Economics of the movie business Essay Example for Free

Economics of the movie business Essay Most of the movies that are eventually released are cofinanced. This is a term that is used within the movie industry to describe those films for which there are more than one firm that share both the cost of production as well as the revenues. Nearly one-third of all the movies that are released are cofinanced. Various studies have shown that the main reason for cofinancing is to manage and share risk. Most of the major studios are in the category of publicly traded firms where the investors are free to carry out their own diversification decisions. Not always is the cofinancing decision related to the movie returns as the studios rarely cofinance highly risky films1. Demand is difficult to predict and thus financial risk remains to be a characteristic of the film industry since most of the cost is incurred long before the demand can be actualized. It’s thus the reason that most of the authors in this field have argued that the key variable that shapes the industry is the financing strategy adopted. Mainly, there are three ways in which cofinancing would reduce risk associated with the movie production. First, the cofinancing of the relatively risky films by the studios would give them the opportunity to participate in the less risky projects. Second, cofinancing would allow studios to fine tune their portfolios thus gaining the advantage of covariances of the gains across the movies. The third advantage of cofinancing is the simple law of large numbers to share a potential loss . Data collection The data to be used here in this paper is the information provided forth in Goettler, R. L and Leslie, P. (2004) where information on over 3,826 movies was exhibited in the US between 1987 to 2000. The primary source of the data was the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). The analysis focused mainly on ownership choices of the major studios. Out of the 3,826 movies examined, 1,305 were produced by the major studios. The analysis here focuses on ownership choices that have been made by the major studios. Movie profitability has been based on the return on investment, RIO, which is defined as the revenue divided by the cost. Revenue in this case was measured as the North America box office revenue and cost was obtained from the production budget. Film’s negative cost, which is the standard measure of production cost was also used. Other cost such as advertising are in most cases proportional to the cost of production and were thus not evaluated in this kind of study. Thus the ROI evaluated here was basically the relative profitability of the films but not the absolute profitability. Also the measure of revenues in this study excluded some revenues such as foreign box and video revenue. It would be ideal to use all the revenue sources but the approach would have limited the number of films in the analysis as most of this kind of data is only available only to a subset of films. At the same time limiting the analysis only to the films with this kind of extra data may introduce selection bias as most of this data maybe limited to the successful films only1. Identification of cofinanced films The listing of a production company is the first sign that there are cofinancing partners but this is not a sufficient condition. The most important criteria is to know if a firm contributes towards the production cost. Its worth to note that a firm can be credited for having contributed into the production company of a film after initiating then selling the project to a major studio even without retaining revenue shares. This kind of arrangement referred to as â€Å"first-look deal† is common between a semi-independent production company and a studio in a long-term relationship. The criteria used here in determining if a film is cofinanced is that first if a major studio is on the list of the production company for a certain film, then the assumption is that the studio has some ownership stake in the film. Second, Variety magazine was a source of those firms with the first-look deals from the â€Å"Facts on Pacts† list and those that are equity partners. The assumption here was that a firm was a joint owner if it was on the production company list and also on the equity partner2. For those movie that an independent firm and a major studio cofinanced, the question of whether either of these two had the option of being sole-owner remains. In simple term, one may also question which among the two firms initiated the entire project? The available information suggest that the studio usually has the mandate to decide if it will co-own or just be a sole-owner. This kind of decision called â€Å"greenlighting† is usually made during decision point of whether to make the movie or not. Complications do arise like when two companies have the same subsidiary structure such as having the same parent company and at the same time end up owning the same movie. In such cases, it was assumed that the movie was not cofinanced since the production divisions happen to work as integrated components of the parent studio rather than as being competitors. Another point of ownership ignored was the cases where the directors or the star actors negotiate a part of the movie revenues. This was so because most of this happens as a result of the directors/actors strong bargaining power to have a share of the revenue once the movie is successful rather than a strong will to share and manage risk.

