Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This episode is sponsored by Petra Culp. Hello and welcome back to this the
final episode of film the final episodeof the season, I should say a
film pro Productivity and Success, thepodcast that helps film pros and other creative
people to live a more focused,effective and happy life. My name is
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Carter Ferguson and this is episode onehundred and forty eight, and it's all
about Facebook and Instagram account hijack scams. Who is to believe a con artist
anyone if she is good? AndyGriffith unquote. And in the last week's
show, folks, I looked atthe concept of the digital detox and how
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you can use it to get yourselfoff of the dopamine kick and back on
target with your goals. Today,though, is the final show of the
season. As I said the secondago in a fairly bodged into I have
to say, and I feel Ireally need to come for this topic that's
hit so many of my friends andcolleagues on social media. I need to
give fair warning to you out there. This is happening. It's been happening
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for about six months to a year, and unless you're aware of it,
you could fall for it yourself.It's just that the numbers of people who
are intelligent, people who are good, professional, intelligent people that have fallen
for this is unbelievable. Scammers areexploiting the messaging systems on Instagram and Facebook
to steal our user accounts, tosteal our own Facebook pages or Instagram accounts,
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and they're doing so through various deceptivetactics. In these days. Oh
my god, the number of scamsthat are going on these days are just
insane. Earlier on in the season, I ran I was asking people to
fill in a questionnaire and I saidI would give five pounds a give foucher
for Amazon for anyone that filled inthe questionnaire, and they had to listen
to an episode of the show eightminutes long or thirteen minutes long. They
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had to listen to the show answersome questions. I hit a question in
them in the question it was onlyten questions long. I had a question
in there to check they actually readit. It would listen to the show
and they had to leave a reviewon like I was. I like to
say to promote the show on Applepodcasts ideally or on Spotify or wherever they
end up being. And I putthat out there and a few people came
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in and I paid them and itwas all fine. And then a scammer
get ahold of it. Somebody getahold of it, and apparently so I
hear, they put it onto somegroup that discusses, you know, stuff
like this, and I got hitwith sixty plus fake accounts, all trying
to get me to pay them fivepounds for trying to review the show.
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Here's the thing, though, Idid build into it that they had to
get permission from me to do thething. They couldn't just do it because
I only had twenty spots on it. So these things were coming in and
I was getting I got suspicious becausetwo of them didn't even know, I
think, what a podcast was.And apparently they had actually listened to the
show, but the answer to theto where they had listened to the show
was the same answer, the samewrong answer. So I was thinking,
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these two are the same people.And then I get ten emails in you
had to email me in order toget a link to take part in the
in the questionnaire, you had toemail me first. I got ten,
eleven, twelve something that identical emails, all with no heading, All of
the identical texts, all from differentpeople apparently who all wanted this five pounds,
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and they were all scammers. Theyhad to put their put them in
a my spam folder, and thenI got about another fifty of the same
thing. And what they've done ischanged their tap tactics somewhat. And I
think they were using something like chatchypt to generate fake communications with me that
I could spot them a mile offthough, because they were all almost saying
exactly the same thing. They're allalmost exactly the same length. But they
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just that smelt wrong. And asI said, two of them had got
through before I realized that there's amaster of these things, and I shut
down the questionnaire. Two of themgot through, and the way they answered
the questions, it was just itwas just wrong. And eventually it just
there was so many fake accounts tryingto get me to give them five quid
that I shut down the whole questionnaire. It killed what I was doing.
It was trying to promote the show. It killed that. But yeah,
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these two they went to the here'sthe thing, right, See, if
they just listened to the show anddone what I'd asked, it would have
taken them twenty minutes fifteen to twentyminutes. They were making fake reviews to
send to me. They weren't goingon and doing it. They weren't listening
to it. They were answering fakeanswering questions with just guest answers. It
was a complete shit show. Andhonestly, if they just filled in the
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question and done it legally, doneit as I set out, they would
have got some money out there.Of these people just a nightmare. Anyway.
