lighting is on-point and the framing is gorgeous.

Now play the identical clip on an HDR TV utilizing the YouTube app and revel within the depth. The evanescence of the bubbles. The tonal richness of the browns, blacks, and reds of the soda. The crispness of the ice. The tiny stars of fizz. Inform me you don’t need a Coke proper now.

Or if you would like one thing rather less industrial, you are able to do the identical with Maya and the Three.

It’s the identical story. Watch the SDR trailer on YouTube and it seems to be nearly as good as the colour house and dynamic vary will permit. Play the present on an HDR display with the Netflix app and the distinction actually must be seen to be believed.

HDR Gold isn’t gold-ish. It glitters. Like gold is meant to. Magic explodes off the display. Hair seems to be shiny. Eyes look shiny and alive…you get the image (or possibly you don’t, relying on what you’re watching it on).

Clearly, as a colorist, I’m a little bit biased. However to me, the transition from SDR to HDR is way extra important than technological advances in display measurement, decision, or body charge. It’s a generational shift in picture high quality and storytelling.

However the sharp-eyed amongst you might need seen an issue with the examples I’ve given. That Coca-Cola bottle video? It wasn’t produced for Coca-Cola. And that trailer for Maya and the Three? It was uploaded to YouTube in an SDR format.

If one of many largest advertisers on the planet isn’t profiting from HDR to promote soda, and Netflix isn’t importing HDR content material to their very own YouTube channel, even when it’s out there, it’s clear that there’s nonetheless some highway to journey and challenges to beat.

Seeing the sunshine

We are able to both keep as we’re, or we are able to select to maneuver issues ahead by displaying our purchasers simply how a lot better their tales look when advised with an elevated palette of sunshine and coloration.

The excessive finish is already doing it, so it’s as much as us to deliver it into the mainstream. There’s actually nothing stopping us.

As impartial filmmakers and producers of short-form content material, we are able to begin this new journey collectively. The filmmakers who make a dwelling telling lengthy kind tales have already gone by way of this entire technique of investigating, exploring, adopting and dwelling in HDR. Now it’s the flip of the short-form group to discover the format for ourselves.

As a result of even if you happen to can’t persuade your purchasers that they want HDR proper now, you’ll wish to be prepared once they determine that they do.

Featured picture from Ozark © Netflix