BitterSweet has been our submission to the Gershwin Showcase project of the Vail Film Festival 2004. This project allowed filmmakers to shoot and submit a short movie using one of the selected music compositions originally composed by George and Ira Gershwin. Our submission won the grand prize of the project, a very big surprise for us.

Synopsis of BitterSweet:
"An old man, suffering from a heart disease, decides to make his late wife’s wishes come true. During a tiresome ride on his bike on to the beach his memories keep coming back… two people and the one decision that changed their lives."

A new website for Orphic Film and BitterSweet will be created the coming months. But if you like you can watch the movie online at:
http://www.orphic.nl/odm/html/bs.html
(click at Media; length 7:51, size 34 MB, Quicktime 6 format)

Peter Sieben

Very nice movie Peter. Camera angles, colors and the music you've selected are great. It really impressed me.

Can you tell us about your equipment please? And what are you using for color correction?

Thanks Ozan.

I've shot BitterSweet with a Panasonic DVX100 (PAL), using a Vinten PRO-5 tripod system. All editing and color correcting have been done with Vegas 4 straight from the box.

Peter

A lovely, lovely film Peter, which perfectly epitomizes the meaning of "Bittersweet" which I think is one of the most beatuful of human emotions. I related to your film very much - Dank U! Returning to the more mundane - was it shot 4:3 and cropped, or is it full-height anamorphic?

Robin

Hi Robin,

The title of the movie had been a major struggle for a long time, then suddenly one of us walked into the room and just said "let's call it BitterSweet" and it felt right immediately.

It was shot with the onboard 16:9 letterboxing mode. Inside Vegas I changed the letterboxing to the Academy (1:1.85) format. The PAL version has a higher vertical resolution, the 25P footage looks good at the big screen so I avoid the anamorphic route as long as I can (due to the investment, deformed info in the viewfinder and hassle with zooming in/out).

Dank U too!

Peter

Good to see you have it online Peter! It has a nice place on my
DVD shelf here. <g>

Hi Peter

In the first 30 seconds, I was slightly put off by the apparent content thinking that this was going to be another depressing story about old age and all, but you proved me wrong. It was very well done and I especially liked the end. The music piece suited the scene very well, and it added a lot of depth to the story.

The visuals were great too, hope to see more!

Hi Peter

I loved the film...It was beautiful...really!

And congratulations with the prize...

That was wonderful Peter. Congratulations on a fine film! Very much on par with the great shorts I see on IFC, Sundance and sometimes Showtime.

I liked it very much, really. The timing is just exactly right from shot to shot, as if you had composed the whole thing musically! Not sure if it was on purpose but it looked somewhat dark and perhaps a little too desaturated for my taste, but then again it might be the monitor's fault, I viewed it on a PC. Underexposing is great because it keeps you from the video-ish limiting in the highlights, but I would have applied some curves to bring up the upper mid tones and enhance contrast. I love the way the credits are presented split screen in the end. Awesome work!

Thanks for all reply's.
I am not sure about the darkness (I am not very experienced with QT compression), but the color desaturing has been done on purpose. We did three types of color correction:
1. flash back scenes: almost washed out and grainy, to give the shots an old feeling, like recordings found on the attic waiting there covered with dust.
2. shots of present life: a bit desaturated to support the feeling of the man that his life lost a bit of color after his wife had died.
3. afterlife shots (dancing): the warm yellow color was added to give the afterlife a dreamy and warm love feeling, after the rejoining of the two people in their younger versions. BTW: it's up to the viewer what kind of interpretation you give to this last part of the movie.

Rob Lohman (if you're reading this): you've got the dvd. Any thoughts from you regarding the colors and darkness?

Peter

Peter: first the DVD was done very well and the quality is very
high on that. The colors are spot on as you describe them and
look absolutely brilliant on my TV here (which ain't the best).

Ofcourse whether someone would like the "choices" made here
is a personal matter. But I can vouch that the 3 sections have
the kind of colors Peter describes. I haven't downloaded the
web version yet. I'll see if I can compare the two (web version
and DVD) on my laptop tonight.

I watched the film a few more times, I had two technical questions:

1. did you do anything special for the sound? it sounded very clear and nice, was it just the on-board mic?

2. a few shots had nice DOF - were you just zoomed in?

thanks

Hi Young,

1. No special sound editing has been done. I used most of the onboard microphone recordings, and added some roomtone, citynoise and beach/wind/sea sounds from a sound library. The only obvious sound effect that was added was the barking dog in the park. The build in microphone of the DVX100 isn't very popular, but I do get reasonable results with it so far. I have this big couchen(?) like things wrapped over the microphone to minimize wind noise.

2. A couple of shots have been used in zoom mode, to play around with the DOF. The standard lens of the DVX100 is wide-angle orientated with only 10x optical zoom, but it works to certain level. No way it comes close to my old Nikon photocamera/lenses.

Peter

thanks for the replies Peter, that was helpful. I was really impressed with the color and look of the shot of the old man walking on the sidewalk near the beginning, the one with the shallow DOF.

and I noticed the sound was really clear as well. I am about to make a purchase of the DVX100a, if Canon does not come out with its XL2 anytime soon (oog, Im getting tired of waiting)

btw, I just gotta tell you how much I loved the ending of your film, I think it totally 'makes' it

hi

strange intro of the women, very grey looking video-look. Then the real intro of th emovie. Nice. Then the man coughing on the streets. On the zoom in you let me down, cause the head of the actor wasn't focused. So it looked weird. I had to wait 2 seconds to see the man's face. Just doesn't seem logical. The movie takes too long and the yellow looking scene on the beach takes a tadd too long as well and you can feel teh dancers aren't comfortable there. NIce see and outside scenes. I love the sound of nature there. And the transition effects were strange as well (from ebach to room where the old women was lying ). Try to cut more and try to introduce more motion and more storytelling. MOre facts. MORE information!.

Peter..
I think you will appreciate a great B type comedy/horror movie. If it's been released over there, definiutely rent or buy 'Bubba Ho-Tep'.
Bruce Campbell as Elvis Pressley and Ozzy Davis as John F. Kennedy are great. Brings an insitefull view to the state of our elderly (in any society). And truly funny too.

Look it up in imdb for a synopsis.

Jose, thanx for your review. The focussing of the head of the actor is due to heavy QT compression, the real movie is sharp. I cut to a close-up using the moment somebody walks between the old man and camera. Yes, at the dance scene you can tell from the guy his face that he's very cold (it's almost freezing!). The transitions to the flash backs were done on purpose like this, it's a matter of style and personal taste I think. I agree that the cutting could be more tight, but in a wat we wanted to have a slowely told story. How often do we see eldery people just doing what they are doing?
We often heard people saying about BitterSweet how much was going on in just 8 minutes.

Joe, never heard of that movie. Looking at the imdbpro.com site it looks very interesting to watch. I've never seen it over here (The Netherlands) in stores or the video rentals. I might have a better look. I'm not sure what the connection is with BitterSweet, other then they share eldery people in the plot ;-)

Peter: I have Bubba (weird movie indeed) in my collection here,
help me remember and I'll bring it over next time we meet!