That was just my experience from earlieron. But everywhere I turn film
festivals, film freeway, the numberof pay to win festivals, festivals that
exist they've existed for less than ayear, and our online festival that are
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charging forty dollars for you to applyfor best Director, best Actor, best
designer, best producer or whatever.The number of them is just off the
charts, and they're all scams.I even found one that was doing a
film festival per week, one perweek, and again it was a pay
to win festival. You know,look like like this is festival July three,
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and you're thinking, O July thethird, it's the third festival or
the third year it's run. Thefestival and it's happening in July. No,
it's the it's the July Film Festival, week three, and they've got
like forty categories for each week andpeople are paying forty bucks. Anyway,
Scam, scam, scam everywhere,but the one that has been the worst
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killer is this one. I've seenlots of my friends lose their accounts.
They never get them back. Thebest I've heard somebody get back is they
got back the imagies from the accountthat had been hijacked. And this was
filmmakers that were specifically getting attacked.The attack came on me as well,
so I know how it works,and that's what I'm going to try and
talk to you about today. Theytried to hit me by contacting me through
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I think it was another account they'dalready hijacked of a friend of mine.
It was John mcfield's brother Paul,and he sent a message saying I've been
locked out my account or whatever,can you do this thing? Or not?
What it wasn't that It was likehe'd been nominated. That was it.
He'd been nominated for something, andin order for him to be nominated,
I had to get a code fromI think Facebook or or Instagram.
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It was kind of the same thingbecause they owned the same company, They're
Meta, and I was to sendhim this code, and I kind of
I kind of was like, itseems to be believable. I was interacting
with this person, seemed to belegit. But while I was talking to
him, I sent a text toJohn McPhail and said, it's your brother
or doing this that the next thinghe's going. He texted back pretty much
right away, saying, don't communicatewith him. It's a scam. They've
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hijacked his account. They're pretending tobe him to try and trick you into
sending this code. And this code, in effect was a backdoor which would
have allowed them into my accounts andthey would have basically changed the passwords on
me and I would be out.And you think that Meta cares that you've
you're out and some hijackers got yourstuff, do they? Hell? Meta
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doesn't give a toss about you.They don't give a toss at all.
You're just another part of the cattlethat they're milking every day for attention and
for promotion at by whoever's paying forsponsored contact content. So once you've lost
your account, it's gone. Forever. But that's how they tried to trick
me. So I decided to doan episode just warn you, warning you
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about some of this stuff. Butthat's the specific way that it comes across
that you've got to look out for. It will be somebody that you know
who's communicating with you. It willbe somebody whose account you've already interacted with
in the past. You might evenbe following. But the person that's that's
running that has already hijacked that accountfrom the person you know. And it
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is rife, absolutely rife. Ithink Ryan Hendrick filmmaker, I think he
lost an account. I know BigStevie from Scare Scotland, he lost his
account. Paul lost his account.These are all creative people out there,
professional people, good people and brightpeople, and I'm not sure they all
get the same way that it happenedto me. But I'm just as I
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say, I'm here to raise awareness. That's enough for now, that we
move on with move on with theepisode. It was the heart of any
scamm er fiddle, keep the punteruncertain, or if he is certain,
make him certain of the wrong thing. Terry Pratchett unquote, So in order
to pique your awareness of this.I'm going to lay out an explanation of
the methods. Right. The firstmethod, which is the method I've been
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talking about, is impersonation. Scammerscan impersonate friends, family, or well
known personalities through fake accounts, orhere's the bigger problem, compromise accounts counts,
accounts that you've already been following,that you've already been interacting with,
and they send messages that appear tobe from someone familiar, often using urgency
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or emotional manipulation to convince us toprovide our personal information or to click on
malicious links. You've got to watchout for malicious links, or as I
say, for me to do somethingthat in effect is me asking for a
new password, and they send outa code and then and they're saying,
we need this code in order tobe a vote for this thing. You've
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got to send the code, andthat, by the way, I nearly
fell for it. I went quitea ways down the line before I went
I'm not sure about this. I'mreally not sure about this. And that's
when I was communicating with John.But I was probably three or four clicks
away from handing off my account tothat scammer. The second thing that will
happen is fishing. That's pH Is HIG phishing. Scammers will send messages
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posing as legitimate organizations or platforms requestingsensitive information such as passwords or account verification
codes. I'd say that is exactlywhat happened to me at It seemed to
be an individual who was impersonating thatwas fishing from me. But that's the
thing. Your passwords and account ofverification codes, that's what they're after.
