Filmed in the Welsh mountains and countryside, “The Bridge” sees 12 strangers team up to build a large bridge over a lake in pursuit of a £100,000 prize pot. Produced by Workerbee, actor James McAvoy voices over the five-part series.

Ross O’Callaghan and Andrew Allen were the DPs. They opted to shoot on Sony FX9s, combined with Sony G-Master and Arri Super Speed lenses, to take advantage of the dual ISO modes and low light capabilities while set lighting was kept to a minimum. 

Having first aired in the U.K. in standard definition in October last year, a six-part Dolby Vision HDR version is soon to be shown on HBO Max in the U.S. 

Wash Post owner and colorist Jon Dobson begins, “As it is a reality series, we wanted to try and distance the look from what viewers would normally expect to see. We were following on from a Spanish version of the show but had the freedom to make it our own—particularly because the setting is in Wales rather than Patagonia. We went for a filmic, soft and stylized grade, which truly makes the show stand apart from others in the genre.”

It was a requirement from the outset that there would be a Dolby Vision deliverable for HBO Max. However, because of the tight turnaround, Dobson explains he had to grade in SDR for Channel 4 initially, and then replicate the look afterwards in HDR.

“I wanted to make sure I kept a close tie between the Channel 4 and HBO grades while still taking advantage of the significant benefits HDR offers. By using group grades alongside DaVinci Resolve Color Management, we created a workflow that allowed us to not to go back to square one between the two versions, and retain the film emulation look for both.”   

At Wash, the team uses both Windows and Mac-based multi-GPU DaVinci Resolve systems alongside the Resolve advanced panels and DeckLink 8K Pro I/O cards. For monitoring they use the Eizo CG3145/6 HDR monitors. 

Dobson adds: “TV shows notoriously have tight turnaround times, and this one was no exception, so having efficient tools like these is crucial.”

Keren Aarons, technical director at Workerbee says, “We had to figure out the most efficient way of ingesting and transcoding around 200 hours of 4K footage per day over 22 days for the offline edit, which was done in Media Composer. Avid’s encoding system isn’t optimized to harness multiple CPUs or make use of GPU encoding, and so we built some bespoke Resolve machines to take on this task. 

“It is one of the very few off-the-shelf products that transcodes Avid OP1 Atom files natively. The GPU enhanced Resolve monsters tore through the transcoding at a ridiculous rate—something like 280-320 frames a second from 4K down to DNxHR 36 quarter res. All in all, the system held together admirably, and we’ve now incorporated this transcoding workflow into all our post work.” 

The online edit was completed in DaVinci Resolve by The Finish Line’s Dave Stephenson. “Doing so removed the need to conform between the grade and online, so we just archived the project and uploaded it on our Media Shuttle,” explains Dobson.  

Looking back on any scenes that really lent themselves to the extra range afforded by HDR, Dobson concludes: “There are some beautiful landscapes that really shone in HDR, they took on a depth that just wasn't possible in the SDR grade.” And Benjamin Hirsch, series director at Workerbee adds, “Jon worked wonders with the footage, achieving a look that was warm, inviting and vibrant while cinematic, and the HDR version truly showed off the Welsh countryside in all its glory.” 

This story first appeared on TV Tech's sister publication TVBEurope.

Do technology limitations shape artistic intent or do they constrain it? This is a question that becomes increasingly relevant as film and TV production moves toward HDR (high dynamic range) imaging. 

HDR offers brighter highlights, darker shadows, more contrast and overall a more realistic representation of light. This also means that creators have more freedom  in how they use light, without worrying about clipped highlights or details lost in the shadows. 

What happens when converting legacy, SDR  (standard dynamic range) content to HDR though? Should restricted highlights and limited brightness be considered an expression of creative intent or an imposed limitation?

ONCE UPON A TIME, TECH INNOVATIONS SERVED THE ARTISTIC INTENTION

When color film came about, the transition to it from the black-and-white world  producers were used to was long and fraught with technical and creative challenges. Creators had to relearn how to create—this time in color—and viewers  had to get used to this additional dimension to film. Yet, despite the hurdles, color  prevailed and today we can hardly imagine a world where video would be without it.  

We are now faced with another transition in the world of moving pictures, one that brings about a considerable improvement in terms of image realism and creative freedom: HDR. HDR images can encode a much wider range of illumination, producing brighter highlights, deeper shadows and richer contrasts. But, despite the promise of this new format, its real world  implementation seems to divide opinion.

HDRN’T (OR FAKE HDR): A CONTROVERSIAL BIRTH

Consumers buy HDR televisions expecting brighter, punchier, more realistic  images and, for the most part, many currently available TV models can achieve  that. But, depending on the content, they find themselves looking at HDR images  closely resembling what they were already used to (which in the field is collectively  termed SDR), with little gain in contrast, brightness levels and details in the highlights. This has accrued various not-so-flattering nicknames both on social media and from the industry, from “Fake HDR” to “HDRn't.”  

