Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat Essay Example for Free

Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat Essay Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat analyzes the progress of globalization and how it has changed core economic concepts. After traveling to numerous countries, he came up with the conclusion that the world is â€Å"flat,† in the sense that competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries have been leveled. He provides frequent examples of how countries, such as China and India, are becoming part of large global complex supply chains. Freidman assures that change is inevitable and that internet and outsourcing tactics are shrinking the world from â€Å"small to tiny. † Through his use of empirical evidence and first-hand experiences, Friedman is able to provide the reader with a greater insight as to why to world is flat. The increasing power of the internet is a major topic that the author addresses. The internet has broadened its audience so that it is accessible to people of all ages and positions. Communication is contributing to the flattening of the world due to the ability to communicate with virtually anyone within seconds. Friedman visited Iraq and came across an interesting situation that allowed him to further support his point: â€Å"On the screen was a live TV feed that looked to be coming from some kind of overhead camera. It showed some people moving around behind a house. Also on the screen, along the right side, was an active instant-messaging chat room, which seemed to be discussing the scene on the TV†¦he explain that a U.S. Predator drone was flying over an Iraqi village, and feeding real-time intelligence images back to his laptop and this flat screen† (38-39). Technology has expanded dramatically within the last decade, and the author insists that it is going to inflate from here on out, thus continuing to flatten the world. Friedman also confronts the topic of outsourcing. He argues that outsourcing has allowed companies to split service and manufacturing activities into components, with each component performing in efficient, cost-effective ways. His travels allowed him to explore the incredible subject, and what he found truly supports the idea that the world is indeed flattening. Friedman reflects on his stay in Bangalore by saying, â€Å"I hadn’t been with him for more than a few minutes at the Leela Palace hotel before he told me that he could handle my tax returns and any other accounting  needs I had- from Bangalore. No thanks, I demurred, I already have an accountant in Chicago. Jerry just smiled. He was too polite to say it – that he may already by my accountant, or rather my accountant’s accountant, thanks to the explosion in the outsourcing of tax preparation† (11-12). Outsourcing is becoming a significant addition to today’s world, with many different businesses practicing it, such as McDonald’s and JetBlue. Friedman tries to portray to Americans that they need to get accustomed to the fact that we will not be ahead of the rest of the world much longer. He seems ambivalent about the implications of the change, and many passages point towards the idea of a system of global cooperation in which no country is dominant. However, many Americans think we will be dominated by the Indians and Chinese if we don’t get our act together. While talking with Nandan Nilekani, an Indian CEO of Infosys Technologies Limited, about the rising ability of people to collaborate and compete in the global economy, Friedman declares, â€Å"I was excited personally, because what the flattening of the world means is that we are now connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network, which-if politics and terrorism do not get in the way- could usher in an amazing era of prosperity and innovation† (8). Friedman offers his book as a framework on how to deal with the foreseeable changes that are being thrusted upon the world. He says, â€Å"The great challenge for our time will be to absorb these changes in ways that do not overwhelm people but also do not leave them behind. None of this will be easy. But this is our task. It is inevitable and unavoidable† (46-47). In other words, be ready. Overall, Thomas Friedman demystifies the flattening world for readers, and allows them to make sense of the globalization unfolding before their eyes. He discusses how the internet and outsourcing are contributing to the leveling of the playing field, and that change within the next decade is expected. Whether this change will be good or bad, nobody knows, but Friedman insists that the world should be ready and embrace the new era.

The Us-Versus-Them Mentality In 2008’s Presidential Campaign Essay Example for Free

The Us-Versus-Them Mentality In 2008’s Presidential Campaign Essay The graphic novel, Maus, by Art Spiegelman, tells the story of a Polish Jew’s memories of his experience during the Holocaust. Drawn as mice, the Jews have faced a variety of psychological warfare, including xenophobia, scapegoating, dehumanization, and us-vs. -them dichotomy where the terrible events of the Holocaust were justified. The Holocaust was one of the most terrible events in human history, and decades later, scholars from many branches of academia still strive to understand such a dark historical event. Unfortunately, aspects leading up to the Holocaust still exist in the world today. While few current issues compare in magnitude to that of the Holocaust, such activities such as xenophobia, scapegoating, dehumanization, and divisive, dichotomous thought pervade populations everywhere. Although such negative sentiments always threaten negative results, in the US in the year 2008, one major historical movement and event occurred that promises a possible relief from such a divisive past. This historic movement and event is Barack Obama’s campaign, in which an African American ran for President of the United States and was the victor, becoming the first ever African American president of the country. But the campaign was not free of strife. This paper argues that while dichotomous, â€Å"us vs. them† elements in the year 2008’s presidential campaign were not systematically acted out as they were in the Holocaust, there existed similar instances of that mentality during the campaign timeframe. In the past decade, partisanship has set two major groups of Americans at odds with each other in the form of Democrat vs. Republicans. However, this past presidential campaign, or even in the past decade, the fever pitch of â€Å"us vs. them† has not escaped many people, and â€Å"Democrat† or â€Å"Republican† began to be expressed in layers of differences. Chuck Raasch of USAToday reports that: Americans fought a terrible civil war on all three fronts. A century later, Northerners saw Southerners as oppressors during struggles over civil rights, and Southerners viewed Northerners as meddlers. Even the Inside the Beltway label continues a deeply rooted, us-versus-them mentality of the nations capital. Despite the elevation of a black man and a white woman to the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets, respectively, the election of 2008 has played often to those divides. In her article Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post describes the crowd’s response, [who were] â€Å"waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, Sit down, boy (p. A03). † While divisive expressions such as these seem far away from the Holocaust, one must consider Peter Suedfeld’s words regarding the genesis of anti-Semitism in the time before the Holocaust: Sherif et al. (1961/1988) demonstrated how leaders, by framing situations in terms of intergroup competition, can produce hostility and aggressive behaviour between component groups. We can see the workings of an ingrained us-vs-them mentality in experimental minimal groups (Tajfel et al. , 1971), which are composed in a completely arbitrary way and whose members never even meet each other (3). This explanation could very well describe the actions of leaders in political parties as well as group behaviors in response to leaders. Sarah Palin could be seen to â€Å"frame situations† such that â€Å"intergroup competition† occurs, as it does in the Republican furor over the Democrate presidential candidate. Partisanship was not the only exhibition of us-versus-them behavior during the past year. Dedication to one’s country came into question in which the concepts of American versus anti-American were introduced. According to Bob Lonsberry in his article â€Å"What’s Wrong With a Marxist? †, a person who is American is one who sees two irreconcilable extremes between Karl Marx and John Locke, and if a person takes into regard the writings of Karl Marx, then he or she is â€Å"anti-American. † If an American is to be truly American, they must adopt similar ways of thinking in which Marxism, communist, and other similar ontological principles must be absolutely shunned because they repudiate everything America stands for. These sentiments before the Holocaust were similar. In place of anti-Americans were the Jews. Andre Minaeu writes: To the Nazis, all things seriously afflicting Germany and the Aryan race were ultimately Jewish or Jewish-inspired. In this sense, the Jewish people were the quintessential enemy of Nazi totalitarianism. The latter elevated Jewry, so to speak, to the rank of an evil ontological principle against which struggle was to be universal (17). In this sense, anti-Americans are philosophically against everything Americans stand for and should be beaten politically, while Jews represented everything the Nazis stood for, which caused them to become an evil philosophical principle. No other dichotomy is more apparent in both Holocaust and the 2008 presidential campaign than ethnicity. The question of race—and one’s ethnicity—became a large factor due to the mixed-race heritage of Barack Obama. Historically, part of Obama’s ethnicity had been under the awful yoke of slavery and then the struggle of civil rights. One can see this in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr: I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama†¦ little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers (60). The question of Jewsishness—both an ethnicity as well as a belief system—was subject of life and death for six million people during World War II. Historically, Jews have also been slaves, and their ethnicity and religion have played a large role in their struggles in past centuries. Paul Johnson explains this in his book The History of the Jews by quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an ex-prisoner of the Nazis: We have learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of those who are excluded, under suspicion, ill-treated, powerless, oppressed, and scorned, in short those who suffer (2). It is not a subtle expression in either of these two statements that the writers and speakers felt that their world was divided in groups, and they were the â€Å"them† in the phrase â€Å"us-versus-them. † While the us-versus-them mentality might seem as if it would haunt human interaction for all time, there have always been historical figures who have sought to overcome the divisiveness by seeking common ground. Perhaps the most famous of those is Abraham Lincoln, who spoke these words: A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect it will cease to be divided (Lincoln). Martin Luther King, Jr. is another figure who sought to overcome injustice and inequality through nonviolent means. Current scholars are improving and applying techniques for nonviolent conflict resolution (Suedfeld 2006, p. 7). In regards to the Holocaust, there are many studies about the tragedy in many areas of study, from psychology to politics to sociology, as evidenced by the books The Making of the Holocaust: Ideology and Ethics in the Systems Perspective by Andre Mineau and Canadian Psychology addressing Holocaust reverberations fifty years later. Lastly, the end of the 2008 campaign year drew to a close, and Barack Obama has been elected President. While he emerged from one of the two major political parties in the US, his own sentiments in his book The Audacity of Hope strive for a bipartisan rather than a divided approach: Maybe there’s no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter the rules of engagement are futile. Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport†¦ We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side†¦ But I don’t think so. They are out there†¦ those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way†¦ to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves (pp. 50-51). Violence stemmed from rabid divisiveness is what made the Holocaust so terrible. Therefore, any attempts to heal the us-versus-them mentality would have to be the opposite: peaceful actions that strive to bring humans together. Fortunately, if one could take lessons from Mahatma Ghandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Barack Obama, then the possibility that discordant sentiments in the human populace may never take seed. WORKS CITED Johnson, Paul. A History of the Jews. HarperPerennial (1988). King, Jr. , Martin Luther. â€Å"The Dream†. Speech. Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC. 28 August 1963. Lincoln, Abraham. House Divided Speech. Speech. Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858. Milbank, Dana. â€Å"Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame. † Washington Post. October 7, 2008: A03. Minaeu, Andre. The Making of the Holocaust: Ideology and Ethics in the Systems Perspective. Amsterdam; Atlanta, Georgea: Rodopi, 1999.

