Colorists Trained Not to ‘Think About’ How HDR Can Be Botched at Home

Rendering high-quality HDR faithfully on a home TV screen can be “a giant can of worms,” Aurora Gordon, senior colorist at post-production studio ArsenalFX Color, told a SMPTE webinar Thursday. “A lot of different factors and variations in home viewing environments” could botch HDR content or make it look ideal, she said. How consumers “have their settings dialed in” can be another, she said. As a colorist, “basically you can’t think about it,” she said. “What we can do is correct our images in a controlled environment.” Colorists can’t control the “modulations that are going to happen in a home viewing environment,” she said. Gordon's personal favorites of her coloring include The Tick for Amazon Prime Video, with a character’s “very, very vivid” blue suit that “can take advantage of the gamut part of the HDR transform,” she said. Raising Dion on Netflix had lightning, "a really fun element in HDR,” she said.