watch Bitter Old Man (2011)

[sonnyboo]

A father confronts his son on the eve of his engagement. WARNING! Strong Language and Harsh Content.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KQMZoSNMPw

This is a re-edit/re-do of a short I made in 2001. Kind of a pre-Gran Torino kind of short film.



***** SPOILER ALERT *****

The effects at the end, the greenscreen especially was quite dated, so I had my Sonnyboo Intern re-digitize the footage and then I re-worked all the effects. This included new music and sound mixing too.

 

[sonnyboo]

Here is the original 2001 version, about a 1 minute longer and with much less quality effects....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7YQgFEb3A

I would love to know anyone's opinion on this piece, especially a comparison of the two versions.

 

[Utopia]

Liked it.

Hope you don't mind my audio critique:

Dialogue was way too echoey.

There was way too much of a first ref coming off those bare walls you positioned the son near.

I would have either placed the son a bit more out into the room and put a chesty lav on him or put the mic even closer to him so it didn't pick up as much echo as it did. I would have also splayed out from wall to wall packing blankets and other blankets to deaden the sound - it being a kitchen and all it must have had a hard floor and created a lot of echo. It got on my nerves - but hey, I'm a sound guy.

The voices overall sounded thin and harsh to me. I would suggest sucking a bit out of 2.5 - 4K and bringing up with a bell around 100. Also, try slapping on a tinge of compression. Not too much, perhaps around 3 to 6 dB at most. There was also a lot of mechanical noise from whatever preamp was used. Signal to noise ratio was a bit too high - possibly use a noise suppressor?

The effects at the end where he is lying down still. They are high-endy and harsh to me.

The father's voice in the end I thought could have a bit more echo and delay on it to separate it from his voice in the real world.

But other than that it has a good message and I thought the old man did a great job.

 

[rockerrockstar]

I looked at them booth. Wow what a visual improvement. What ever you did to improve the quality of the picture was great. The sound improved also. I looked at the differences in the green screen too. I thought both versions were cool. I wonder what the old version of the green screen would have looked like if it was updated to the same visual quality as the rest of the short film. I kinda liked the old green screen if you could improve the resolution on it. It had this sort of dream state to it that could pass as heaven. Not sure which was a better green screen the old or the new version I would need to see a new version of the old green screen to judge. It may not really make much of a difference to the short.

 

[sonnyboo]

The sound was not so good on this, I agree. We shot this in January of 2001 with a $30 microphone gaff taped to a fishing pole XLR into a cheap Radio Shack adapter into a Canon GL1 with the Mic Att at the wrong setting.

The audio for the greenscreen work at the end was so low in volume it took everything I had to try to even get a usable signal without ADR.

So, I agree with everything in your critique!

 

[Michael Allen]

I liked your use of the car at the start. I found it took a little while for the actors to warm into it but once they did I started to get into it too.
I liked your idea.
And yes a very big improvement from the older version to the new.

 

[sonnyboo]

Not sure which was a better green screen the old or the new version I would need to see a new version of the old green screen to judge. It may not really make much of a difference to the short.

Look at the actor's feet in the 2nd or 3rd greenscreen shot. They are crawling all over the place because it was a horrible key, as were most of the shots in the original. In the new one, I wanted to give "heaven" a different feel, so I went with the light streak effect which I felt worked.