Death of a Salesman :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It is late evening and the sun is about to set on old highway 53 heading south from Yonkers to home. Willy driving in is car, continuously thinking to himself, what he his going to do about all his problems. You see Willy is down on himself about his success in life. He thinks to himself that he could be better known and make more money to pay off his bills. As Willy is driving down the road it becomes hard for him to concentrate on the road as he thinks more and more about the good things that had not happened to him. Willy is going home to a wife that loves him very much and two sons who care about him like two sons should even though they have caused a lot of stress on Willy. Once young adults grow up and you get through to them they usually will come around and be a productive considerate member of society. Willy thought long and hard the rest of the twenty minuet drive about nothing but negative things. Willy has a lot of positive things going for him, and at the moment he can’t grasp them. He pulls up to his home and gathers his briefcase with files of sales and heads to the front door. (Scene 1 begins)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Linda in the morning of her husband’s death whom she still loves very much is finding it hard for herself to go on with her life. She knows she has her boys who love her very much and are going to be there for her. She sits and thinks how hard Willy worked for them to own that house and know she sees no reason to go on with here life. The community came together to encourage Linda to carry on and with this she meet a lot of people. She is know seeing someone a little younger than her, but he his in the house to comfort her. She thinks what it would have been like with Willy still there or if he his watching right know. The two sons are doing well know, they are both out west working hard in the construction business and make a point to visit mom and the grave of Willy Loman, there hard working stressed father. They all think to themselves if he where here know he could have been able to enjoy himself hopefully.

Emily Dickinson Essay

Emily Dickinson’s place in history has affected many aspects of social order. Dickinson’s writing touched on many issues that were very important to the life and development of Dickinson’s persona; such as religion, war, psychosis, and love. Dickinson’s insight into these issues has been the source of the majority of the interest in her work. Emily Dickenson, throughout her life, sought a personal understanding of God and his place within her life. Her place within the Calvinist Puritan Amherst, however, would not allow for her inquiry into the understanding of the nature of God other than within their specific doctrine. In her childhood Emily Dickenson was shy and already different from the others. Like all the Dickinson children, male or female, Emily was sent for formal education to Amherst Academy. Dickenson began to develop into a free willed person. Many of her friends had converted to Christianity, and her family was also exerting enormous amount of pressure on her to convert. Her father, along with the rest of the family, had become Christians and she alone decided to rebel against that and reject the Church. She had rejected the traditional views in life and adopted the new transcendental outlook. Dickenson’s questioning about God began at an early age. â€Å"Once (to Higginson) she recorded another bit of mystification at adult behavior†. (Sewell 326) As Sewell recounts, Dickinson’s reservations about the nature of God began as early as her genius. As a child, we are told Dickenson felt a disturbance in the speech of a clergyman during as funeral. â€Å"[She was] disturbed by the clergyman’s question, ‘Is the Arm of the Lord shortened that it cannot save? ’†(Sewell 326) Dickinson’s poetry is a window into her quest for this understanding. In poem number 1241, Dickinson concentrates on nature and its relativity to science. Dickinson looks upon a lilac in the late light of a setting sun. Set on a hill, it receives the last light of day, and subsequently, is the last thing that God sees of that day. The sun is given the action of intending the lilac to be meant for â€Å"Contemplation – not to Touch†. I think this is an allusion to the Calvinist ideal of seeking God through action. Dickinson felt that the actions of the church that surrounded her were hollow and led one no closer to understanding the true nature of God than she had attained in her poetic questionings. The flower is given, above humanity, the focus of God’s eye. â€Å"The scientist of Faith† that Dickinson speaks of in this poem is denied any furthering of his understanding when she says: â€Å"His research has but just begun – / Above his synthesis / The Flora unimpeachable / To Time’s Analysis’’. Here, Dickinson is saying that it is not through active searching that one will find the true nature of God, but in the witnessing of His actions—such as the creation of lilacs. She ends the poem with the line â€Å"Eye hath not seen† may possibly / Be current with the blind / But let not Revelation / By theses be detained†. This tells the reader that Dickinson felt that the active search for God, (with the eye) will fail. However, the â€Å"blind† will not have their revelations detained. In the poem #564 Dickinson centers on the physical building of churches as a problem with her understanding of