Understanding The Future Of Post Production and Color Grading – Part 3

Part 3: Why HDR increases the audience’s sense of ‘presence’ (and HDR’s impact on bit depth)

At the time of this writing, it’s been a while since I recorded Parts 1 & 2 of this series. If you haven’t watched those two Insight, now’s the time to watch them. This Insight builds on those, which established the 5 pillars of technological growth of digital video:

• Frame Rate
• Frame Size
• Bit Depth
• Color Space
• Dynamic Range

I pulled those pillars from a terrific Siggraph presentation of Technicolor. That concept has been the organizing principle of this Series.

In this Insight, we explore High Dynamic Range digital video

Specifically – we examine if HDR enhances the audience’s notion of ‘presence’? Or not. If not, we can expect HDR to go the way of 3D glasses. But if it does increase presence then we can expect HDR to drive technological change on at least three other the pillars of technological growth.

This is a long Insight since it’s given as a stand-up presentation. While preparing this presentation for you, I’ve added and refined my thoughts since the last time I gave this talk at a conference. I hope you enjoy it!

Mentioned in this Insight:

I use several images from Light Illusion’s excellent primer on the topic of HDR and UHD. Here’s that page: UHDTV – HDR and WCG – Understanding UHDTV Displays with PQ/HLG HDR, and WCG 

Coming Up Next: Color Spaces, Standards, and Recommended Binge-Watching

We will wrap up this series in Part 4, focusing on the evolution of color spaces. You’ll learn about the alphabet soup of Standards that codify the current transition to UHD / HDR / Wide Color Gamut images. I’m also going to share a recommended series to stream as an example of HDR color grading that is pointing to the direction of the future of our craft (hint: It was color graded by Company 3’s Jill Bogdanowicz).

Enjoy!

-pi