Book number 3 in a series of 5
Pmt Function In Javascript
1 year ago
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Monday, 18 May 2009
Am I becoming a Movie Mogul?
About 18 months ago, I got involved with movies in a completely new way. First I was approached by a film company called Full Circle, who wanted me to buy shares in their next project. Normally, I wouldn't consider risking money on a venture like this, as the chances of receiving your money back, or any profits are entirely dependent on the success of the finished product. You hear of successful films such as Slumdog Millionaire, The Full Monty, and Ghost, that were made with very small capital investment, and the shareholders will receive a big return on their investment. You also hear of the big flops that should have been successful, but do not recoup the initial investment, such as Heavens Gate. Those shareholders lose their money.
What convinced me to take a risk, was the British Government. If I invested in this project, I could offset the investment against my taxes! Basically, this means that over three years, 66% of my investment will be paid back as a rebate in taxes. So yes, I could lose my investment completely. Also I stand a chance to gain enormously on my investment too! The film I have invested in is called The Mortician, so it will be interesting to see how successful it will be when it is released in 2010.
Another aspect of investing in this film, is that I get a chance to go to the premieres, and meet the stars. Also I could visit the film sets, only it is going to be filmed mostly in the USA, so maybe I'll pass on that offer!
The other project does not involve any financial investment, only my time. This is where I Co-Produce a film with thousands of other people, through an e-mail questionaire. Here we are asked to work out the story, in what diresction we want it to go. What kind of music score we want, and even if you are really enthusiastic, to write the script! The end result is we will all be given some shares, depending on how much input we have provided, in the movie for free. Again, I have no idea how successful the movie will be, but this time, I guarantee to make some profit!
What convinced me to take a risk, was the British Government. If I invested in this project, I could offset the investment against my taxes! Basically, this means that over three years, 66% of my investment will be paid back as a rebate in taxes. So yes, I could lose my investment completely. Also I stand a chance to gain enormously on my investment too! The film I have invested in is called The Mortician, so it will be interesting to see how successful it will be when it is released in 2010.
Another aspect of investing in this film, is that I get a chance to go to the premieres, and meet the stars. Also I could visit the film sets, only it is going to be filmed mostly in the USA, so maybe I'll pass on that offer!
The other project does not involve any financial investment, only my time. This is where I Co-Produce a film with thousands of other people, through an e-mail questionaire. Here we are asked to work out the story, in what diresction we want it to go. What kind of music score we want, and even if you are really enthusiastic, to write the script! The end result is we will all be given some shares, depending on how much input we have provided, in the movie for free. Again, I have no idea how successful the movie will be, but this time, I guarantee to make some profit!
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Picking someone elses brains can be very useful!
Yesterday evening, and all this morning, I have been trying to connect this blog to Twitterfeed. For some reason I could not get Twitterfeed to recognise the RSS feed from this site. I asked for help on both this Blogger forum and also on the Twitterfeed forums, and then headed off to work expecting to get an answer later today or tomorrow.
When I arrived at work, and told my colleague of my problem, he explained to me exactly what to do in about 30 seconds! So now every time I update this blog, I should have a nice shiny new Twitter update informing other Twiterers that they can see my blog update if they want to!
When I arrived at work, and told my colleague of my problem, he explained to me exactly what to do in about 30 seconds! So now every time I update this blog, I should have a nice shiny new Twitter update informing other Twiterers that they can see my blog update if they want to!
Saturday, 16 May 2009
Not so much Tortoise pace, more like snail pace!
Back in January, I went to 2 seminars for the business I am slowly building up. I decided to take my camcorder with me to film the events, with the view to creating a DVD to pass on to my active team members.
The first Seminar was nearly 5 hours long, and I made the mistake of not bringing enough spare tapes with me, so consequently I didn't capture the last hour of the seminar! The second seminar, I took enough tapes, but forgot the mains lead! So again, I missed the last hour of the seminar. Next year I will do much better!
The videos were successfully transferred onto my computer using Pinnacle Studio. When I tried to edit the footage within the program, I kept losing the audio which makes the editing process impossible! No matter what I tried, I constantly lost the audio, and could not edit it.
Every few weeks I would go back to it and try something different, hoping I would discover a solution. Earlier this week, I suddenly began to make progress at last!
First I had to combine all the video clips to make one movie of 3 hours. Then I had to convert it from an AVI file to an MPEG file, this time there was audio in the converted product. Next I had to the 45GB file through DivX into a 1.5GB file. Finally, yesterday, I loaded this file into Roxio Easy Media Creator, and started to edit the movie, creating a menu, and adding chapters. This last process requires me to actually watch the footage in real time to place and name the chapter headings. I hope that in a few days time I will have managed to complete the task, and have a fully functioning DVD of the event, that will be fully accessible to any particular bit of the seminar for someone to watch and learn from!
The first Seminar was nearly 5 hours long, and I made the mistake of not bringing enough spare tapes with me, so consequently I didn't capture the last hour of the seminar! The second seminar, I took enough tapes, but forgot the mains lead! So again, I missed the last hour of the seminar. Next year I will do much better!
The videos were successfully transferred onto my computer using Pinnacle Studio. When I tried to edit the footage within the program, I kept losing the audio which makes the editing process impossible! No matter what I tried, I constantly lost the audio, and could not edit it.