Trends in Indias Film Industry

Trends in Indias Film Industry 1.  Chapter One: Introduction In these modern times of instant digital communication, film has turn out to be one of the most vital way through various nations and cultures reveal their values and identities. Moving image technologies has turn out to be all-encompassing in our lives. They are huge business. Apart from that, a capability to recognize and apply them has become as important for the people of this present era as literacy was in the times of19th and 20th century (India PR Wire, April 4, 2007). The tempo, scale and consequences of this transformation are significant enough. The Indian Film industry has made a huge development ever since the Motion pictures first arrived in India in the year of 1896 when the Lumiere brothers revealed six silent short films in Bombay. The first feature film of India named- King Harishchandra (which was a silent movie) was released in the year of1913. In India the first ‘talkie’ movie that released was Alam Ara in the year 1931 (India PR Wire, April 4, 2007). 1.1  Film Production Houses In India A film production house is normally connected with the in-house production. It could categorize, make or telecast various segments of programs around news, films, multimedia, television shows, sports or ad films. India can be regarded as a home to a several well-known production houses from all the aforesaid stated areas. www.bestindiansites.com specifies top leading Indian websites on production houses of India, sports production house, ad film production house, film production house, sports production house, information on production house, list of production houses, television production house, multimedia production house, and a several other significant information’s (Subramaniam, A, 2003). We can in reality utter about various types of production houses such as Independent and corporate and just detail it by stating that Individual production houses are managed by just 1 or 2 producers and the infusion of capital investment for the production purpose is mainly generated by personal investment or by the means of loans taken from private investor. For corporate houses we could only cite that it is just like as any other corporate deal with the only differentiation that it produces films which is considered under the head of creative segment (essentially organised corporate structure of producing in creative industries – which is a new concept for Indian film industry) (Subramaniam, A, 2003) So when ‘Industry’ status was granted in 2000, Corporate started getting attracted towards the films industry realising the huge potential that was there to be exploited. When the corporate started entering to film industry with huge investment power they started incorporating studio culture of Hollywood by following vertical integration. Leaving behind the prevailing system of horizontal integration to the independent producers. The studio model production house started giving more importance to the content. It stressed on script development, introducing younger generation actors and directors, budget and time management, co productions and international distribution.  None of the new corporate production house had the background of film production when they entered the segment. However most of them were involved in activities related to the media (The Business Line, 2007). Barney says that the first to exploit the resources would gain competitive advantage over its rivals. This is exactly how the corporate production houses gained advantage over independent producers. The Industry had a lot of potential to grow with its wide acceptance globally. but the independent production houses had neglected this aspect, so when the corporate entered the industry they took complete advantage by using the unexploited resources of reach of the films and its growth possibilities steps (Barney, 1991). To exploit the resources of growth prospective, the studio model was developed under these parameters- To Produce and co produce the movies with strong content and story line. To complete the movie with in the budget and also in time. To sign contractual agreements with actors and directors. To focus on medium and large scale budget movies. To develop a huge distribution network nationally and internationally These parameters are not different from any other studio model in the world. Corporate production houses main aim was to apply these practices and standards in other markets, to the Indian market. The reason for doing this was to make maximum utilisation of the resources available. Already registered in the London Stock Exchange, several Indian film companies like as Eros, Ad labs, India Film Company, and utv – have generated immense capital from the various institutional investors who were keen to invest in Indian film companies. Moreover several Western film companies are looking forward for acquiring an ample equity share in these companies (Desai 2007). In this regard on 24 January 2005, Percept Picture Company associated with Michael Douglas’ production company Further Films and Sahara One to co-produce the $50-million Racing the Monsoon. Also on 1 September Sahara declared one more alliance, and this time with a Hollywood producer Donald Rosenfeld for Tree of Life starring Colin Farrell. These are two among a total of six Hollywood coproductions. (Kohli- Khandekar 2006.). On 20 October, 2005, Sony Pictures sign on Sanjay Leela Bhansali to co-produce Saawariya. The film was released globally in the year of 2007 with around 1,000 prints, a figure which was not heard of in the previous times for an Indian film. [The figure is on average 250.] Moreover this was the first time that a renowned Hollywood studio (that one of top six) had produced an Indian film. (Kohli-Khandekar 2006.) Indian admired cinema, remarkably Bollywood – the Mumbai (Bombay) film industry has witnessed several transformations given that it’s first beginnings. A few key modifications that took place at the turn of the century when Indian Popular Cinema gained the position of an industry.(1) After that the Indian film has developed in new directions. One such change was a more intense interplay between the global and the local which took place during the 1990s. Today, every single function and activity related to the Indian film business is becoming well defined and systematized, be it the retail infrastructure, financial aspect, marketing or distribution. Even films themselves are gradually falling into place. In just under five years, the industry has shed five decades of baggage and has become an organised business. This is a new Indian film industry (Kohli-Khandekar 2006). Film producers are interested in creating serious corporate structures, and Indian as well as foreign business is pouring money into the cinema. A wall of money is descending on Bollywood and there is a huge bubble building up (Desai 2007). Evaluating by the amount of movies produced by the Indian film industry, which is about more than one thousand movies per year, it is been regarded as the largest movie industry of the globe. The studio has reached international and also the profit earnings of the several Indian movies were greater in overseas locations than in India. Indian films have been witnessed in the leading ten lists of movies in the continents of UK and USA ((The Business Line, 2007)). 1.2  An overview of Indian film industry 1.2.1  Historical Section How Bollywood has evolved India is been regarded as the biggest movie industry of the world, if we talk about the number of movies produced in a year. It produces around more than 1000 films per year, which is greater than any of the film producing country. The Indian film industry is commonly regarded as BOLLYWOOD. The first Indian cinema was arrived in the year of 1913 with RAJA HARISHCHANDRA firstly coming into the picture and paving its way to the new period of silent cinema in India (Das Gupta, S., 2006). Since that time it has witnessed a vast series of evolution both in conditions of making and marketing of the Indian films.  We will largely talk about the evolution that took place from the year of 1980s to present time. India produces more films than any other country in the world, the government of India didn’t recognize filmmaking as an official industry until as recently as 2001. Before then, it was impossible for producers to get loans from banks or even insurance for their productions. As a result, producers often paid for their films out of their own pockets – a practice most American producers would consider absurdly risky – or obtained financing from less savory sources (Das Gupta, S., 2006): The unruly aspects of film production weren’t just limited to its financing. In some cases, it would take years to shoot a film. Overbooked film stars would show up egregiously late on set (or not at all) without penalty, scripts were often rewritten on set depending on which actors showed up, contracts were verbal and often violated, and produced films had no guarantees of finding distribution. All of these factors combined to make Bollywood film production an extremely risky endeavour (Das Gupta, S., 2006). 1980-1990 In India maximum number of films were produced by Independent (SingleSolo) producers or Family production houses, Big production companies like Rajashri productions, B.R Productions and R.K Productions were family owned production houses  and in some cases it can be traced back to several generations.(Taebue and Lorenzen-2007)   â€Å"In this period the Indian film industry seemed to make the least progress and in some case journey in the path of deprogress† (Ashish Tiwari). Most of the films were produced on a Formula which had protagonist the male lead character of the film who is called as the Hero and his female counter part as the Heroine who romanced with the Hero singing and dancing around the trees, this strategy gave birth to the masala films (Hindi for â€Å"spice mix†) â€Å"It was a compound made up of several elemental combinations that had drama comedy and romance along with song and dance sequences in symbol driven rather than plot driven† ( Lorenzen Taeube-2006). â€Å"The controversial author Salman Rushdie found a very precise and creative term that sums up the subject of Indian films perfectly, describing it as: ‘Epico-Mythico-Tragico-Comico-Super-Sexy-High- Masala-Art’ (Salman Rushdi, 1995 in â€Å"The Moor’s Last Sigh† quoted in Mishra,)à ¢â‚¬ (Adleline Pissang-2000).  