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."
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."
"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."
Check out Deadpool's Awesome Package. Available on Blu-ray™ & DVD 25 May. You're Welcome.
