Anything Goes : Getting your film to display at a gamma in theaters that matches your gamma on your home monitors. by Andre Hunt

Andre Hunt

Getting your film to display at a gamma in theaters that matches your gamma on your home monitors.

I recently showed my B&W short film at a festival that used a Sony 4K projector. I was very careful about recalibrating my Imac monitor before I made a Blu-Ray disc using an external Blu-Ray burner, which doubled as a player after I downloaded free software to watch the disc on it. The Blu-Ray played and looked like my original quicktime h.264 1080P film. However, on the 4K, the projector's gamma seemed to make it look about 25% too light. Otherwise, it held up astonishingly well...no breakup. I was thrilled, but new I had to figure out a way to make a darker film by experimenting by opening the film in Photoshop extended, (where I created my film) and adding a layer adjustment, and then experimenting with the black and medium sliders to override the low gamma look of my film. I could not duplicate that look by changing the brightness of my monitor. I could duplicate it by adjusting the lower left slider from 0 to around 30. I left the right slider at 255. So, with this now looking like it did in the theater, I used the upper sliders in the adjustment box...the black and midrange, to pull the image back to how it used to look on my monitor. This gave me settings to use after I pulled the lower slider left slider back to zero, to burn a new Blu-Ray. But I have no idea what the next projector will really do. The Sony 4K that my film ran on has three gamma settings. 1.8, 2.2, and 2.6 I have no idea what settings it was on when my film ran through it, or will I know if my film gets shown in another theater at some point. So, any thoughts on this?

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