God. Within this poem Dickinson tells the reader that the deification of the man made houses of worship also distract from one’s understanding of God. The line â€Å"God grows above—so those who pray / Horizons—must ascend† illustrates Dickinson’s idea that limiting one’s view, as in focusing on a building rather than God himself, would hinder one’s ability to see God. Dickinson goes on to clarify, succinctly, her feelings on the worshiping of God through churches: â€Å"His house was not—no sign had He / By Chimney—nor by Door / Could I infer his Residence— / Vast Prairies of Air† Dickinson tells the reader that nothing tangible or built by the hand of man has been seen by God as His house. Dickenson contends that there is a separation between â€Å"praying and â€Å"worshipping†. The churches used by the people around Dickinson are used to â€Å"worship† and show the action of belief. Whereas praying is the only way to â€Å"reach† God and prove one’s heart as a believer. In the poem numbered 1499, Dickinson again questions the physical place worship by calling insecure the â€Å"Physiognomy† of the Calvinist theology. Dickinson begins this poem by acknowledging the temporality of the human visage: â€Å"How firm Eternity must look / To Crumbling men†. Dickinson obviously feels that the â€Å"face value† of religion is passing and worthless. She felt that the eternality of action and the long lasting effects of true faith were far more important and worth while. The questions raised by Emily Dickenson within her poetry, echoes the problems that people have had with religion for ages—where does the truth about God reside? Dickenson wanted to find a peace that accompanied the acceptance of God; however her exposure to the Calvinist Puritans stifled that. Her distain and mistrust from the sect resounded throughout her life and her poetry. Though not all of her poetry maintained such as hard line rejection of Puritan ideals, the ones selected here illustrate her desire to find something else, outside of the Calvinist dogma that better explained to her the nature of God. It has been â€Å"suggested that [the] contradictions in Emily Dickinson [‘s poetry] were due to her dual nature, which made her at once a pagan and a â€Å"sincerely religious woman. † (Voigt 193) This constant pull within her life, caused Dickinson to struggle throughout her lifetime with her desire to loved by God, and her inability to accept the blind faith that accompanies devotion to religion. The several poems that I am looking at are examples of how Emily Dickinson’s lack of center and acceptance manifested itself into poetry. In poem numbered 315, for example, the fumbling of the unnamed â€Å"he† at the soul of the narrator is immediately seen as the ultimate of personal invasions. The hap-hazard bumbling of this â€Å"he† is made worse by the â€Å"stun[ning]† that is caused by this invasion. The different degrees of this stunned soul hints at the multiple levels of invasion that is taking place—emotional, physical and, presumably, spiritual. The objectifying human â€Å"Nature† as brittle is an obvious tool to illustrate the suffering that humanity is plagued with throughout their lives. It also brings in the idea of death and mortality to the concept of human existence. The â€Å"he† deals the final blow the brittle human narrator with â€Å"One – Imperial – Thunderbolt† (315. 11) This assumed death, however, does not promise an escape from the constant suffering of life, but instead we learn that â€Å"The Universe – is still –â€Å" (315. 12) The final dash after â€Å"still† tells the reader that the universe is still moving, turning, and continuing the pain that the narrator wishes to be freed from. The Civil War was another issue that was addressed by Dickinson. With the poem, â€Å"The name – of it – is ‘Autumn’†, Dickinson uses natural imagery to describe the horrors of war. David Cody wrote, in his article on the poem, that Dickinson’s poem continues both to beckon and to baffle its readers, and the present essay is devoted not so much to an attempt to â€Å"guess† its meaning as to the more modest task of recalling or reviving, palingenetically as it were, some faint ghost or echo at least of the rich, complex and increasingly remote cultural moment in which it came into being. Precisely because it seems to embody. (Cody 24) Ed Folsom wrote that her poem, numbered 754 â€Å"My Life has stood – a loaded gun†; â€Å"explicitly with the Master/slave relationship†. (Folsom) The poem identifies with the slave’s reality of being worthless until pressed into service by the master. The work that Dickinson did during her lifetime was as diversely inspired as it was cryptic. However, the subjects that were covered by her work still hold enough interest and importance to warrant a continued study. The questions that Dickinson raised about religion, echoed the questions of many people who were slowly becoming disenfranchised with the Calvinist movement. Her own issues with psychosis were also subject to her eye. The poems she wrote about her lack of understanding of the world, and the fear that kept her secluded from society offer a deep insight into her mind. WORK CITED The Complete Poems of Emily Dickenson. Johnson, Thomas H. Ed. Little Brown and Co. New York. 1961. The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson. Voigt, Gilbert P. College English. Vol. 3. No. 2. (Nov. 1941). 192-196. The Life of Emily Dickinson. Sewell, Richard Benson. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. 1994. Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters, ed. by Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward. Cambridge MA. Harvard University Press. 1958. Cody, David â€Å"Blood in the Basin: The Civil War in Emily Dickinson â€Å"The name of it is Autumn â€Å"† The Emily Dickinson Journal. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Volume 12, Number 1, Spring 2003, pp. 25-52 Folsom, Ed. â€Å"Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and the Civil War†. University of Iowa. 2003. Date of Access: July 26, 2006. URL: http://www. classroomelectric. org/volume2/folsom/

