'Deadpool' Filmmakers Discuss 'Amazing' Detail of 4K Blu-ray Release With HDR

18 May, 2016 By: Stephanie Prange

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Like the foul-mouthed superhero in his hit movie Deadpool, director Tim Miller was frank about the revelation of seeing his movie in Ultra HD with high dynamic range (HDR).

“The Ultra HD was just f**king amazing at the level of detail,” he said May 17 at a demonstration, held at the studio lot, of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment’s recently released Ultra HD Blu-ray release.

Schawn Belston, EVP of media and library services for 20th Century Fox Film, noted the time and effort put into the studio’s first all-HDR Blu-ray release.

“This is our first disc that features all high dynamic range content, so the menus and the logos and everything are in high dynamic range,” he said. “Also, there’s object-based audio, Dolby Atmos, on the entire disc. This might not seem like that big a deal, but trust me it was.”

Just perfecting the logo took more than two months, he noted, adding, “so you can imagine [the work that went into the HDR rendering of] the movie.”

Colorist Tim Stipan spent lots of time preparing the film for its many releases, and noted that the HDR pass “had the most detail in it.”

“The amount of detail that you get in the flames, you see so much more,” he said. “It all of a sudden has more dimension to it. It almost becomes more 3D.”

“It’s like suddenly the sky was not a white mass the way it had been in all the other formats, but had this beautiful detail,” Miller added. “Also, Deadpool’s costume was the other big thing I noticed because it’s got a really fine weave to it and suddenly all the detail in that costume kind of comes out.”

CGI-rendered character Colossus also benefitted from the HDR format, as did highlights in the film.

“Anywhere you see lightbulbs, with HDR you can almost actually see the filament of the lightbulb,” Stipan said.

“I think this is the wave of the future because you’re seeing more of what the camera captured,” he added, noting “a lot of the shots had this almost painterly quality.”

“I truly thought it was the best-looking version of the movie by far,” Miller said.

The director joked that the home release offers a wider audience than the typical comic book fan.

“Dudes can watch this with their wives,” he said. “My wife hates everything I do, and she loved this movie.”

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