HARD DAY AT THE CINE FACE

Its been a good week for readership on the blog with over 10k hits, we of course soared past the 20M mark on our Youtube site but as people use apps to avoid adverts the revenue has halved over the past month especially as people get back to school or work after Christmas / New Year. Remember please if you do watch our films click on an advert or even better two, there really are some interesting things out there among the dross.I was going to film in Wrexham today but the weather turned out worse than forecast so I decided to plod on with the Super8 films, I'm on the last leg now with mainly 200' reels and even a few 50' which are a lot more work as you can't really leave them alone as they need constant changes and rewinding. There has been a lot better selection of material and quality compared with the standard 8 but of course its the 16mm which has a lot of the gems and now I generally ignore private footage and concentrate on the documentaries and other commercial material. I'm not sure how things will end this spring, perhaps I'll be able to put some of the material together. Today i had the great pleasure of running off two Catalan films on road safety the first the older of the two was on road signs of which there were many around 1969 ish and although slightly pinked in places I should e able to squeeze out a good feature, I've never seen so many lorries in a film like this and as the commentary is bi lingual with Spanish / Catalan or vice versa! that means the shots last a bit longer. The other one from the 70s was on urban driving and not quite so tasty, a couple of Barcelona tram scenes and just one trolley.

The replacement bulb in the super8 sound projectore went today after just a few hours of use at £9 a throw I'm going to see if I can use a more common type of halogen lamp, the fitting seem to be the same. I've nowe fitted my second and last spare lamp. I'm chewing up the mini dv tapes but there will be enouigh for this batch of films. There have been quite a few other gems among them. Getting them on the computer and for sale takes a while. I shifted my old Manfrotto tripod on EBay it had been in the garden shed for years, still current though and saved a chap in France a few hundred Euros. We've just had our weekly Skype with Max and Tina in New Zealand, tomorrow friend Sue arrives ready for the trip. A meal out tomorrow at the Pheasant in Plumley then an early start. The reviews on the hotel in the jungle are better now, its not ideal as lots of steps and stairs and climbing but probably the best spot for Mandy to see the birds. I hope it goes off well, the news is full of the virus they have but i think we are safely not pregnant! Packing almost complete now. I've also got hundreds more photos trimmed up ready to file, the filing and loading to my Smugmug site will take some time, after all the requests for our photos hits on Smugmug don't even pay the site rent. I've ordered up some PMP branded hi viz vests. I've written to Peel Ports to try for an invite at the extended Liverpool docks when its ready ( their last news on the website was 2014 so guess its behind a little.

This morning i went to the bank and our Australian friend's cash came through so I could do the transfer to China for the May trip so thats making progress, it was a long struggle as exchanging cash sees it vanish in bank charges. I'm also looking ahead a little, not quite sure when our Spanish trip will happen so perhaps it will be a short break to see our friends there. The year seems to be filling up fast, good news on the rally front with some golden oldies confirmed and some new ones. We will miss Kelsall but return next year and will try to fit in Truckfest, Gaydon Trucks etc plus Llandudno which I skipped last year due to atrocious weather. Hmm no photos so its almost lucky dip how about worldwide trucks to get in the mood for the trip.