Every few weeks I would go back to it and try something different, hoping I would discover a solution. Earlier this week, I suddenly began to make progress at last!
First I had to combine all the video clips to make one movie of 3 hours. Then I had to convert it from an AVI file to an MPEG file, this time there was audio in the converted product. Next I had to the 45GB file through DivX into a 1.5GB file. Finally, yesterday, I loaded this file into Roxio Easy Media Creator, and started to edit the movie, creating a menu, and adding chapters. This last process requires me to actually watch the footage in real time to place and name the chapter headings. I hope that in a few days time I will have managed to complete the task, and have a fully functioning DVD of the event, that will be fully accessible to any particular bit of the seminar for someone to watch and learn from!
Thursday, 14 May 2009
A Twit of a Twitterer!
This morning, I walked with my wife and the dog to the next village so that my wife could get a bus to work. As she has to be at work by 08:00, she cannot wait for the bus from our village, as the first one doesn't come through until 07:30, and she would miss her connecting bus to get her to work!
So when I can, I walk with her for 30 minutes to the bus stop. Once she is safely on her way, I then walk back home, with the dog, by way of the river. This is a very tranquil and peaceful time, as the daily hum of the traffic is replaced by all the birdsong, the honking of the Canada Geese, and the noise from the sheep and the cows. Occasionally, you might hear the gentle gurgle of a small tributary running into the river.
While I was walking beside the river, I thought it would be nice to take a picture, and upload it to my Twitter account. I took the picture at 07:00 this morning, and tried, and tried to upload it, without any success. My mistake was that on my BlackBerry phone I had the option of "Send to TwitterBerry". This did not work, and after 3 or 4 hours trying I gave up. It was only when I got to work and looked on the TwitPic site, did I discover that I need to Email the picture instead!
So I have successfully uploaded my first picture, and have learned not to try and send another one via TwitterBerry!
So when I can, I walk with her for 30 minutes to the bus stop. Once she is safely on her way, I then walk back home, with the dog, by way of the river. This is a very tranquil and peaceful time, as the daily hum of the traffic is replaced by all the birdsong, the honking of the Canada Geese, and the noise from the sheep and the cows. Occasionally, you might hear the gentle gurgle of a small tributary running into the river.
While I was walking beside the river, I thought it would be nice to take a picture, and upload it to my Twitter account. I took the picture at 07:00 this morning, and tried, and tried to upload it, without any success. My mistake was that on my BlackBerry phone I had the option of "Send to TwitterBerry". This did not work, and after 3 or 4 hours trying I gave up. It was only when I got to work and looked on the TwitPic site, did I discover that I need to Email the picture instead!
So I have successfully uploaded my first picture, and have learned not to try and send another one via TwitterBerry!
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Flushed with success!
The reason I chose the title above is that two things of interest happened to me yesterday.
The first was, I listened to the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 that had the subject of toilets, more specifically, how to clean yourself after you have finished. The old addage "The jobs never completed until the paperwork is done!" certainly fits this subject perfectly.
I discovered that it is mainly British and American people who use toilet paper to clean themselves. Muslims, and a large proportion of the rest of the world, tend to wash themselves afterwards! In France, the Bidet is commonplace on most dwellings, but in the UK with very little space allocated to bathrooms, there is seldom enough space to have both a toilet and a Bidet.
I decided to investigate a little bit further, and discovered a company that provides a custom built toilet that washes and dries you after you've done the business. It is even self cleaning, as it has a reservoir of disinfectant too! I then looked to see how much one of these super dooper toilets would cost.... that's when my excitement got flushed down the pan, you have to stump up over £2000 for this toilet! I am not even going to attempt to try and work out how many toilet rolls £2000 would buy, or how long it would take to use them all! So I think it will take a long time before the UK wakes up to the more hygenic and comfortable way of going to the toilet.
The other success I had yesterday, was successfully persuading my wife to play a new board game. The game we played was called Cashflow. It was a very close game, and ultimately it was simply a throw of the dice which determined who won the game (me this time)! Hopefully we will be playing this game a few more times over the next few months.
The first was, I listened to the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 that had the subject of toilets, more specifically, how to clean yourself after you have finished. The old addage "The jobs never completed until the paperwork is done!" certainly fits this subject perfectly.
I discovered that it is mainly British and American people who use toilet paper to clean themselves. Muslims, and a large proportion of the rest of the world, tend to wash themselves afterwards! In France, the Bidet is commonplace on most dwellings, but in the UK with very little space allocated to bathrooms, there is seldom enough space to have both a toilet and a Bidet.
I decided to investigate a little bit further, and discovered a company that provides a custom built toilet that washes and dries you after you've done the business. It is even self cleaning, as it has a reservoir of disinfectant too! I then looked to see how much one of these super dooper toilets would cost.... that's when my excitement got flushed down the pan, you have to stump up over £2000 for this toilet! I am not even going to attempt to try and work out how many toilet rolls £2000 would buy, or how long it would take to use them all! So I think it will take a long time before the UK wakes up to the more hygenic and comfortable way of going to the toilet.
The other success I had yesterday, was successfully persuading my wife to play a new board game. The game we played was called Cashflow. It was a very close game, and ultimately it was simply a throw of the dice which determined who won the game (me this time)! Hopefully we will be playing this game a few more times over the next few months.
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