11 Boosting an Ability (1/2)

A calculator is more helpful than the System. You found one tucked away in the drawer.

So, dividing by 24 hours and 60 minutes and 60 seconds in a day, and 365 days in a year, not bother counting leap years. You have about 62.28 years or 62 years and around 4 months left in your lifespan.

That is a long time. You get to live until you are over 80 years old if nothing bad happens. But you are sure that regardless how many years you have left in your life, if you get hit by a speeding car, it will be over for you instantly.

Still, knowing that you get to live that long is always a boost to your morale.

Speaking of boosting, you now have the power to boost a skill. You should test out your new power when an opportunity arises. It will allow you to learn the pros and cons of your new ability.

You refocus your attention to the screenplay sitting on the desk. You pick it up and give it a pat. It took you a good amount of time to get it done, but your hard work has paid off.

The movie itself is not complicated. It only needs to highlight the emotional drama between the main protagonist and the heroine. They both need to experience hardships and overcomes it together.

You recall how good Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock were together in the movie. You also recall that Keanu also has a crush on Sandra during the filming stage of the movie. She also has a crush on him in return.

Maybe you could do something about that. You know their relationship will not last just like every famous relationship, but at least, it will be fun to see them both squirm – in a good way.

Putting that thought aside, you focus your attention back to the movie Speed.

While the movie will be released a few years earlier than it supposes to, it should still receive the same critical acclaims and box offices success like it did in your previous world.

You made sure that the movie's plot remained the same, but you did finetune the dialogue and added extra scenes between Keanu and Sandra. Those scenes have very little to do with the main plotline, but you couldn't help but have your guilty pleasures.

Since the screenplay is now complete, you can have a good estimation of the budgets required. You use the calculator to do some calculations. You write these figures onto a new sheet of paper.

Most of the props could be rented since there is no need to build them from scratch. All the expensive shots could be done using a scaled down model. Salary for the actors, actresses and extra is a bit of a wild card, so you are unsure. However, if you cut back more on the length of the shots, you should be able to film the movie at 15 million.

That is far from 30 million, but still is a horrible budget figure.

15 million is an awful amount of money, and you will need to secure your funding somehow. You know that no film company will gamble such a large amount of money on a newcomer such as yourself, but you must try.

Even though you are not a professional Director yet, you know that in the next few days and weeks, you would be waiting in many studios' lobby, trying to get funding.

You decide to bring the screenplay to your mother. She should be the first person to read it.

You haven't been seeing much of your mother in these past weeks, so it is a good time to have a nice mother and son's talk.

You found your mother in one of the rooms, going over the company's finances. She is as attractive as ever, and thanked to the heatwave, she is wearing light clothing that loosely bound to her figure. Her clothes begin to flicker under your gaze.

You close your eyes for a moment and suppress your lustful nature. You rein in you lust quickly and extends your screenplay to your mother.

”Mum, can you have a read of this and tell me what you think,” you requested of her. She immediately put down everything and took the screenplay into her hands.

Her reading speed is extremely fast, and after fishing reading the script, she expresses her opinion on the estimated budget. ”A good film production company will have multiple channels to finance their operation, mostly investors' money, but…”

She pauses, seemingly thinking deep upon it. In the end, she let out a worried sigh. ”A sensible person would not make such a gamble. I would not.”

”Would not is not the same as will not,” you point out. ”But seriously mum, do you think a production company will use this script?”

Your mother looks at you for what seems to be a very long time. She was thinking hard about how to break to you, no doubt. ”I will tell you the truth, please don't take it the wrong way. I have seen many movies and many advertisement scripts, and all of them is much better than your script.”

You thought you have prepared – prepared for any form of rejection. However, rejection coming from your mother really strikes at your confidence. You thought the script is really good, but your mother has stated otherwise.

Why? Perhaps she is the wrong person to give you any form of feedbacks?

You narrow your eyes, stripping her clothes away.

A new window appears around her, revealing her skillsets completely. This is the first time you actively try to see them, and you quickly notice that your mother is a realist. She sees everything for exactly what it is.

While that kind of thinking is very good in business, requiring her making accurate financial decision with all the statistics and data available. In screenplay, it is a crutch since she never imagines the scene and how it plays out in her mind as she read your screenplay.