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Cinema film poster shop opens in Southend

Posted by admin in Business | Film/tv - (2 Comments)

Hi loyal blog followers. (This is heavily ironic; no-one reads this at all)
In collaboration with a good friend I have just opened a film poster shop in Hamlet Court Road Southend.
We sell genuine cinema posters, rolled or framed. Most of the selection here are the UK quad size (as it’s known in the trade) – the ones used in the light boxes outside the cinema to advertise what is currently playing.

A man with two disinterested dogs window shopping

These are quite collectible with premium examples fetching 1,00s of pounds. Regardless of value they look pretty striking when nicely framed and hanging on your wall.

We have some space in the Big Society depatment store, Hamlet Court Road, Essex. N.B. this name bears no relation to the flagship policy conception in the 2010 UK Conservative Party general election manifesto. It is intended to connote the spirit of the proprietor’s aspirations of supporting the community. One way of doing so is providing small businesses a low cost, no nonsense space to trade. Or something like that …

My business partner has been selling movie posters online for over 12 years (at favouritefilm.com, Amazon and Ebay) so this is the first time either of us have tried retail selling.

I will therefore endeavour to blatantly promote this enterprise via my blog. I’ll soon be blatantly promoting my online shop selling movie poster frames through a series of posts. First, an article on collecting film posters from my expert colleague. Then a follow up piece on framing your collection. Truly I have no shame – especially as NO HUMANS EVER READ MY BLOG. There I shouted, twice, with no chance of any remonstration.

So pay us a visit sometime. We can be found at The Big Society Department Store, 106 Hamlet Court Road, Westcliff on Sea.

Social enterprise – to boldly go

Posted by admin in Business | Self improvement - (1 Comments)

Right. Having just finished a brief stint freelancing in (now don’t yawn) software support I’ve found myself without a contract to go to next. I am not as disappointed as perhaps I should be. Why? Well, I was struggling to bear doing the work if I’m honest; the bespoke software I was involved with was at best frustrating to use and … I don’t even want to bore you with it all.
Suffice to say I may now have an opportunity to do something a little interesting. I’ll be broke yes. But once again I’ll have hope in my heart.
Over the last year or so I’ve been working with a Business Development Officer in Southend. Right now he’s running a 5 week (one day per week) course aimed at local budding entrepreneurs.
Card describing The Challenge
For someone in my position it’s ideal. It gets me out of the house meeting like minded people; just want I need right now. I’m expecting inspiration and who knows, perhaps an income at the end of it.
Anyway, for my money these guys are doing great work; anything that inspires people to start helping themselves and their community through these gloomy times has got to be healthy. I urge anybody local to check out The Business Surgery. (see links)

How to use adwords

Posted by admin in eBusiness - (0 Comments)

OK. I’m simply getting loads of spam here. To be fair, it is probably because the website really has no clear objective or purpose. I was hoping to get some kind of a dialogue going with other lifestyle entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs or even common or garden drop outs. I’ve dabbled in film-making, (which enthuses me) but, circumstances compel me back to to my old job for a while (which does not). I need to get my head above water, then get a little money together, then engineer an income through some form of self employment. I’d really like to learn about selling on the web.
Anyway, I digress. Once I have some capital I would like to run a few adwords test campaigns but I’m a total novice. I’d love to hear from anyone who has had success. For example, what type of conversion rates (clicks per sale) are you getting, and with what type of keywords? I guess the more targeted the keywords, the better the conversion rate. But how then to balance this with the your cost per click bidding?
If anyone out there wants to offer some genuine content or advice I’d welcome it. Perhaps even a page on this site with a guide would be helpful to others?

Delete wordpress comments newer than 3 months

Posted by admin in eBusiness | Web programming - (0 Comments)

If, like me, you are inundated with spam and a little sloppy when it comes to undertaking any anti-spam measures, then you will probably have thousands of junky-robot-scribed-comments clogging your blog.

I found this SQL handy to get rid of these pesky things. Now, don’t blame me if it breaks stuff … You need to go into your PHP Admin interface (or similar) and run this against your WordPress database.

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_date > DATE_ADD(CURDATE(), INTERVAL -3 MONTH)

I don’t know if it is perfectly safe, in terms of database integrity etc. But it saved me some messing about for sure.

The 5 shot rule

Posted by admin in Film/tv - (0 Comments)

OK, so you have a great story for a film. You’ve got some actors, some expensive equipment, a director’s chair – the whole kit. It’s time to start filming the first scene. Now, where should you point the camera?

We’ll assume here that you need to film someone doing something. An heuristic I’ve come across often as I attempt to learn something about film making is the five shot rule. It gives you a starting point if your mind has gone ablank.

Let’s imagine we want to film someone feeding the ducks. You could film material for the following sequence of shots:

1) A close up of the hands,  showing the fingers tearing up the bread.

2) A close up of the face, revealing who is doing it.

3) A mid shot from the side, showing the same person and their arms throwing bread.

4) An over-the-shoulder or POV shot of a similar action.

5) A wide shot, putting the person in some kind of context.

Obviously, this sequence can be mixed up a little bit. You could throw in a few shots of the ducks in a feeding frenzy for example. Or reverse the sequence, going in the direction of wide shot to close up instead.

It turns out I have an example of just this scenario. The following clip has its faults I concede, but I hope it illustrates the effectiveness of this technique in some way.

Fed up ducks: