The Apple TV+ WWII drama Greyhound features some impressive visuals, especially when viewed in Dolby Vision. Director of photography Shelly Johnson, ASC, hadn’t shot with HDR in mind, expecting the initial release to contain the traditional theatrical dynamic range, but he was able to flesh out the possibilities offered by HDR during the color grade. He worked closely with Company 3 colorist Bryan Smaller immediately after the decision came down that its initial release would be on the Apple streaming service and in Dolby Vision.
Shelly Johnson, ASC
The film, which stars Tom Hanks (who wrote the script), is a drama set aboard a Navy destroyer facing enemy artillery as it makes its way across the vast ocean. Directed by Aaron Schneider, the imagery was designed to feel real, not nostalgic or pretty. “The last thing we wanted was a glossy ‘Hollywood’ lighting job,'” Johnson recalls. “Granted, there is a good amount of VFX work, but our visual plan involved ‘dirtying’ the images up, making sure they had those intangible imperfections that make a shot feel authentic. In a stormy environment, lenses should sometimes capture moisture and flares — the messiness that you would have in a natural situation, and that translated to the color too.”
Which explains why he was curious about integrating the brighter, more colorful highlights and the ability to increase color saturation that are key distinguishing factors of HDR. “This was my first Dolby Vision master,” he says. “I’d done HDR versions with other films after the fact, but in terms of starting in Dolby Vision and then extracting other versions based on that grade — this was my first time doing that.”
The differences between an HDR and SDR version can be quite subtle. They can also be extreme and take full advantage of the HDR process, depending on how very bright highlight information captured by the sensor is rolled off in the post process to “fit” within the dynamic range allowed by the particular HDR display. The film purist might want those highlights in HDR to be compressed into a kind of “shoulder,” as they are on film, or they might prefer to “dodge” bright portions of the frame to pull them back into SDR range, or they might want to simply let them blow out. It’s ultimately an aesthetic choice that is finalized up in the color grading theater.
As soon as Greyhound‘s initial deliverable format became HDR, Smaller — who’d already been working closely with Johnson on what was to be the theatrical DI — encouraged the cinematographer to evaluate some scenes from the film in HDR (graded in Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve at 1000 nits) after Smaller made selective use of a significant amount of that additional dynamic range to allow certain highlights to peak up in the 600- or 700-nit range.
“Bryan put it simply,” says Johnson of the colorist. “A lot of the image will still exist in what is essentially the same range as it would in SDR, but the brightest values can carry luminance and color information into those higher ranges beyond 100 nits. In our case, the ultimate goal was all about the viewer being captivated by a naturalistic image.”
The approach to collaboration between DP and colorist was unusual at this time because COVID-19 was in full force, and the practice of sitting together during the color grading theater was not an option. Smaller, working out of Company 3’s Santa Monica facility, provided live-remote grading for Johnson, who sat alone inside a theater that Company 3 calibrates and maintains several miles away on the Sony lot. “The place felt abandoned at that time,” Johnson notes. “I think there were tumbleweeds blowing down the streets of that lot!”
But the remote session was as close to normal as was possible at the time, and Johnson sat down (remotely) with Smaller and began working with the Dolby Vision master based on the film’s artistic principles, which had been established when they started down the path of traditional theatrical grading. He mused to himself, “The last thing I want is for this to look ‘electronic.'”
Smaller rolled the first scene. “I thought, ‘This is beautiful!’ Just seeing the luminance in the clouds and how light kicked off the water, you could see the frame was made of liquid color, and it looked amazing. It was the opposite of electronic. It was immersive. I felt like I was outside on a cold day on the North Atlantic. I could suddenly think of all kinds of ways to build on HDR and do even more with it.
“Then we got to scenes of the ship’s interior where it’s very dark and you can see portals and the day exterior outside,” he adds. “That’s when the images really started to glow. You could look out these very bright portals and the exterior was bright, but it retained realistic color value. I shot tungsten practicals in the pilot house, and we could read color in the bare bulbs. All these details contributed to placing the audience in the world of a Navy destroyer.”
Continuing on, Johnson only grew more pleased. “Night scenes were fantastic. The first time we saw those muzzle flashes from the big guns and how bright and impactful they were, it was incredibly powerful. Once we weren’t confined to the 100-nit image of Rec. 709 or the roughly 48 nits of P3 theatrical projection, it became something very different and expressive. You can almost feel the gun concussion in your chest by the way the light values were hitting and affecting you. To me, that was instrumental in putting the audience on deck and feeling this warscape.”
Of course, that picture information was there in the “neg,” so to speak. Johnson captured it. The sensors on the Panavision DXL1 recorded the data, but Johnson visualized the imagery and monitored it in SDR (Rec. 709 monitors). The Dolby Vision technology and Company 3’s unique approach to the color science allowed this highlight information to be displayed in HDR, and Smaller’s work helped interpret exactly how this harvested detail was displayed in this way.
“If the color science hadn’t been as thorough as it was,” Johnson points out, “we could have been in for a very rough time of it when we needed to pivot to the Dolby Vision finish. Early on, Smaller pointed to the wisdom of grading using a P3 LUT that Company 3 had in its arsenal. I’m happy we used the CO3 LUT because it facilitated the unforeseen transition to a Dolby Vision master and made it seamless for me. We could start right away making important creative decisions.”
The colorist, having worked closely for some time on those creative decisions with the filmmakers, was bursting with ideas about an HDR pass before that day he auditioned the HDR pass for the DP. “I’d already laid out our visual goals for Bryan,” Johnson explains. “Greyhound takes place mostly under storm conditions in indirect light, and the narrative involved a journey across a threatening North Atlantic, and time of day for our color story was paramount. Some parts would have a gray, steely-cool storm look with dusk going a very windblown-blue and dawn a more chromatic cyan transitioning to a salty gray. Bryan enthusiastically locked right into these ideas.”
While shadow information, strictly speaking, is neither brightened up nor darkened down through transposition to Dolby Vision’s PQ curve, there is a natural perceptual difference between the way deep shadows appear when the brightest highlights top out at 100 nits and when a viewer is watching a scene where the brightest portion of the frame peaks at closer to 700 nits. “If you’re looking out a portal, and it’s 700 nits,” Johnson observes, “that’s a load for your eye to respond to. We found ourselves opening up the shadows somewhat to compensate for people’s sensory reaction, where the pupil closes down due to bright light. This is very interesting because that gave us shadow fidelity in the dark parts of the frame, while they still looked quite dark. In a Rec. 709 grade, a colorist might set blacks and maintain a consistent line on the waveform monitor for ‘black.’ But to get the most out of HDR, it has a lot to do with how shadows and highlights involve the viewer on a shot-to-shot basis. Bryan was very participatory on this front. I liked his approach and his ideas regarding the construction of a shadow.”
Bryan Smaller
By starting work at 1000 nits and then deriving other versions from there, Johnson believes that versions seen on lower-than-1000-nit displays and even in SDR benefit from the workflow, where you start out being able to use all that information and subsequently remap the image. “The Dolby Vision process involves a translation from HDR to SDR, or whatever the specific monitor the viewer is using can accept and display. Right now, mastering in Dolby Vision gives you the best approach pattern to the final look of these various color spaces.”
Having seen what HDR was able to do for Greyhound, Johnson is eager to employ these options in his future work. “It really showed me the importance of monitoring HDR as you shoot, which is starting to become more of a common practice. If a movie is going to be finished in HDR, it would be helpful to place those values where you want them in the HDR space as you light. Greyhound was a wonderful journey of discovery.”