And they create convincing messages that trickuses into the disclosing their credentials by doing
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this, and the scammers, ofcourse then use these credentials that you've sent
to take control of your account.Gotta be on this, You've got to
be aware of this. You've gotto be suspicious, okay. And the
third thing that they do they dois malware and malicious links. That's the
first thing they're trying to catch youwith. Scammers will send messages containing malicious
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links that, when clicked, willinstall malware onto your computer or your phone
or whatever. And this malware canmanipulate your log in, credentials or other
sensitive information and allow the scammers toget unauthorized access to your accounts. And
I'm just on that topic. You'vegot to look out these days for QR
scam codes in real life too,that is, on the street. QR
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code scams involve fraudulent use of squareshaped barcodes that can be scanned with smartphones.
You know the ones I'm talking about. There like lots of little shapes
in the middle of a square.And here's the thing, stickers that could
be posted over things like parking meterswhere legitimate QR codes exist and have been
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put out there by the government orwhatever. They will print a QR code
off and they will paste it overthe QR code that's legitimate one on the
device that you're out and about trackuse, Like if it's a parking meter,
you might scan it. Now you'vegot to make sure that that's the
right one that you're scannings. Ifit's been pasted over by a scammer,
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that will then lead to fake appsthat will steal your data and lock you
out, you know, hijack yourphone, hijack your accounts, hijack your
bank account potentially as well if yougo on to put your bank details into
this to pay for parking and scammerscreate misleading codes that lead the users to
malicious sites or prompt them to sharesenses information. So you've got to be
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aware of it. These codes willappear on physical objects and are shared online
as well, so be aware ofthem. And scammers are absolutely all out
to trick users into sharing personal dataor falling for these fish attacks. So
again, if you get down theline with this, start thinking what am
I doing here? Be very awareof handing off sensitive information and to protect
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yourself against QR code scams instantly.Just you have to be cautious. You've
got to verified destinations. You've gotto ensure device security measures on your phone
or whatever are up to today.And I've had this happening with phone calls
as well. I had somebody pretendingto be Carphone Warehouse. Now I used
to have a phone with Carphone Warehouse, although I didn't I ever had a
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car phone. That's just a Britishcompany. It was called that, and
I believed them, and I wentdown the line. I thought this thing
is all right, and they're offeringme. They're offering me a a phone
upgrade and stuff. And I wasthinking, okay, that's fine, that's
fine. And I was thinking thisis. This is actually my own company,
that the company I've had association with. But I said to them,
well, what I said basically,I'm suspicious of this call. Can you
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give me some sort of verification.They gave me carphone Warehouse dot whatever.
It was a real site, itwas there, but I was thinking,
this isn't the carphone warehouse this is. This looks like it, But the
code at the top was like carphonewarehouse dot Russia or something. The car
would be a carphone Warehouse code atUK if it was if it was UK.
So I was searching. I wasgoogling at the same time, and
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I'd actually given them quite a lotof information. They knew who, they
knew who I was, insistantly alreadythey had already bought or stolen or grabbed
from some leak of information all ofmy details and knew all about me.
But as I say, I gotsuspicious. I started checking out what they
were saying, and eventually I said, I think you're fake. And you
know, I've had constant phone callsfrom them ever ever since. But it's
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a total scam. Anyway, thisis going to be a long episode.