Repetition of these kinds of stereotype films kept the audience away from theatres. Introduction of colour television and national coverage by Doordarshan in early 1980’s caused a drop in demand for Indian films. The middle class audience preferred to watch new Television soaps and old films on video cassettes (VHS) in their home rather than going to cinema halls. So the cinema halls became a run down and regarded suitable only for lower class men who could not afford a television preferred watching hard core violent films in theatres with lots of action and skimpily clad women dancing in the rain (Misara-2002). Competition from television made film production houses think innovatively, to hold their grip on the medium, so they started upgrading their films with lavish sets and so called â€Å"multi starrer† films which in turn increased the importance of star actors. So naturally the star actors wanted to cash in on their ‘star value’ and started charging exorbitant sums to act in a single film which in turn escalated the production cost of the film (Gopalan-2002). This was at the same time when the Indian music industry was on a high and could turn around the profit margins of even those films that failed at the box- office. The movie soundtrack became a key publicity stunt for the movies and the number of tracks and their popularity increased steadily. The pre- movie launch of music could determine the fate of a movie because if the music did well in the market then it created a huge wave amongst the public before the film got released. The sales of the audio cassettes used to bring in good share of revenue. The producers always hoped and worked towards making the music of their film a hit by casting good/popular music directors and famous playback singers for their films. Again, the producer had to invest a lot more on a popular music director but it was chance worth taking (Ganti-2004).   1990-2000 The introduction of cable T.V. was the greatest revolution of this era. It changed the outlook of film industry, though initially the survival of film industry was challenged with the entry of cable T.V. as it was an instant hit with the audience because it provided plenty of regional language channels like ZEE TV, SUN network and as well as few English channels STAR, HBO which aired films on their channels. But gradually the production houses understood the potential of the cable T.V. as it found a way for new source of income through selling its film rights at relatively higher prices for its telecast in television which is called as satellite rights (Pendakur-2003). Subsequently the film industry started depending on television as a medium of publicity by broadcasting songs and advertising campaigns of their films to pull the audiences to the theatres (David Hancock-1999). Music channels like MTV and V channel could not sustain by just transmitting private non film and international music albums so they had to take cover of film songs to increase their popularity in India (Bose-2006). It is believed that the criminal sources like underworld had a very strong hold on the Indian film industry; they controlled the whole production process of the films that they financed by dictating the terms in Bollywood like casting a superstar and selecting brilliant directors to work for their films. It is also believed that celebrities of the industry had close links with the mafia. Though usage of Black money (unaccounted money) in films was not an unfamiliar thing for ages but funding from underworld started in this period. It is estimated that 40% of film productions were financed by the underworld (Kripalani and Grover 2002; David Hancock-1998).   The early 1990’s can be called as the period of stagnation; the commercial cinema had ridiculous dialogues, baseless stories with no originality in them (Ashish Tiwari 2007). Few films in mid 1990’s were huge hits which broke most of the previous records. These films were big budget, romantic films (Dwyer and Patel) which upheld the family values in them. The two astronomical hits were HUM APKE HAI KAUN? (Who am I to You?) This released in 1994 and went onto run for two years in more than 50 theatres and DILWALE DULHANIA LE JAYENGE!! (The Brave Heart Will Take the Bride) got released in 1995 and was still running in its 13th year for 679th week as on 17th October 2008 at Marata Mandhir Cinema in Mumbai (www). Both these films were on similar lines, they were big budget romantic films with no actions sequence in them. In the former’s case the whole film was shot in beautiful gigantic sets going outdoors only for song sequence, which had 12 music tracks in it. In latter’s case maximum portion of the shoot took place in foreign locales. The audio of both these films were massive hits because they used the full potential of television by telecasting their songs and ad campaigns before the theatrical release. Both the production houses (Rajashri Productions and Yashraj Productions) of these films took great interest in refurbishing the theatres before the release of their films because they precisely knew their target audience were the upper middle class and family audiences who were content with television and they had to bring them back to the theatres. Once they succeeded â€Å"it marked the dominance of new middle class and uphold them to the pleasure of socially mixed audie nce both in India and overseas†. (Dwyer and Patel-2002) Rajashri and Yashraj Productions were the good old big production houses which started the trend for these kinds of films with big budget, but most of the small scale productions could not cope with this and had to stop producing films. Gradually number of films produced per year dropped. Source: David Hancock; Global Film production (Working Document) Venice Conference The biggest and greatest breakthrough in the Indian Cinema came in 1998. This is the year the Indian government recognised the potential of Indian cinema and granted the official status of ‘Industry’. Until then the public as well as private banks and other big financial institutions desisted from getting involved with the film production companies so the producers always had to depend on private money lenders for the capital for their films (Dwyer Patel, 2002). Now the production houses are getting their capital from public investments through semi public Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) and other public banks (Lorenzen Taeube, 2006) 2000- Till date.. Indian Film Industry started in its way of revival of sorts, in 2001 all the prints of the film Chori Chori Chupke Chupke which had a huge star cast was seized by the Central Bureau of Investigation suspecting it to be funded by the underworld and the producer of the film Bharath Shah was arrested for having close connections with the underworld. After this incident most of the producers feared to be identified with the under world. So the underworld gradually lost its hold in the Bollywood. Shooting at overseas location for a film is not new to Bollywood they have been doing this since 1960’s but currently there is an increasing trend of Indian film crew shooting at foreign locales. This is because of the huge global market for the Indian films. Many films are released simultaneously in U.S.A. and U.K.  and there are instances where the returns from overseas collections is higher than the home collections.  The script writers and Directors cannot neglect the overseas market any more while scripting and shooting for their film (Dudrah, R K, 2006). After the liberalisation of the industry in 1998 Direct Foreign Investments, Global Investors, Private Corporate started entering the film industry. Hollywood Majors like Universal, 21st Century Fox started investing in the Indian film industry through joint ventures with the Indian production houses. The corporate production houses are gaining importance in the film industry. Corporate houses like ADLABS, EROS, UTV, K.SERA SERA and many others have already made a mark in B.S.E. (Bombay Stock Exchange) and even in L.S.E. (London Stock Exchange). In the current scenario 20% of the total India films are produced by corporate giants (Anand times- 2006).   They have developed professional ways of organising business, mergers, outsourcing, distributing, use of new technology and marketing content.  The corporate houses have brought in the much needed professional flavour in to films which were missing in the production process earlier. The main advantage of the corporate house is it can produce more number of films simultaneously; it produces 5-6 films per year where as compared to the individual production houses cannot afford to produce more than 2-3 films in a year even after the deregulation. The greatest advantage of a corporate production house is it has a huge capital to invest on its films. Usually the risk is higher on a single movie basis, but the risk spreads out as they produce lot of films simultaneously.  They employ professionals in their firm as compared to the single producers of 80’s who used change their crew after every film. Few corporate houses even have their own multiplex cinema which helps in theatrical release as well as in developing a marketing strategy for their films. The corporate giants are investing hugely on the industry as a result of this the film Industry is already the 3rd largest industry in India (Dudrah-2006). The production houses are aiming at a homogenous or serial form of production as opposed to heterogeneous form of production they had earlier. The main purpose of switching to this form of production is to control all means of production and operate all aspects of film making from finance to production and distribution (Prasad-1998). The best example being Yashraj Productions. They have their own studios for recording, dubbing and editing and also have production equipments required for the shoot. With in the production  house they also have different sections like Yashraj Distribution for overseas and home market, Yashraj Music for all their audio sales and Yashraj Video for home video like DVD’s and VCD’s. It was one of the first production houses to hire management students from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadabad (IIMA) to market their films and also to set up their whole business process. They also stated their own website to market and project their media image  (Dywer Patel- 2002). Professionalization has brought new and better modes of planning. There are changed practices of production where there are professionals working constantly for the better utilization of funds, bringing production costs down and maximizing the profits  Film production in India is becoming an organised business. The overall film industry is taking on professional colours. 1.3  Size and growth opportunities The total size of Indian film industry was estimated at around Rs.56.5bn (inr40 = usd1) WHEN was this?, it is  anticipated to touch a huge figure of about Rs.153bn by the year of 2010 with taking into account 18 percent compound annual growth rate (cagr) as per the estimates of  ficci-Pricewaterhouse- Coopers in the year 2006. On the whole, the Indian film industry was anticipated to be value of about usd1.8bn in the year 2006. On the basis of a thorough top-down analysis considering the share of private consumption as a proportion of gdp, the marketshare for media and entertainment (me) expenditures, and film budgets within the me space it was accounted that the Indian film industry will be valued in between usd4.4 and 5.1bn (between inr176bn and inr204bn) by 2011 (cii-A.T. Kearney 2007). The movie industry has been getting more and more corporatized. Many film production, distribution and exhibition houses are listed on the stock markets and they have raised capital through public issue. Several theatres around the nation have been developed into multiplexes and plans to build up additional digital cinema halls are by now in lime light. This will certainly not only enhance the quality of prints and thereby providing viewing a extra pleasant experience for the audiences but will also decrease the piracy of prints (ficci-PricewaterhouseCoopers 2006). These days piracy is a major issue for the Indian film industry. Not initiating nay major anti-piracy laws on the part of the government and an absence of educated officers that implements anti-piracy laws remains the vital issue. These are the main issue which is why the piracy business has not been able to control to a greater extent. This issue along with the lengthy legal and arbitration process is regarded as prevention to the fight against piracy. Apart from this the present Copyrights Act is also obsolete in conditions to technology enhancement and in addition, it does not deal with the requirements of the electronic media where the degree of piracy is amongst the maximum in present time. The Optical Disc Law draft established to deal with the requirement for regulating piracy at the manufacturing phase is still pending for the approval of the Indian ministry (ficci-PricewaterhouseCoopers 2006). As against to few developed markets where the home market symbolizes greater than 40% of total movie revenues, the home market share in India is comparatively small (8%), though, this share is anticipated to rise to about 14% by the year of 2010. The important pushers that will facilitate this are the rising amount of reasonably priced DVD players and lesser prices of original DVDs so as to battle the issues of piracy (cii-A.T. Kearney 2007). The Indian entertainment and media industry enjoys a lot of aid in the present times – be it regulations that permit foreign investment, the momentum from the economy, digital lifestyle and spending styles of the consumers, and also several opportunities the development in technology have to provide. The industry only has to do is to realize its growth potential and opportunities. The government is required to play a greater dynamic task in solving out the policy-related obstruction for the purpose of growth. The industry is required to get rid of all obstructions, like as piracy in an intensive way along with the measures to produce high-quality global class end products. The entertainment and media industry has all ingredients which it generally takes to turn into the star of Indian economy (ficci-PricewaterhouseCoopers 2006). There are two important movements that will basically transform the scene of the Indian film industry in the coming couple of years, namely digitization and a change in consumer preferences. Digitization will lead to consolidation and appearance of huge scale exhibition networks and, and apart from this, in the balance of power among producers-distributors and exhibitors. Changing customer preferences will lead to rising international acceptance of Indian films and in the upcoming of new media (cii-A.T. Kearney 2007). Growth opportunities in terms of Corporate production houses Indian film industry comprises of numerous regional clusters, and Bollywood is merely one of them. Bollywood is the cluster located in Mumbai, producing the biggest share of films (40%) mainly in Hindi (PWC FICCI, 2007). Bollywood is the oldest film cluster in India, dating back to early 20th century. Other film clusters in India like as one in Hyderabad, called â€Å"Tollywood† produces second biggest amount of films mainly in Telugu. While other clusters produce films chiefly in their local language. Growth opportunities in terms of Indian Film Industry 1.31 Current situation Currently the success ratios of films are very low at the box office. Only 10 to 20% of films break even or earn profits (Ganapathi, 2002; Pendakur, 2003; Ganti, 2004; Lorenzen Taeube, 2006) but most of the producers make money, recouping their investments through new auxiliary sources of revenue () like satellite rights music rights, home video rights(DVD),  video games, toys, computer wallpapers, ring tones, movie clips for mobile and selling ancillary rights. The new trend is product placement in films which brings in a lot of revenue and even helps in publicity of the film. In the period of 1998-2005 i.e after gaining the status of industry, the revenues in the films have grown by 360% this is including all revenues from advertising, selling of ancillary rights and music rights (Kholi- Khandekar, 2006; Lorenzen Taeube, 2006). The digital relay of films in cinema theatres is saving a lot of money as you don’t have to develop the physical print, which took a major share in a film budget.   The industry is losing more than 40% of its revenue through Piracy (David Hancock-1998). Copyright infringement of films is so wide spread in India it can be called as a ‘small scale industry’. Bootleg copies of DVD’s are available in the market on the same day the film officially releases in theatres or some times even before that. Pirated DVD’s and CD’s of Bollywood movies are available in most of the South Asian and South East Asian countries. The small cable television channels broadcast newly released films in their channels without paying any kind of compensation. Another problem is consumer copying which is very difficult to stop. To add on to this is Online Internet movies where consumers can download movies from websites like www.bhejafry.net, www.indiaonlinemovies.com and many more without actually paying anything. The technical skills of the Indian Film Industry has always been extraordinary but most of the time they had to settle for old and very poor quality of equipments.  But now due to huge market and Corporatisation they can afford to buy more sophisticated equipments. Digital facilities for Sound Recording, Dubbing, Editing is as good as anywhere in the world (Dwyer Patel, 2002). Bollywood has always been very enthusiastic about embracing new technologies in their films, and it is also been much quicker in doing this than the Hollywood (Currah, 2007). The Film Industry is using all the latest technologies like Arry 435 for the shoot, Avid and Mac products for post production work. Sync sound, D.I.(Digital Intermediate), Animations and special effects with Graphics are used extensively.  The Indian Film Industry can now even employ foreign technicians to work for them to improve the quality of the final product. In the blockbuster film KRRISH- (2006) the action sequence was choreographed by Tony Ching from Hong Kong and all the special effects for the film was done by Hollywood technicians (Minocha and Stonehouse- 2006). Globalisation has four facets, that is, movement of goods, capital, technology and people across borders. In terms of movement of goods (i. e., movies) Indian movie industry has a long history of presence in the global market. Awara was sent to the Soviet Union and other Communist bloc countries crazy in the year of1950s. Mehboob’s Aan had a French release after its premiere in London. Long before that Himansu Rai made visually stunning films in cooperation with the Germans in the early 1930s, like The Light of Asia and A Throw of Dice, and many more which were shown in Europe as Indian films with Indian stories. By then the Bombay film industry had been around for 35 years. The film industry is definitely as old as the cinema itself and surely older than Hollywood, which has its early development in the late 1900s (Desai 2007). The exports of the Indian movie have grown for approximately 60% in recent times. The USA and Canada are two main export locations witnessing for 30 percent than by the UK with 25% and Mauritius and Dubai with 10% each. Some other main markets comprise South Africa, Russia, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia where there is abundant Indian diasporas present. Making a film for the diaspora market is a certainly a moneymaking project as against to making a film for the Indian domestic market (Desai 2007). With the global audience, there is outstanding recognition of Indian movie themes along with sew of the cross-over films made by global movie production players. The profit earnings of these movies can be match up to to few of the Hollywood box office hits. A number of Bollywood movies have gained greater than 50% of their total gross profit margin from global box office collection. However it is a welcome movement that requires to be carried on. One of the significant success factors for these cinemas is to recognize ideas from within the Indian subjects which are liked by the audience. An additional important success factor is to associate with a top global distributor; films produced by the person of Indian origin have had up to 2–3 times greater global earnings as compared to the national bestsellers (cii- A.T. Kearney 2007). Table 2 reveals a series of cross over films and the revenue earning generated by these films. India has stated its determined plans to double its share in the international film industry by the end of this year. This shows the great determination of the country to build itself as a cultural as well as economic powerhouse. There are many reasons why we must believe that. To begin with, the government, which aims on considering Bollywood to set up India as a ‘soft power’, considers the Indian film industry is competent enough to capture five percent of the international market this season. The share at the present time is two percent (Johnson 2007). Kishore Lulla, the chief executive of Eros International, a uk Trends in Indias Film Industry Trends in Indias Film Industry 1.  Chapter One: Introduction In these modern times of instant digital communication, film has turn out to be one of the most vital way through various nations and cultures reveal their values and identities. Moving image technologies has turn out to be all-encompassing in our lives. They are huge business. Apart from that, a capability to recognize and apply them has become as important for the people of this present era as literacy was in the times of19th and 20th century (India PR Wire, April 4, 2007). The tempo, scale and consequences of this transformation are significant enough. The Indian Film industry has made a huge development ever since the Motion pictures first arrived in India in the year of 1896 when the Lumiere brothers revealed six silent short films in Bombay. The first feature film of India named- King Harishchandra (which was a silent movie) was released in the year of1913. In India the first ‘talkie’ movie that released was Alam Ara in the year 1931 (India PR Wire, April 4, 2007). 