Andrew Kolakowski wrote:Famous example is House of The Dragon which is crazy bad.
I watched all the
House of the Dragon shows via streaming on a calibrated LG OLED C9, and it looked fine to me. Zero problems. I wasn't in a position to compare the SDR version with the HDR, but the HDR was fine. How was your displayed calibrated?
I think a lot of people (particularly neophyte colorists) are quick to criticize a huge, blockbuster show when they don't consider that a) at least 6 or 7 people in the room (producers, director, post producers, the editor, HBO execs, etcl) all approved that look, b) the DP could well have carefully crafted every shot in terms of exposure to look exactly that way, and c) the display you're looking at has a gigantic effect on the final look. A show like
House of the Dragon, which cost about $20 million per episode, was not done lightly, nor did they slough off any part of the post-production. Renowned UK colorist Asa Shoul did the final color on the series at Warner Bros. De Lane Lea in London, all on Baselight, and in general I think he does exceptional work.
Bear in mind I also watched the infamous episode of
Game of Thrones, "The Long Night," which I didn't think was too dark (also in HDR on the same display). I think the problem there was: the episode took place at night; within the story, it was mostly illuminated by torches and fire; it was cut very quickly, so the viewers never got a good look at anything for more than a few seconds; and there were not a lot of wide shots, so you never got a sense of the "scope" of the setting and story. But they clearly made specific creative decisions for a reason. You can see the DP's explanation for
Game of Thrones here:
https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainm ... k-episode/I've sometimes gotten into creative "discussions" with clients on brightness levels, and it's rare that any DP wants it brighter: they generally believe "drama = darker," and it's sometimes hard to talk them into going with a "movie dark" look where we can still see into the shadows. There are shows that did this very well:
Lost and
Walking Dead are two I can think of that frequently had exterior night scenes where you could still see everything (in SDR). You have to walk a fine line in terms of revealing too much vs. crushing the toe of the signal.
Andrew Kolakowski wrote:Dolby Dark on selected titles is almost a „black” screen. Good name. Dolby is very, very protective of their creations. It’s not normal that eg. AC3 plug-in encoder use to cost more than many hosting apps itself even if they offered tons of other functionality.
We ignore the presets and just have a technician calibrate our screens for SDR Rec709 and HDR Rec2020, with a decent probe and the right test signals. Every year or so, I take the older OLEDs from our color room home and just repurpose them in the living room or bedroom as "home sets." They haven't been calibrated in awhile, but they're close enough.