Sorry about this. The next thingyou've got to watch out for his prize
scams. Scammers will send your messagesclaiming that you've won a contest, a
lottery, or a prize, requestingyour personal information or payment information so you
can claim the award. And thesemessages specifically aimed to deceive you into providing
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your account details for finite ant orwhatever, your financial information basically, and
that will enable the scammers to stealthe account and commit fraud within your account
as well. So totally totally beacross that fifth here, I've got his
fake customer support another common one.Scammers will impersonate customer support representatives. They'll
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send messages claiming there's an issue withyour account or whatever. That may be
a phone account, it could evenbe like an electricity account, whatever,
and they'll say there's an issue withthe account that requires immediate action, and
they'll provide you links to fake loginpages or request account information under the guise
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of resolving a problem for you,forcing users to kind of unknowingly disclose your
account details to these scammers, who, of course then we'll go on to
hijack your account. That's the nextthing you've got to look out for,
so to protect yourself and that's justexamples that I'm pulling off the top of
my head. To an extent,I did do some serious notes for this
episode, and I did a bitof research, but again it's coming back
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to the same thing, having thatawareness. But to protect yourself from these
scams, it's really important to becautious of any unsolicited messages at all,
especially from unknown or suspicious accounts.But you do also need to be extremely
cautious of known accounts because of thenumber of accounts I've already been hijacked.
So if you're suspicious, if someone'ssending messages and you know them, text
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them, ask what's going on,or just shut down the conversation. I
mean, my blocklist is huge nowbecause just in the volume of people that
are hitting me up with scams.And next thing you can do is a
void clicking on links or providing personalinformation unless you're a one hundred percent certain
of the sender's authenticity. And that'shard, that's hard to know what's what's
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it. But you're better to erron the side of caution and hold back
stuff until you've got more information confirmed. If they're legitimate, you'll be able
to legitimately find out from them maybethe next morning and whatever if if the
communications have been rightly. When Ispoke to some whoever, somebody tried to
scam me before, and I sentthe information off to whoever it was,
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whatever the organization was, I thinkit was through Twitter a set of things.
Scene is this you. I can'teven remember this one. It has
happened that often. I can't remember, and they wrote back scene, it's
absolutely not us. Thanks for sendingthe information. It's good to know what
this happened. I was able tosupply email addresses, and I think at
that point, but to be honest, as I say, it's happened that
often. I don't even remember whowe trying to scam me at that point.
Next thing you can do is enabletwo factor authentication for your accounts to
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add an extra layer of security.Now, this is a pain in the
ass. I get it's convenient foryou to have it on your phone and
have you know, access quite quickly. But if you can do two factor
authentication on things like your bank accounts, specifically any any access to her accounts,
any access, direct access to yourmoney, that's well worth doing.
But as I say, it's it'sscamming is like a business these days,
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and they are set up for it. You've got to be across it.
And two factor authentication, although it'sa complete pain, is probably what you
need to be thinking of if youreally want to be secure. Next up,
you want to verify the legitimacy ofany requests or offers by contacting I
said this a minute ago the officialcustomer support channels directly using trusted contact information,
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and if it's a friend messaging youthen call or text some for verification.
At that you get the point that'sI think that the key to it
is just double checking what you're hearing. Don't trust what they've sent you.
Check if they sent you a linkto a website, you look it up
yourself without following their link, andyou see if it matches. And I'll
tell you there's a very very highprobability that whoever's phone in you or whoever's
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messaging you is scamming you these days. And lastly here in order to protect
yourself, you can regularly review anupdate your privacy and security settings on your
social media platforms. It's always worthchecking in with that. You can always
change your passwords and stuff if you'reconcerned as well, I certainly know avid
phone calls from someone who knew theyknew they had my email address, they
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had my phone number, and theyhad an old password of mine and there
had been a security breach at somebig firm and it was like a really
old password. But I was thinking, oh, this is person's legit.