1.1  Film Production Houses In India A film production house is normally connected with the in-house production. It could categorize, make or telecast various segments of programs around news, films, multimedia, television shows, sports or ad films. India can be regarded as a home to a several well-known production houses from all the aforesaid stated areas. www.bestindiansites.com specifies top leading Indian websites on production houses of India, sports production house, ad film production house, film production house, sports production house, information on production house, list of production houses, television production house, multimedia production house, and a several other significant information’s (Subramaniam, A, 2003). We can in reality utter about various types of production houses such as Independent and corporate and just detail it by stating that Individual production houses are managed by just 1 or 2 producers and the infusion of capital investment for the production purpose is mainly generated by personal investment or by the means of loans taken from private investor. For corporate houses we could only cite that it is just like as any other corporate deal with the only differentiation that it produces films which is considered under the head of creative segment (essentially organised corporate structure of producing in creative industries – which is a new concept for Indian film industry) (Subramaniam, A, 2003) So when ‘Industry’ status was granted in 2000, Corporate started getting attracted towards the films industry realising the huge potential that was there to be exploited. When the corporate started entering to film industry with huge investment power they started incorporating studio culture of Hollywood by following vertical integration. Leaving behind the prevailing system of horizontal integration to the independent producers. The studio model production house started giving more importance to the content. It stressed on script development, introducing younger generation actors and directors, budget and time management, co productions and international distribution.  None of the new corporate production house had the background of film production when they entered the segment. However most of them were involved in activities related to the media (The Business Line, 2007). Barney says that the first to exploit the resources would gain competitive advantage over its rivals. This is exactly how the corporate production houses gained advantage over independent producers. The Industry had a lot of potential to grow with its wide acceptance globally. but the independent production houses had neglected this aspect, so when the corporate entered the industry they took complete advantage by using the unexploited resources of reach of the films and its growth possibilities steps (Barney, 1991). To exploit the resources of growth prospective, the studio model was developed under these parameters- To Produce and co produce the movies with strong content and story line. To complete the movie with in the budget and also in time. To sign contractual agreements with actors and directors. To focus on medium and large scale budget movies. To develop a huge distribution network nationally and internationally These parameters are not different from any other studio model in the world. Corporate production houses main aim was to apply these practices and standards in other markets, to the Indian market. The reason for doing this was to make maximum utilisation of the resources available. Already registered in the London Stock Exchange, several Indian film companies like as Eros, Ad labs, India Film Company, and utv – have generated immense capital from the various institutional investors who were keen to invest in Indian film companies. Moreover several Western film companies are looking forward for acquiring an ample equity share in these companies (Desai 2007). In this regard on 24 January 2005, Percept Picture Company associated with Michael Douglas’ production company Further Films and Sahara One to co-produce the $50-million Racing the Monsoon. Also on 1 September Sahara declared one more alliance, and this time with a Hollywood producer Donald Rosenfeld for Tree of Life starring Colin Farrell. These are two among a total of six Hollywood coproductions. (Kohli- Khandekar 2006.). On 20 October, 2005, Sony Pictures sign on Sanjay Leela Bhansali to co-produce Saawariya. The film was released globally in the year of 2007 with around 1,000 prints, a figure which was not heard of in the previous times for an Indian film. [The figure is on average 250.] Moreover this was the first time that a renowned Hollywood studio (that one of top six) had produced an Indian film. (Kohli-Khandekar 2006.) Indian admired cinema, remarkably Bollywood – the Mumbai (Bombay) film industry has witnessed several transformations given that it’s first beginnings. A few key modifications that took place at the turn of the century when Indian Popular Cinema gained the position of an industry.(1) After that the Indian film has developed in new directions. One such change was a more intense interplay between the global and the local which took place during the 1990s. Today, every single function and activity related to the Indian film business is becoming well defined and systematized, be it the retail infrastructure, financial aspect, marketing or distribution. Even films themselves are gradually falling into place. In just under five years, the industry has shed five decades of baggage and has become an organised business. This is a new Indian film industry (Kohli-Khandekar 2006). Film producers are interested in creating serious corporate structures, and Indian as well as foreign business is pouring money into the cinema. A wall of money is descending on Bollywood and there is a huge bubble building up (Desai 2007). Evaluating by the amount of movies produced by the Indian film industry, which is about more than one thousand movies per year, it is been regarded as the largest movie industry of the globe. The studio has reached international and also the profit earnings of the several Indian movies were greater in overseas locations than in India. Indian films have been witnessed in the leading ten lists of movies in the continents of UK and USA ((The Business Line, 2007)). 1.2  An overview of Indian film industry 1.2.1  Historical Section How Bollywood has evolved India is been regarded as the biggest movie industry of the world, if we talk about the number of movies produced in a year. It produces around more than 1000 films per year, which is greater than any of the film producing country. The Indian film industry is commonly regarded as BOLLYWOOD. The first Indian cinema was arrived in the year of 1913 with RAJA HARISHCHANDRA firstly coming into the picture and paving its way to the new period of silent cinema in India (Das Gupta, S., 2006). Since that time it has witnessed a vast series of evolution both in conditions of making and marketing of the Indian films.  We will largely talk about the evolution that took place from the year of 1980s to present time. India produces more films than any other country in the world, the government of India didn’t recognize filmmaking as an official industry until as recently as 2001. Before then, it was impossible for producers to get loans from banks or even insurance for their productions. As a result, producers often paid for their films out of their own pockets – a practice most American producers would consider absurdly risky – or obtained financing from less savory sources (Das Gupta, S., 2006): The unruly aspects of film production weren’t just limited to its financing. In some cases, it would take years to shoot a film. Overbooked film stars would show up egregiously late on set (or not at all) without penalty, scripts were often rewritten on set depending on which actors showed up, contracts were verbal and often violated, and produced films had no guarantees of finding distribution. All of these factors combined to make Bollywood film production an extremely risky endeavour (Das Gupta, S., 2006). 1980-1990 In India maximum number of films were produced by Independent (SingleSolo) producers or Family production houses, Big production companies like Rajashri productions, B.R Productions and R.K Productions were family owned production houses  and in some cases it can be traced back to several generations.(Taebue and Lorenzen-2007)   â€Å"In this period the Indian film industry seemed to make the least progress and in some case journey in the path of deprogress† (Ashish Tiwari). Most of the films were produced on a Formula which had protagonist the male lead character of the film who is called as the Hero and his female counter part as the Heroine who romanced with the Hero singing and dancing around the trees, this strategy gave birth to the masala films (Hindi for â€Å"spice mix†) â€Å"It was a compound made up of several elemental combinations that had drama comedy and romance along with song and dance sequences in symbol driven rather than plot driven† ( Lorenzen Taeube-2006). â€Å"The controversial author Salman Rushdie found a very precise and creative term that sums up the subject of Indian films perfectly, describing it as: ‘Epico-Mythico-Tragico-Comico-Super-Sexy-High- Masala-Art’ (Salman Rushdi, 1995 in â€Å"The Moor’s Last Sigh† quoted in Mishra,)à ¢â‚¬ (Adleline Pissang-2000).  Repetition of these kinds of stereotype films kept the audience away from theatres. Introduction of colour television and national coverage by Doordarshan in early 1980’s caused a drop in demand for Indian films. The middle class audience preferred to watch new Television soaps and old films on video cassettes (VHS) in their home rather than going to cinema halls. So the cinema halls became a run down and regarded suitable only for lower class men who could not afford a television preferred watching hard core violent films in theatres with lots of action and skimpily clad women dancing in the rain (Misara-2002). Competition from television made film production houses think innovatively, to hold their grip on the medium, so they started upgrading their films with lavish sets and so called â€Å"multi starrer† films which in turn increased the importance of star actors. So naturally the star actors wanted to cash in on their ‘star value’ and started charging exorbitant sums to act in a single film which in turn escalated the production cost of the film (Gopalan-2002). This was at the same time when the Indian music industry was on a high and could turn around the profit margins of even those films that failed at the box- office. The movie soundtrack became a key publicity stunt for the movies and the number of tracks and their popularity increased steadily. The pre- movie launch of music could determine the fate of a movie because if the music did well in the market then it created a huge wave amongst the public before the film got released. The sales of the audio cassettes used to bring in good share of revenue. The producers always hoped and worked towards making the music of their film a hit by casting good/popular music directors and famous playback singers for their films. Again, the producer had to invest a lot more on a popular music director but it was chance worth taking (Ganti-2004).   