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**DCI forum** · 06-06-2016, 05:19 AM

Deadpool director says HDR is the real killer feature for 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
By Stephen Lambrechts 12 days ago Home cinema

It's not just the language that's colourful
Few comic book characters are as colourful as Deadpool, with his rapier wit, constant swearing, penchant for violent blood-letting, fourth-wall-breaking shenanigans and, of course, that bright red suit. Long considered a tough sell in Hollywood, the 'merc with a mouth' has finally been captured in all his glory by director Tim Miller in the hugely successful movie, Deadpool.

The film is so good, it immediately made it into techradar's (somewhat) prestigious best superhero films of all time list. Take that, Wolverine!

As we head toward Deadpool's 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release, director Tim Miller and colorist Tim Stipan stopped by Fox's Innovation Lab to demonstrate and chat about the disc's visual presentation — in particular, the ways in which high dynamic-range (HDR) has been utilised to make the film even more vibrant and explosive than it was in theatres.

Schawn Belston, EVP of Media and Library Services at 20th Century Fox, also chimed in on what it took to make Deadpool shine for its home release.

"We had to reimagine all our technical workflows behind the scenes to make this actually possible," said Belston, stating that "even the logo, for example, we spent more than two months rendering and re-rendering, trying to figure out the best way to render the logo, in 4K, in [Industrial Light & Magic's HDR file format] OpenEXR, to get the most out of this high dynamic-range experience."

Deadpool
Visual effects veteran Miller, who made his feature-film directing debut with Deadpool, was impressed by what colorist Stipan managed to come up with while producing different outputs of the film for other formats.

"I felt like every time we were going through it, we were seeing more and more and more," said Stipan. "The last pass that we did was the HDR pass, and we were just like 'wow, we wish we had that in the beginning', because you could all of a sudden see so much more detail in the skies, or the flames, or Colossus or Deadpool's suit."

Stipan elaborated, "for me, what I loved about it, is it allowed me to be better at my job, because I could see more colour and could match things better, and if I'd seen all that extra colour information and detail, I just think I'd be doing a better job as a colorist and matching shots and grading that look."

Miller agreed. "The Ultra HD is f***ing amazing in the level of detail, especially because we did it at the end of the process," said Miller, pointing to the film as it played on a curved Samsung SUHD television beside him.

"Especially in the skies is where I noticed it most," said Miller. "Particularly in the freeway fight, there's just so much more detail; it's like suddenly the sky was not a white mass the way it had been in all the other formats."

Deadpool
Having tested the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release extensively, we have to agree – what were once mostly white and grey skies now shine through with streaks of blue peeking through the clouds, themselves now showing much more definition.

Of course, it's Deadpool's costume, so wonderfully faithful to Rob Liefeld's original comic design, that would be the major selling point of this release. While many of the film's action scenes have a steely grey sheen to them, Deadpool's vibrant (but still dirty) red and black costume always manages to steal your attention.

"Deadpool's costume was the other big thing I noticed. It's got a really fine weave to it, and suddenly, all the detail of the costume comes out in a way that turns to mush in all the other formats."

Miller noted that "explosions, fires, things like that" also benefitted greatly from HDR's much wider colour gamut. Stipan described the flames in the film's laboratory fight sequence as "all of a sudden having dimension to it – it almost becomes 3D," rather than looking like "a flat TV image."

With regards to specular highlights, which are the bright spots of light that appear on shiny, reflective objects, Miller revealed that HDR allowed for greater detail in the scenes that featured the massive metal mutant, Colossus, citing that in other forms, the character's shine "fuzzes out to a glowing spot."

Deadpool
Miller also believes that "having that detail in there makes it less distracting, because there's not this giant element sitting on the screen; it's this nuanced element that fits will all the rest of the visual details a lot better than if it's just a blob of colour."

According to Miller, working in the HDR process has opened his eyes to possibilities of what he and his team could achieve on the next Deadpool film. "We shot 3K on the Alexa. If we'd shot 6K, which is the newer stuff which we could've shot on RED, how much better would this look?" Said Miller. "Where [the normal Blu-ray version] I don't think would benefit from that extra resolution, this [new Ultra HD] format would."

"The most important thing is people's faces, you know, the makeup," expressed Miller, explaining that "it's not like when HD first came out that people were all of a sudden like 'Oh gosh, we've got to put extra makeup on,' but that would be my only concern with HDR, otherwise, all this, the difference that you're seeing is a huge benefit for us."

Though HDR is becoming instrumental in how filmmakers approach their material, it's clear that it's still considered a very new technology in Hollywood.

"From all the filmmakers that I've worked with, and have been talking to about HDR, no one is bringing an HDR monitor on set," explained Miller, citing their expense as the reason. "If one of those gets knocked over, that's like a $30,000 mistake."

Deadpool
"I'm not sure what we would gain out of it, other than us looking at the raw output on a monitor," said Miller. "If the detail is there, then Tim [Stipan] is going to be able to do something with it in post."

For Stipan, the best part was being able to utilise all the information that was captured by the cameras in the first place.

"There's this extra detail we're taking advantage of. The camera captured this. So now, with this HDR here, allowing us to see what the camera's actually captured, I've got to admit, I was really disappointed, because it was the last pass we did," laughed Stipan.

That disappointment didn't last long, though, with Stipan admitting that "you start playing, and you see this detail, and I truly thought it was the best-looking — format aside and display medium aside — it was the best-looking version of the movie by far."

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'Deadpool' 4K HDR Demo with Director Tim Miller

'Deadpool' 4K HDR Demo with Director Tim Miller

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