But then I was thinking, whyif it was legit, the person on
the phone wouldn't be telling me mypassword, would they. So that was
a stinker as well, very veryiffy. Anyway, I could go on
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up this. Only by staying vigilantbasically and practicing good online hygiene will you
be able to reduce the risk offalling victim of these scammers, These scammers
that exploit the messaging systems on Instagramand Facebook, our ability to manufacture fraud
now exceeds our ability to detect it. Alpaccino unquote. Primarily it's scam one,
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as I said, scam one mixedwith scam two. So it's impersonation
and fishing that is really rife.Just now. Scam account hijack hijacks on
Instagram or Facebook are individuals or groupsof people who are illicitly trying to gain
control of legitimate user accounts for theirown malicious purposes. I don't fully follow
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what those purposes are, by theway, but they definitely have them.
They employ these various tactics to achievethis, such as phishing, social engineering,
exploiting security vulnerabilities, that sort ofthing. And once they gain access
to an account, they will changethe user name, potentially the profile picture
they might change as well, andassociated email address to make it difficult for
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the original owner to regain control.And as I said just on that,
the people I know that have hadthis happen, they have not found terrific
support from these social media companies.You think these social media companies are all
for helping you and thinking about youknow, they're just there to make money
and this is a time consuming andcostly thing for them. They track down
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scammers, they don't really care aboutscammers. In my opinion, Scam account
hijackers will often engage in fraudulent activitiessuch as posting spam content, sending scam
messages to other accounts followers, asI say, or using the account to
promote deceptive schemes of some sort.As I say, I'm not fully across
why they're doing these things, Butat the end of day, I've got
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this thing to keep on saying,I should really do an episode on it.
Which has followed the money. There'ssome reason they're wanting your account,
and inevitably, somewhere down the lineit will lead to them trying to steal
your money somehow. It's crucial.You've got to protect your Instagram account and
you're Facebook account by using strong andunique passwords, using that two factor authentication
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if you can, if you chooseto. I know it's a pain in
the ass. I don't like iteither, but it is important. And
just being cautious of suspicious links ormessages, regularly monitoring account activity as well,
just being aware of what's right andwhat's wrong. And if your account
is hijacked, you should report,of course to Instagram immediately or Facebook two
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meta for assistance in recovering the account. Just don't hold your breath, as
I's say. From what I'm hearing, the account is gone forever. Once
they have it, you will nevergain access to it again, at least
not in the way you thought youhad. I think, as I mentioned
maybe a minute ago, Ryan wasable to get his photographs back. He
was able to get his data backoff of the account that was hijacked.
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But I hope you don't mind youtelling this story. I think you put
it out there that it had happenedright, But the account was gone Big
Stevie account completely gone. And theseguys put a lot of time and effort
into creating accounts that support the creativework they are doing. So it's a
real shame to see when these thingskind of disappear and they have to start
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all over again. And in thevast landscape of social media where scams lurk
amidst a sea of posts and profiles, navigating safely simply requires a clever eye
and a vigilant mind. Remember inthe realm of scams two that skepticism is
your shield, curiosity is your compass, and caution is your cloak. That's
a good line, isn't it.Skepticism is your shield, curiosity is your
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compass, and caution is your cloak. Stay alert to the signs of deception,
question the legitimacy of offers that seemtoo good to be true because they
probably are, and always prioritize yourdigital well being by arming yourself with knowledge,
critical thinking, and a healthy doseof skepticism. You can always forge
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your path through the social media realmand avoid the pitfalls of these scams.
The best, very best scammers willalways ask for your advice. This is
a favorite technique. It makes themvulnerable, It flatters your ego. James
Altitcher unquote. I'm not sure howI'm pronouncing that one, but it's a
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very good point. The best scammerswill always ask your advice. It's their
favorite technique. It makes them vulnerable, it flatters your ego. Stay aware,
stay skeptical, don't fall for flattery. Anyway, that turned out a
bit longer than I planned it tobe. You see, I'm a little
bit passionate about this one, andthis is the last show in season eleven.