1990-2000 The introduction of cable T.V. was the greatest revolution of this era. It changed the outlook of film industry, though initially the survival of film industry was challenged with the entry of cable T.V. as it was an instant hit with the audience because it provided plenty of regional language channels like ZEE TV, SUN network and as well as few English channels STAR, HBO which aired films on their channels. But gradually the production houses understood the potential of the cable T.V. as it found a way for new source of income through selling its film rights at relatively higher prices for its telecast in television which is called as satellite rights (Pendakur-2003). Subsequently the film industry started depending on television as a medium of publicity by broadcasting songs and advertising campaigns of their films to pull the audiences to the theatres (David Hancock-1999). Music channels like MTV and V channel could not sustain by just transmitting private non film and international music albums so they had to take cover of film songs to increase their popularity in India (Bose-2006). It is believed that the criminal sources like underworld had a very strong hold on the Indian film industry; they controlled the whole production process of the films that they financed by dictating the terms in Bollywood like casting a superstar and selecting brilliant directors to work for their films. It is also believed that celebrities of the industry had close links with the mafia. Though usage of Black money (unaccounted money) in films was not an unfamiliar thing for ages but funding from underworld started in this period. It is estimated that 40% of film productions were financed by the underworld (Kripalani and Grover 2002; David Hancock-1998).   The early 1990’s can be called as the period of stagnation; the commercial cinema had ridiculous dialogues, baseless stories with no originality in them (Ashish Tiwari 2007). Few films in mid 1990’s were huge hits which broke most of the previous records. These films were big budget, romantic films (Dwyer and Patel) which upheld the family values in them. The two astronomical hits were HUM APKE HAI KAUN? (Who am I to You?) This released in 1994 and went onto run for two years in more than 50 theatres and DILWALE DULHANIA LE JAYENGE!! (The Brave Heart Will Take the Bride) got released in 1995 and was still running in its 13th year for 679th week as on 17th October 2008 at Marata Mandhir Cinema in Mumbai (www). Both these films were on similar lines, they were big budget romantic films with no actions sequence in them. In the former’s case the whole film was shot in beautiful gigantic sets going outdoors only for song sequence, which had 12 music tracks in it. In latter’s case maximum portion of the shoot took place in foreign locales. The audio of both these films were massive hits because they used the full potential of television by telecasting their songs and ad campaigns before the theatrical release. Both the production houses (Rajashri Productions and Yashraj Productions) of these films took great interest in refurbishing the theatres before the release of their films because they precisely knew their target audience were the upper middle class and family audiences who were content with television and they had to bring them back to the theatres. Once they succeeded â€Å"it marked the dominance of new middle class and uphold them to the pleasure of socially mixed audie nce both in India and overseas†. (Dwyer and Patel-2002) Rajashri and Yashraj Productions were the good old big production houses which started the trend for these kinds of films with big budget, but most of the small scale productions could not cope with this and had to stop producing films. Gradually number of films produced per year dropped. Source: David Hancock; Global Film production (Working Document) Venice Conference The biggest and greatest breakthrough in the Indian Cinema came in 1998. This is the year the Indian government recognised the potential of Indian cinema and granted the official status of ‘Industry’. Until then the public as well as private banks and other big financial institutions desisted from getting involved with the film production companies so the producers always had to depend on private money lenders for the capital for their films (Dwyer Patel, 2002). Now the production houses are getting their capital from public investments through semi public Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) and other public banks (Lorenzen Taeube, 2006) 2000- Till date.. Indian Film Industry started in its way of revival of sorts, in 2001 all the prints of the film Chori Chori Chupke Chupke which had a huge star cast was seized by the Central Bureau of Investigation suspecting it to be funded by the underworld and the producer of the film Bharath Shah was arrested for having close connections with the underworld. After this incident most of the producers feared to be identified with the under world. So the underworld gradually lost its hold in the Bollywood. Shooting at overseas location for a film is not new to Bollywood they have been doing this since 1960’s but currently there is an increasing trend of Indian film crew shooting at foreign locales. This is because of the huge global market for the Indian films. Many films are released simultaneously in U.S.A. and U.K.  and there are instances where the returns from overseas collections is higher than the home collections.  The script writers and Directors cannot neglect the overseas market any more while scripting and shooting for their film (Dudrah, R K, 2006). After the liberalisation of the industry in 1998 Direct Foreign Investments, Global Investors, Private Corporate started entering the film industry. Hollywood Majors like Universal, 21st Century Fox started investing in the Indian film industry through joint ventures with the Indian production houses. The corporate production houses are gaining importance in the film industry. Corporate houses like ADLABS, EROS, UTV, K.SERA SERA and many others have already made a mark in B.S.E. (Bombay Stock Exchange) and even in L.S.E. (London Stock Exchange). In the current scenario 20% of the total India films are produced by corporate giants (Anand times- 2006).   They have developed professional ways of organising business, mergers, outsourcing, distributing, use of new technology and marketing content.  The corporate houses have brought in the much needed professional flavour in to films which were missing in the production process earlier. The main advantage of the corporate house is it can produce more number of films simultaneously; it produces 5-6 films per year where as compared to the individual production houses cannot afford to produce more than 2-3 films in a year even after the deregulation. The greatest advantage of a corporate production house is it has a huge capital to invest on its films. Usually the risk is higher on a single movie basis, but the risk spreads out as they produce lot of films simultaneously.  They employ professionals in their firm as compared to the single producers of 80’s who used change their crew after every film. Few corporate houses even have their own multiplex cinema which helps in theatrical release as well as in developing a marketing strategy for their films. The corporate giants are investing hugely on the industry as a result of this the film Industry is already the 3rd largest industry in India (Dudrah-2006). The production houses are aiming at a homogenous or serial form of production as opposed to heterogeneous form of production they had earlier. The main purpose of switching to this form of production is to control all means of production and operate all aspects of film making from finance to production and distribution (Prasad-1998). The best example being Yashraj Productions. They have their own studios for recording, dubbing and editing and also have production equipments required for the shoot. With in the production  house they also have different sections like Yashraj Distribution for overseas and home market, Yashraj Music for all their audio sales and Yashraj Video for home video like DVD’s and VCD’s. It was one of the first production houses to hire management students from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadabad (IIMA) to market their films and also to set up their whole business process. They also stated their own website to market and project their media image  (Dywer Patel- 2002). Professionalization has brought new and better modes of planning. There are changed practices of production where there are professionals working constantly for the better utilization of funds, bringing production costs down and maximizing the profits  Film production in India is becoming an organised business. The overall film industry is taking on professional colours. 1.3  Size and growth opportunities The total size of Indian film industry was estimated at around Rs.56.5bn (inr40 = usd1) WHEN was this?, it is  anticipated to touch a huge figure of about Rs.153bn by the year of 2010 with taking into account 18 percent compound annual growth rate (cagr) as per the estimates of  ficci-Pricewaterhouse- Coopers in the year 2006. On the whole, the Indian film industry was anticipated to be value of about usd1.8bn in the year 2006. On the basis of a thorough top-down analysis considering the share of private consumption as a proportion of gdp, the marketshare for media and entertainment (me) expenditures, and film budgets within the me space it was accounted that the Indian film industry will be valued in between usd4.4 and 5.1bn (between inr176bn and inr204bn) by 2011 (cii-A.T. Kearney 2007). The movie industry has been getting more and more corporatized. Many film production, distribution and exhibition houses are listed on the stock markets and they have raised capital through public issue. Several theatres around the nation have been developed into multiplexes and plans to build up additional digital cinema halls are by now in lime light. This will certainly not only enhance the quality of prints and thereby providing viewing a extra pleasant experience for the audiences but will also decrease the piracy of prints (ficci-PricewaterhouseCoopers 2006). These days piracy is a major issue for the Indian film industry. Not initiating nay major anti-piracy laws on the part of the government and an absence of educated officers that implements anti-piracy laws remains the vital issue. These are the main issue which is why the piracy business has not been able to control to a greater extent. This issue along with the lengthy legal and arbitration process is regarded as prevention to the fight against piracy. Apart from this the present Copyrights Act is also obsolete in conditions to technology enhancement and in addition, it does not deal with the requirements of the electronic media where the degree of piracy is amongst the maximum in present time. The Optical Disc Law draft established to deal with the requirement for regulating piracy at the manufacturing