{"id":1603,"date":"2009-09-27T18:35:13","date_gmt":"2009-09-27T17:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=1603"},"modified":"2009-09-27T18:35:13","modified_gmt":"2009-09-27T17:35:13","slug":"an-inflatable-parrot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/an-inflatable-parrot\/","title":{"rendered":"An inflatable parrot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk\/e\/cm?lt1=_blank&#038;bc1=FFFFFF&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;fc1=000000&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;t=thewidblo-21&#038;o=2&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;m=amazon&#038;f=ifr&#038;asins=B000BBEQSA\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" align=\"left\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>A couple of years ago, when we had just got a new camcorder, I bought Charlotte a birthday present: &#8220;How to make a movie: The secret of Pirate Island&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>On the back, it said: &#8220;All you need is a digital camcorder, a modern computer with basic video editing software and four actors (boys or girls).  We provide the rest.&#8221;  Pretty cool, I thought.<\/p>\n<p>However, it was put aside and never used, but recently she finally opened the box.<\/p>\n<p>It contained a bunch of booklets, a pirate&#8217;s eye-patch, a treasure map, a CD, some stickers and a director&#8217;s clapboard.<\/p>\n<p>When we opened the <i>Pre-production booklet<\/i>, we were surprised to read this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Certain props are included in this box, but some other small props will be needed:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A clipboard\n<li>Plastic swords (preferably cutlasses)\n<li>A toy boat\n<li>Some pieces of wood, to create a makeshift raft\n<li>A broomstick, to make a mast\n<li>A Jolly Roger flag (skull-and-crossbones)\n<li>An inflatable parrot\n<li>A biscuit-tin\n<li>A supply of 2p-coins onto which you can stick the doubloons\n<li>Rope\n<li>A blindfold<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It finally points out you&#8217;ll need costumes for all the actors.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, given the size of the box, I didn&#8217;t expect it to contain four complete pirate costumes, but am I the only one who thinks that &#8220;We provide the rest&#8221; could lead the unsuspecting consumer into believing that you wouldn&#8217;t need to do any additional shopping?<\/p>\n<p>I mean, most people probably have a biscuit tin, a broomstick and some 2p coins, so that&#8217;s perfectly OK, but I know that we own neither a Jolly Roger flag nor an inflatable parrot, and I haven&#8217;t seen our plastic swords for ages.<\/p>\n<p>This is very misleading, and if the company can&#8217;t be bothered including all the unusual props, perhaps they should start selling downloadable PDF files on the Internet instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of years ago, when we had just got a new camcorder, I bought Charlotte a birthday present: &#8220;How to make a movie: The secret of Pirate Island&#8221;. On the back, it said: &#8220;All you need is a digital camcorder, a modern computer with basic video editing software and four actors (boys or girls). We provide the rest.&#8221; Pretty cool, I thought. However, it was put aside and never used, but recently she finally opened the box. It contained a bunch of booklets, a pirate&#8217;s eye-patch, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,115,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-kids","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}