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This one's been sponsored by Petra Kulp, who is fantastically supportive. Thank
you, Petras so much for everythingyou've done to support this and the other
works that I'm doing. And foreveryone else. I don't know at the
point i'm recording who all the sponsorsare, but I know Petra's in there,
and I know that Joseph is inthere as well. But yes,
I really appreciate the support that we'vehad. I only sought sponsors for the
(23:41):
second half of this season. Andthe reason I did that is because I
had a short film that I saidI would make that I raised money for
and it was not complete until Igot to episode six of the show.
It is complete, and therefore Ijust didn't want to have my hand out
go and give me more money whenI hadn't completed on the last thing I
had said. I would do justa thing I've got and to perfect.
(24:03):
Be perfectly honest here, I'm notsure I'm going to be recording new episodes
past episode one hundred and fifty.If you if you really want to hear
more, you need to. That'sonly two episodes away, and I think
that will be a Christmas episode ina New Year episode. I've gone on
to another hiatus, another break justnow. If you do want to hear
more, though, as I say, please let me know directly on social
(24:26):
media. It'd make a tremendous differenceto the show's standing on the platforms if
you'd take a few minutes, asI mentioned the start of the show,
to leave a short review, becauseleaving the review on Apple Podcasts specifically more
than anyone else, helps the showto rank properly in their charts, and
that is important, so please helpif you can on that one. And
in the meantime, there are othershows out there that you can listen to.
(24:48):
I recommend the Filmmakers Podcast. GilesAlderson's show is very very good weekly
interviews with people quite high up inthe film industry. You get Gary Howitt's
show as well, the Choose FilmPodcast that's a review, a chat review
show of really heat themes I thinkseasons and the guests choose films and they
(25:11):
watched them and they talk about them. And I was on that one doing
an episode on Cool Runnings. Couldgo back and check that one out.
That was good fun. Gary's agood guy. Gary also runs the HB
Film Festival in Paisley and he's justfinished the film The Defender is second or
third feature film, so he's agood guy as well. There's loads of
shows on the Indie Film Hustle podcastnetwork as well that you should. You
(25:33):
should go and look at. Thisshow's part of that network, and there's
loads of other shows on there.They're all created by Alex Ferrari. So
you've got like Atlanta Film Chat,Cinematic Heartland, you've got Damien Swabey's show,
which is film making conversations. That'sa really good show as well.
Film Trooper podcast, Go for Production, which is Brandon Riley's show Low Budget
(25:56):
Rebels, which is indie film makingconversation with Joss Josh Stifter. Stifter,
Yes, I think that's right.Shoot from the Heart with Diane Bell,
absolutely fantastic. Dan Bell's great.That's a great book as well. By
the way, The Secrets of Storiesanother one of screenwriting and novel writing podcast.
And he's got another one I'm lookingup. I'm looking up that's Successful
Screenwriter with Jeffrey D. Calhoun.Another great one there as well in Fact
(26:19):
and Indie Film Hustle himself. Andas for as get a couple of shows
at three shows, I think possiblymore himself. To check those ones out
and if you like a bit ofproductivity, I would recommend you go to.
Let me think the Paul Miners podcastwould be the one that I would
recommend there. There have been othersaround, but a lot of them are
shut down unfortunately. But that's enoughfor today. Twenty seven minutes. That's
(26:42):
the longest show I've done this season. Let me end today with a few
words from FBI director Louis J.Free, who said the fraudster's greatest liability
is the certainty that the fraud istoo clever to be detected. Take control
of your own destiny, keep onshooting, and join me next time.
(27:04):
Probably Christmas. It might be itmight be New Year, but I think
it's going to be Christmas. Joinme then for film Pro Productivity and success
and the music you can hear rightnow as Adventures by a Humitsu. You
can view the show notes for thisepisode on the official website film pro Productivity
(27:26):
dot com. You can also followmy personal accounts on Twitter and Instagram at
fright Underscore Director and on threads tooif you want a lot, I'm pecunity
partly using that, and you canfollow the show's official account on Twitter at
film pro prod pod or on Facebookat film pro Productivity. Please continue to
support the show, folks by subscribing, spreading the words, and leaving an
(27:48):
awesome review. Catch you next time.