phase is still pending for the approval of the Indian ministry (ficci-PricewaterhouseCoopers 2006). As against to few developed markets where the home market symbolizes greater than 40% of total movie revenues, the home market share in India is comparatively small (8%), though, this share is anticipated to rise to about 14% by the year of 2010. The important pushers that will facilitate this are the rising amount of reasonably priced DVD players and lesser prices of original DVDs so as to battle the issues of piracy (cii-A.T. Kearney 2007). The Indian entertainment and media industry enjoys a lot of aid in the present times – be it regulations that permit foreign investment, the momentum from the economy, digital lifestyle and spending styles of the consumers, and also several opportunities the development in technology have to provide. The industry only has to do is to realize its growth potential and opportunities. The government is required to play a greater dynamic task in solving out the policy-related obstruction for the purpose of growth. The industry is required to get rid of all obstructions, like as piracy in an intensive way along with the measures to produce high-quality global class end products. The entertainment and media industry has all ingredients which it generally takes to turn into the star of Indian economy (ficci-PricewaterhouseCoopers 2006). There are two important movements that will basically transform the scene of the Indian film industry in the coming couple of years, namely digitization and a change in consumer preferences. Digitization will lead to consolidation and appearance of huge scale exhibition networks and, and apart from this, in the balance of power among producers-distributors and exhibitors. Changing customer preferences will lead to rising international acceptance of Indian films and in the upcoming of new media (cii-A.T. Kearney 2007). Growth opportunities in terms of Corporate production houses Indian film industry comprises of numerous regional clusters, and Bollywood is merely one of them. Bollywood is the cluster located in Mumbai, producing the biggest share of films (40%) mainly in Hindi (PWC FICCI, 2007). Bollywood is the oldest film cluster in India, dating back to early 20th century. Other film clusters in India like as one in Hyderabad, called â€Å"Tollywood† produces second biggest amount of films mainly in Telugu. While other clusters produce films chiefly in their local language. Growth opportunities in terms of Indian Film Industry 1.31 Current situation Currently the success ratios of films are very low at the box office. Only 10 to 20% of films break even or earn profits (Ganapathi, 2002; Pendakur, 2003; Ganti, 2004; Lorenzen Taeube, 2006) but most of the producers make money, recouping their investments through new auxiliary sources of revenue () like satellite rights music rights, home video rights(DVD),  video games, toys, computer wallpapers, ring tones, movie clips for mobile and selling ancillary rights. The new trend is product placement in films which brings in a lot of revenue and even helps in publicity of the film. In the period of 1998-2005 i.e after gaining the status of industry, the revenues in the films have grown by 360% this is including all revenues from advertising, selling of ancillary rights and music rights (Kholi- Khandekar, 2006; Lorenzen Taeube, 2006). The digital relay of films in cinema theatres is saving a lot of money as you don’t have to develop the physical print, which took a major share in a film budget.   The industry is losing more than 40% of its revenue through Piracy (David Hancock-1998). Copyright infringement of films is so wide spread in India it can be called as a ‘small scale industry’. Bootleg copies of DVD’s are available in the market on the same day the film officially releases in theatres or some times even before that. Pirated DVD’s and CD’s of Bollywood movies are available in most of the South Asian and South East Asian countries. The small cable television channels broadcast newly released films in their channels without paying any kind of compensation. Another problem is consumer copying which is very difficult to stop. To add on to this is Online Internet movies where consumers can download movies from websites like www.bhejafry.net, www.indiaonlinemovies.com and many more without actually paying anything. The technical skills of the Indian Film Industry has always been extraordinary but most of the time they had to settle for old and very poor quality of equipments.  But now due to huge market and Corporatisation they can afford to buy more sophisticated equipments. Digital facilities for Sound Recording, Dubbing, Editing is as good as anywhere in the world (Dwyer Patel, 2002). Bollywood has always been very enthusiastic about embracing new technologies in their films, and it is also been much quicker in doing this than the Hollywood (Currah, 2007). The Film Industry is using all the latest technologies like Arry 435 for the shoot, Avid and Mac products for post production work. Sync sound, D.I.(Digital Intermediate), Animations and special effects with Graphics are used extensively.  The Indian Film Industry can now even employ foreign technicians to work for them to improve the quality of the final product. In the blockbuster film KRRISH- (2006) the action sequence was choreographed by Tony Ching from Hong Kong and all the special effects for the film was done by Hollywood technicians (Minocha and Stonehouse- 2006). Globalisation has four facets, that is, movement of goods, capital, technology and people across borders. In terms of movement of goods (i. e., movies) Indian movie industry has a long history of presence in the global market. Awara was sent to the Soviet Union and other Communist bloc countries crazy in the year of1950s. Mehboob’s Aan had a French release after its premiere in London. Long before that Himansu Rai made visually stunning films in cooperation with the Germans in the early 1930s, like The Light of Asia and A Throw of Dice, and many more which were shown in Europe as Indian films with Indian stories. By then the Bombay film industry had been around for 35 years. The film industry is definitely as old as the cinema itself and surely older than Hollywood, which has its early development in the late 1900s (Desai 2007). The exports of the Indian movie have grown for approximately 60% in recent times. The USA and Canada are two main export locations witnessing for 30 percent than by the UK with 25% and Mauritius and Dubai with 10% each. Some other main markets comprise South Africa, Russia, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia where there is abundant Indian diasporas present. Making a film for the diaspora market is a certainly a moneymaking project as against to making a film for the Indian domestic market (Desai 2007). With the global audience, there is outstanding recognition of Indian movie themes along with sew of the cross-over films made by global movie production players. The profit earnings of these movies can be match up to to few of the Hollywood box office hits. A number of Bollywood movies have gained greater than 50% of their total gross profit margin from global box office collection. However it is a welcome movement that requires to be carried on. One of the significant success factors for these cinemas is to recognize ideas from within the Indian subjects which are liked by the audience. An additional important success factor is to associate with a top global distributor; films produced by the person of Indian origin have had up to 2–3 times greater global earnings as compared to the national bestsellers (cii- A.T. Kearney 2007). Table 2 reveals a series of cross over films and the revenue earning generated by these films. India has stated its determined plans to double its share in the international film industry by the end of this year. This shows the great determination of the country to build itself as a cultural as well as economic powerhouse. There are many reasons why we must believe that. To begin with, the government, which aims on considering Bollywood to set up India as a ‘soft power’, considers the Indian film industry is competent enough to capture five percent of the international market this season. The share at the present time is two percent (Johnson 2007). Kishore Lulla, the chief executive of Eros International, a uk

Impressionism in Writing and Art Essay -- Exploratory Essays Research

Impressionism in Writing and Art Realizing that their art would be overshadowed at major art exhibitions such as the Salon in Paris, a group of artists created their own exhibition. Following the painters’ first show in 1874, critics picked up on the title of one of Claude Monet's paintings, Impression, Sunrise 1872. Between 1874 and 1886 this group, dubbed â€Å"impressionists†, put on eight shows in all. Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, and Claude Monet were three of the more well know artists of the movement (http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/ impressionism/intro1.shtml). Although not necessarily a cohesive group, impressionist paintings all contained certain characteristics. The artists used very informal techniques while capturing the light and true color of their subjects. Their paintings have a very realistic feel when looked at from a far, however when viewed close up one can clearly see the short, blotchy strokes used by the artist. The paintings of Impressionists were immediate sensations which often captured the artists’ interpretation of everyday life. Diego Martelli remarked that impressionist painters do not â€Å"fabricate their theories first and then adapt the paintings to them, but on the contrary†¦the pictures were born of the unconscious visual phenomenon of men of art (Martelli 2)† Around the same time period a group of writers also demonstrated impressionistic ideals in their writings. As is the case with impressionist painters, writers of the impressionist movement are also difficult to classify. Critics have argued that Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Stephen Crane and others could all be considered to have impressionistic ideas in their writings. In response to scientism, a belief that scientific m... ... site on the life and work of impressionist artists, here you can browse through impressionist paintings or even ask an expert a question. They even respond to your questions too! http://assets.cambridge.org/0521791731/sample/0521791731WS.pdf Here you can read the introduction to John Peters book Conrad and Impressionism. After his introduction you will want to go out and get the whole book Works Consulted Martelli, Diego. â€Å"A Lecture on Impressionists.† Impressionism and Post-Impressionism 1874-1904. Ed Linda Nochlin. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966. Peters, John. Conrad and Impressionism. United Kingdom: Cambridge UP, 2001. The Impressionists. History Channel. 2002 Watt, Ian. Conrad in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California, 1979.