Tonatiuh Aztec God of Sun, Fertility, Sacrifice

Tonatiuh (pronounced Toh-nah-tee-uh and meaning something like He who goes forth shining) was the name of the Aztec sun god, and he was the patron of all Aztec warriors, especially of the important jaguar and eagle warrior orders. In terms of etymology, the name Tonatiuh came  from the Aztec verb tona, which means to shimmer, to shine, or to give off rays. The Aztec word for gold (cuztic teocuitlatl) means yellow divine excretions, taken by scholars as a direct reference to excretions of the solar deity. Aspects The Aztec sun deity had both positive and negative aspects. As a benevolent god, Tonatiuh provided the Aztec people (Mexica) and other living beings with warmth and fertility. In order to do so, however, he needed sacrificial victims. In some sources, Tonatiuh shared the role as high creator god with Ometeotl; but while Ometeotl represented the benign, fertility-related aspects of the creator, Tonatiuh held the militaristic and sacrificial aspects. He was the patron god of warriors, who fulfilled their duty to the god by capturing prisoners to sacrifice at one of several shrines through their empire. Aztec Creation Myths Tonatiuh and the sacrifices he demanded were part of the Aztec creation myth. The myth said that after the world had been dark for many years, the sun appeared in heaven for the first time but it refused to move. The dwellers had to sacrifice themselves and supply the sun with their hearts in order to propel the sun on its daily course. Tonatiuh governed the era under which the Aztecs lived, the era of the Fifth Sun. According to Aztec mythology, the world had passed through four ages, called Suns. The first era, or Sun, was governed by the god Tezcatlipoca, the second one by Quetzalcoatl, the third one by the rain god Tlaloc, and the fourth one by the goddess Chalchiuhtlicue. The current era, or fifth sun, was governed by Tonatiuh. According to the legend, during this age, the world was characterized by maize eaters and no matter what else happened, the world would violently come to an end, through an earthquake. The Flowery War Heart sacrifice, ritual immolation by excision of the heart or Huey Teocalli in Aztec, was a ritual sacrifice to the heavenly fire, in which hearts were torn out of a war captives chest. Heart sacrifice also initiated the alternation of night and day and of the rainy and dry seasons, so to keep the world continuing, the Aztecs waged war to capture sacrificial victims, particularly against Tlaxcallan. The war to gain sacrifices was called water-burned fields (atl tlachinolli), the sacred war or flowery war. This conflict involved mock battles between Aztec and Tlaxcallan, in which the combatants were not killed in battle, but rather collected as prisoners destined for blood sacrifice. The warriors were members of the Quauhcalli or Eagle House and their patron saint was Tonatiuh; participants in these wars were known as the Tonatiuh Itlatocan or men of the sun Tonatiuh’s Image In the few surviving Aztec books known as codexes, Tonatiuh is illustrated wearing circular dangling earrings, a jewel-tipped nose bar and a blond wig. He wears a yellow headband decorated with jade rings, and he is often associated with an eagle, sometimes depicted in the codexes in conjunction with Tonatiuh in the act of grasping human hearts with its claws. Tonatiuh is frequently illustrated in the company of the solar disk: sometimes his head is set directly in the center of that disk. In the Borgia Codex, Tonatiuhs face is painted in vertical bars in two different shades of red. One of the most famous images of Tonatiuh is that represented on the face of the stone of Axayacatl, the famous Aztec calendar stone, or more properly Sun Stone. At the center of the stone, the face of Tonatiuh represents the current Aztec world, the Fifth Sun, whereas the surrounding symbols represent the calendric signs of the past four eras. On the stone, Tonatiuhs tongue is a sacrificial flint or obsidian knife protruding outwards. Sources Edited and updated by K. Kris Hirst Adams REW. 1991. Prehistoric Mesoamerica. Third Edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma PressBerdan FF. 2014. Aztec Archaeology and Ethnohistory. New York: Cambridge University Press.Graulich M. 1988. Double Immolations in Ancient Mexican Sacrificial Ritual. History of Religions 27(4):393-404.Klein CF. 1976. The Identity of the Central Deity on the Aztec Calendar Stone. The Art Bulletin 58(1):1-12.Mendoza RG. 1977. World view and the monolithic temples of Malinalco, Mexico: iconography and analogy in Pre-columbian architecture. Journal de la Socià ©tà © des Amà ©ricanistes 64:63-80.Smith ME. 2013. The Aztecs. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Van Tuerenhout DR. 2005. The Aztecs. New Perspectives. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO Inc.