Yet part of the content production industry insists on following workflows for  producing HDR that intentionally looks little different from SDR. An often-heard  justification is that during the transition period from SDR to HDR, as both formats  may be co-produced or one may be converted to the other, preserving the artistic  intent is crucial. 

So if the artistic intent is encoded in the SDR version (because the video engineer has shaded the SDR camera precisely so or because the reference graded version of a production happens in SDR and is subsequently  converted to HDR), then we might be tempted to think that the only way to preserve the artistic intent is to make the HDR look the same as the SDR. 

PLUS: Reflecting the Real World: The Quest for True HDR

Still, when transitioning to HD television, for a long period, content was upscaled  (often by the TV itself), with no concerns about the artistic intent. So should we  have stuck with low-resolution images on the then-new HD TVs in the name of  artistic integrity? 

You might argue that this is a straw-man argument; resolution  improvements at this scale arguably do not affect the creative message of a piece of content. Changes in luminance or contrast information might—but is this always the case? And from black-and-white film to lower resolutions to lower contrast and dynamic range, is it fair to consider these technological limitations of another era an expression of artistic intent? 

IS CREATIVE INTENT A PRETEXT FOR DELAYING CHANGE?

The answer to this question is not an easy one, especially as the very meaning of  artistic intent changes depending on the content type. 

In cinematic content the lighting style is undoubtedly linked to the creative vision of the director, but when we consider content such as sports, documentaries or even advertisement, the choices of the director or camera operator are driven not only by aesthetic principles but also by the information that the content is transmitting to viewers.  

For information-driven content, it would be hard to think that an increase in  realism could have a negative impact, an impression that is easily confirmed by observing HDR and SDR content side by side. When the HDR version is visible,  SDR—even when well produced—appears washed out in comparison, with whites  appearing gray. 

The reason for this is that our vision, and the quality of the experience linked to visual images, function at a relative scale: how bright something appears depends on what else is around it. But as light in the real world is closer to what HDR offers, naturally, HDR imagery appears more realistic than SDR.  

For content where creative intent plays a bigger role, as might be the case for  cinematic productions, realism is perhaps less important. In this context, the  advantages that HDR offers become another tool in the arsenal of the director, to  help them tell their story. 

So even if realism is not the goal, in this case as well HDR can offer a creative advantage. In fact, it is worth noting that for cinematic content, traditional film-based workflows offered a dynamic range closer to HDR than SDR, meaning that HDR could even be used to find some of the lost details of older productions. 

What happens though when converting existing SDR content to HDR? The same  arguments apply. We believe that conversions, even automatic ones as long as they are well-designed, can help increase the realism of SDR images by  converting them to HDR, for content where an increase in realism makes sense. 

For cinematic content, automatic conversions can serve as a preparatory step instead, moving the content toward HDR, while leaving the final touches up to the director to ensure that their creative vision is respected, while taking  advantage of the new format. 

In either case, whether new HDR content is produced or SDR content is upgraded  to HDR through conversions, consumers buy HDR televisions expecting a visible  improvement. Current practices for HDR production sacrifice a lot of the potential  improvement in the name of creative integrity but, without considering realism in  the equation, we are not doing HDR justice.

Tania Pouli is deputy lab manager for b<>com. 

GRASS VALLEY, Calif.—Arena TV employed AJA Video’s FS-HDR, FS4 and Hi5-4K-Plus Mini-Converters as it delivered a simultaneous HDR and SDR feed of this year’s FA Cup Final.

According to Dafydd Rees, deputy director of Arena TV, the broadcast of English football’s showcase event was the culmination of three years of work between the BBC, Arena and AJA. “FS-HDR was the key to unlocking the entire concept, giving us the highest possible quality HDR up- and down-mapping to bring audiences much more dynamic HDR and SDR pictures,” he said.

The workflow began with Grass Valley cameras that output the main feeds in HLG or PQ HDR. 3G-SDI outputs were then fed into AJA FS-HDR for conversion to SDR for shading. For replays, slowed down replay materials were fed through FS-HDR for pass-on for simultaneous SDR and HDR output.

Additional materials that required HD to 4K up conversion were then run through an AJA FS4 to ensure pristine 4K output. Pre-recorded SDR materials were fed from an EVS device to an FS-HDR for SDR to HDR transformations. After the content was routed through other equipment, an AJA Hi5-4K-Plus enabled SDI to 4K HDR HDMI monitoring.

“We picked FS-HDR because we know AJA FS gear is reliable, plus FS-HDR’s dual power supplies also give us redundancy,” added Rees.

Arena TV said it intends to refine its single HDR workflow concept with each new project.