CRAFT HIGH-END TELEVISION
PRODUCTION
BEN JOINER
It does definitely help to have a working understanding of the potential of how a scene might end up looking when finished in SDR and HDR. It’s valuable to be able to visualise and understand what will and won’t be visible on screen in HDR especially in terms of wardrobe and set design and the light levels you may end up working with. You may decide you can expose up a little with HDR to bring out shadow detail knowing that your highlights can be retained. That may affect how much fill light you would choose to use, and time spent lighting on set which affects schedules and overall budgets so there are a lot of variables to consider.
It is possible with the capability of HDR to produce images that feel unnatural or unrealistic. I remember seeing a demo a couple of years ago that had a lot of natural beauty scenes and vistas of mountains and water that whilst visibly impressive technically, for me felt very other worldly and not necessarily true to how I might
experience that scene in real life. That may feel correct for certain subject matter, but it won’t be right for every story so as filmmakers we need to retain a responsibility to the aesthetic and creative look of a project and how appropriate it is to the story being told.
It is tempting to get so immersed in the technology of a scene that the basics of storytelling with visual imagery becomes secondary. Just because we have access to all this latitude, resolution and colour depth it doesn’t mean we have to use it if it doesn’t support the story or the artistic intention. We also have to consider the audience in that HDR images can be very bright and over a long period of viewing that has an intensity and emotional effect that may not be desirable! I think it’s important to view HDR as another tool that we as filmmakers have at our disposal but it’s one of many and not a cure all “now everything will look amazing!” It has to be used appropriately and responsibly to the story being told.
Cinematographer CREDITS The Grand Tour Seasons 1-4, Climate Change:The Facts, Commercials for Ferrari, Toyota, Shell, Nissan, Lexus, Fiat
I work lot in doc and multi camera shoots on the fly in extreme environments where we might not have access to lighting and often work in less than favourable conditions, We won’t necessarily be choosing what time of day to shoot or the direction the light is coming from. So one of the great advantages of HDR is that it gives you confidence that as long as you expose your footage correctly and exploit the latitude and bit depth of the camera you are using to the full, the HDR grade will give you the best outcome from those difficult or uncontrollable conditions and the capability of the sensor. On a recent Grand Tour film I shot in Mongolia,
we were battling constant changes in weather and environments. Fierce sunny backlight in certain scenes and flat overcast in others and the HDR grade really draws out the subtleties of the environment and the journey.
The possibilities with night exteriors have opened up a lot with dual iso cameras and the ability for HDR to keep the blacks dense and rich whilst opening up the subtleties in the
shadows.This will affect the lighting fixtures used on location, the power needed to run them and therefore costs and budget - an example of HDR directly affecting the way we work on set.
Winter 2020
televisual.com 73
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133
