archived-videos Catsup - Short Comedy Sketch

I would have had more fun with a build up. Have a lot more examples - potato, tomato, etc. With each word escalate the weapons caliber; start with pointing fingers, then fists, then knives, then pistols, then shotguns... Make it ridiculous; the premise is already so take it to the obvious, outrageous extremes. That's when you have the WTF are we doing, this is silly and then the ending. Also, the bigger weapon could have splattered him all over the room.

On to the audio criticism...

It's obviously an on-camera mic, but not too horrible as most of the shots are fairly close and almost face on.

The sound wanders all over the place. The dialog is right of center or all the way to the right in the stereo field. The sound FX are centered. The dialog and sound FX volumes need to be better balanced.

I'll leave the visual critique to others more knowledgeable.

BTW, "ketchup" and "catsup" are two different words, so don't really apply to the pronunciation argument.
 
Thanks for the comments! In terms of the story, I didn't write this one...and to make a long story short, my best friend did which makes any decisions I want to make very hard :P

That's interesting with the audio panning because when I listen to it, the dialogue sounds fully centered to me. Also almost all the sound effects were from the live shoot, so any centering or lack-there-of that isn't right with the dialogue seems a little weird to me. Yeah, it's a shotgun mic on camera. Usually I have someone boom it, but there was no boom op that day. Thanks for the critiques! It's very helpful.
 
No real opinions here. I thought it was another great sketch. Then again, I'm new myself and still learning. Audio is tricky. I'm working on it and every time (I) think it sounds great.... well, it doesn't. I want to keep it up but for any serious projects I may plan I think I'll get a sound person.
Overall. I liked it.
 
BigBadBilly said:
No real opinions here. I thought it was another great sketch. Then again, I'm new myself and still learning. Audio is tricky. I'm working on it and every time (I) think it sounds great.... well, it doesn't. I want to keep it up but for any serious projects I may plan I think I'll get a sound person.
Overall. I liked it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the comments, I'm glad you liked it! I agree, audio is really tricky. It's incredibly difficult to find that perfect median where low-volume noises and dialogue aren't too quiet and louder noises and dialogue don't clip. That's my biggest issue. As noted, I just had the mic on top of the camera for this, but typically I would have a boom operator which, in my opinion, is the most important part of capturing live sound (taking for granted that you have a good mic/preamp).
 
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