The author is rightly excited about HDR, but could be slightly overstating its effect in some examples.
> But at key parts of the story, certain colors eek outside of that self-imposed SDR container, to great effect. In a very emotional scene, brilliant pinks and purples explode off the screen — colors that not only had been absent from the film before that moment, but seemed altogether outside the spectrum of the story’s palette. Such a moment would not be possible without HDR.
I think the author knows that this is a special case of the effect where you limit color palette to some range of colors for a duration of the film and then exceed that range in places—no HDR in particular fundamentally needed to make this possible.
True, HDR can give a greater effect in absolute colorimetric terms when full palette is revealed, but the perceived magnitude depends on how restricted the original palette was prior to the reveal, and how masterfully the effect is used in general.
> But at key parts of the story, certain colors eek outside of that self-imposed SDR container, to great effect. In a very emotional scene, brilliant pinks and purples explode off the screen — colors that not only had been absent from the film before that moment, but seemed altogether outside the spectrum of the story’s palette. Such a moment would not be possible without HDR.
I think the author knows that this is a special case of the effect where you limit color palette to some range of colors for a duration of the film and then exceed that range in places—no HDR in particular fundamentally needed to make this possible.
True, HDR can give a greater effect in absolute colorimetric terms when full palette is revealed, but the perceived magnitude depends on how restricted the original palette was prior to the reveal, and how masterfully the effect is used in general.