American Cinematographer - August 2015 - 74

Post Focus

Making the Most of Disparate Displays
By Stephen Nakamura

As a finishing colorist who's been involved in features for
two decades - and television for longer - I've seen the color
workflow significantly evolve. Until recently, though, the ways in
which images were viewed, either on a monitor or from a projector, were fairly limited. There was the film-print standard that put
a maximum of 14 foot-lamberts on the screen and had a color
space defined by what film stocks could reproduce. There was
also the HD standard, Rec 709, which had its own color space;
based on CRT technology, it was developed for a brightest highlight of 30 foot-lamberts. Before that, there were the more
limited standard-definition formats, and cinematographers were
well aware of the color and contrast limitations inherent in those
displays.
Of course, a significant part of the art of cinematography
has to do with the way the images are ultimately displayed and
viewed. When photography was primarily photochemical,
photographers understood that a good printer could capture the
essence and feeling of a beautifully shot 35mm chrome, but
could never fully re-create the experience of seeing that slide
projected in a dark room. There's no physical way for that piece
of paper to display the contrast of that projected slide - two
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August 2015

display formats, two visual experiences. This concept is by no
means foreign to directors of photography, but I think anyone
involved in capturing, managing and posting images could
benefit from discussing it - especially now, as the number of
ways images are displayed is rapidly multiplying.
I recently worked with Claudio Miranda, ASC and director
Brad Bird on Tomorrowland [AC June '15]. It was the first feature
released in Dolby Vision, the projection method that can display
the brightest highlights at 31.5 foot-lamberts - more than
twice the traditional film and D-cinema standard. Dolby Vision
and other high dynamic range (HDR) methods can create an
entirely different viewing experience than a standard film or digital-cinema projector could ever display on a screen.
Finishing Tomorrowland for Dolby Vision and regular digital cinema wasn't about grading it for one display and then
mechanically "translating" that grade to the other. Claudio and
Brad considered what they wanted the movie to feel like in both
types of projection, and they gave a great deal of thought to the
implications of the fact that at the time of release, only four or
five theaters would be able to actually display Dolby Vision, with
its added detail in deep blacks and super-bright highlights. They
decided to take advantage of some of the additional contrast
range so the Dolby Vision version would be something special,
but just because we could make shadows blacker than film

American Cinematographer

Photo courtesy of Company 3.

Colorist
Stephen
Nakamura
prepares
features and
series for
different
display
formats.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - August 2015