A Good Samaritan Law is Never a Good Idea Essay -- Argumentative Persu

A Good Samaritan Law is Never a Good Idea Less than one year ago, the largest television audience since the series finale of M*A *S*H tuned in to watch the last episode of Seinfeld As the nation watched, Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer said farewell with the arrest, trial, and conviction of violating a Good Samaritan law. While this made for a hilarious television show, this law itself seems to both contradict its essence as well as violate the right to freedom of choice of a citizen. The Good Samaritan law, which requires a bystander to provide aid to those who are in harm’s way if there is no apparent immediate danger to the bystander, encroaches upon the rights of a citizen. This law is an inexcusable violation of American civil liberties and should be stricken from the records, leaving only people’s moral compasses as their guide. The morality of this law is relatively simple: help those in trouble. Generally society seems to consider it a moral obligation to prevent the injury of another person, sometimes even at risk to one’s self. People who do not help others in need are frequently bad examples for the rest of the world. For example, in Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, Ebeneezer Scrooge is infamous for his selfishness and disregard for the well-being of others such as Bob Cratchett and his family (barely paying him and not allowing him more than a day for Christmas). Scrooge’s partner, Jacob Marley, is damned for the same type of crimes. The only path to redemption for Ebeneezer is through helping others who are in need: giving food to the Cratchetts and caring for a sickly Tiny Tim. While Scrooge had a moral reason to help others, there was no Constitutional burden to do so. If the federal... ...ce call buttons more accessible to the public since many are willing to contact the law enforcement officials. Although Jerry and Elaine can not seem to provide more than a few jokes when seeing their fellow man in trouble, the majority of Americans seem to be willing to help. Despite several incidents to the contrary, the morals of most people will guide them. These less-talked-about occasions in which people called the police, yelled for help, or even tried to physically stop attackers outweigh the apathetic few. With these facts in mind, this law presents unacceptable violations of the freedom of liberty. Ultimately, then, Good Samaritan laws are both unnecessary and dangerous. Bibliography â€Å"Good Samaritan Laws are Questionable.† alt.politics.lawenforcenieflt.Ca.Com (12 October 1998) â€Å"Rapist-Murderer Case.† alt.adoption.com (03 September 1998).

The Significance of Letters in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Essay

The Significance of Letters in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Letters play a very important role in 'Pride and Prejudice'. They can link the story because letters provide information which we would not have found out from the dialogue between the characters. We an also find out extra background information which can help with the reader's understanding of characters, the plot and the novel in general. Letters can reveal characters' personalities and how they feel about the other characters in the novel, for example Miss Bingley's feelings about Jane. Letters are used as a dramatic device in 'Pride and Prejudice' to further the plot, link the story and to inform the readers of the character's personalities. Letters are also an extremely important part of 'Pride and Prejudice' because at the time when the novel was written, letters were the only way of communicating other than through word of mouth. Letters can be used to deliver good and bad news at any time. They did not have telephones so a letter would be the most appropriate way of keeping touch with friends and family. Jane and Elizabeth are two of the main characters in the novel and they write to each other frequently during their visits away from each other. The sisters share some parts of their personalities. Both are caring, loving and considerate towards other people, but Jane is extremely loving and she does not want to judge any of the other characters in the novel before she has heard the entire story. This is because she does not want to think badly of anyone. We know this from Jane?s letter to Elizabeth regarding the actions of Miss Bingley and Miss Hurst ... ... the novel would make no sense. Austen uses letters to make the novel much more interesting as it is different from constant dialogue. She superbly shows that there are different ways to provide the reader with information other than through dialogue or through the narrator. Letters are important in ?Pride and Prejudice? because they can enhance the plot, change the plot, provide the reader with additional information and can also show character. All of the letters from above contribute to the readers understanding of the novel, to the plot and to add to the characterisation and without these letters the novel would seem incomplete. This just proves that letters play a major role in 'Pride and Prejudice'. Bibliography: Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Donald Gray. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996

Paleolithic vs. Neolithic

It has long been understood that in order for a species to survive there needs to be a certain level of adaptation. It is an integral and well-known concept of the human race and a familiar and widely accepted component in the development of man. Essentially, this is what happened when the Paleolithic cultures evolved into the Mesolithic, and eventually the Neolithic culture.The concepts of specialization and diversification were relevant in the transformation of these cultures. Specialization can be defined as â€Å"a structural adaptation of a body part to a particular function or of an organism for life in a particular environment† (Merriam-Webster). The hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic culture were prepared, sometimes at a moment’s notice, to pick up and evacuate their current living areas in order to migrate to an environment in which their living conditions would be greatly improved. Such conditions included better climates, and most importantly, more suitable land to live off of.The scarcity of food was a major problem at the time. The hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic society were tasked with solving this prevalent issue and they did so with the strategic use of tools and stone. Such tools include the common hand axe, chisel, the arrow and spearhead, and the grinder (â€Å"Early Humans†). Tools such as these enabled them to acquire larger quantities of food and necessities for a longer, and ultimately, a more healthful life. The decision process of the nomadic people with regards to the settlement location and migration patterns were largely a factor based upon the current conditions of the weather. There were not many women or children whom survived, the population mainly consisted of aggressive men who were a part of smaller groups, made up predominately of adults usually numbering around thirty.This in turn made it easier to provide food and shelter since there were a fewer number of people. During the Paleolithic era, peopl e’s main occupation was probably finding enough food to survive. Eventually, the Paleolithic culture had to undergo a transformation in order to sustain a longer, improved lifestyle, taking them out of the Stone Age and into the New Age, also known as the Neolithic Era.The Neolithic culture began when humans discovered agriculture and raising cattle, which allowed them to no longer need to live a nomadic life style  (â€Å"Hunter-Gatherers to Farmers†). The culture of the Neolithic people began to progress due to the fact that they began to settle with larger groups in a more stationary setting of one area. By this point, the Neanderthals were now all deceased. In this reality sprung the early signs of civilization such as cities, the social system of hierarchy, and an overall more literate population of people. This time period, beginning around about 9500 B.C., became known as the agricultural revolution.They eventually evolved from hunter-gatherers into farmers wh om still gathered food from the wild, but they now had crops that they cultivated, making the food supply more abundant and more tailored to an increasing population. They were able to settle in fertile areas with predictable climate, usually near river basins (â€Å"Neolithic vs. Paleolithic†), but no longer were the inhabitants of these lands â€Å"light on the earth† like the Paleolithic people before them. The accumulation of more possessions such as livestock became prevalent, thus requiring more space. More women and children survived as well, making the size of the groups increase from around 100 to 1,000 people; a drastic change from the Paleolithic groups.The increase in population caused diseases to spread amongst the groups of Neolithic people because of the close proximity and relativity to others. A social hierarchy eventually had to be enacted to keep the growing population in order. Technology, language, and art continued to advance in the Neolithic cult ure once people started to work together, extending the knowledge, and creating an environment more suitable for the developments to come. The issue of ownership also became prevalent since before there existed no concept of owning specific land. Private property came to be during this time, in effect causing the emergence of ownership of land, livestock, and even tools.As I became more informed on the transformation of the Paleolithic to Neolithic culture, I could not help but to start comparing the changes they underwent to that of the Native Americans and White Settlers. The Native Americans led a simple life, one marked by the use of land as a means of survival. They were a nomadic type of hunter-gatherers usually ruled by tribal leaders and elders just as the Paleolithic people were. When obstacles such as seasonal-change and weather were thrust upon them, they would uproot and find another place to survive. Also, the Paleolithic culture believed in spiritual rituals, as did th e Native Americans. Dr. Miles H. Hodges explains, â€Å"His (Paleolithic man) world view informs him that all events in life result from the actions of the spiritual world working in an invisible way in and through the visible world.The visible world of material reality is merely the outer form or dressing of an even greater inner reality† (â€Å"Paleolithic Society and Culture†). This concept aligned with the beliefs of the Native Americans and their respect for the spiritual world. An example that is parallel with the spiritual beliefs of both the Native Americans and Paleolithic people would be if a hunt were to bring success there were important spiritual rituals to be performed. The Neolithic people became the White Settlers in my mind mainly because of the fact that life became more structured in a sense. Due to this structure, more focus was put on the advancement and expansion of the culture. They also had a similar effect on the land because they did not live lightly or have the same respect for it as the Native Americans did.The Neolithic Age marked the beginnings of established society for modern man, comparable to the White Settlers when they institutionalized beliefs such as religion. Overall, the reason for comparing the Paleolithic and Neolithic times with the Native Americans and White Settlers is because of the fact that an evolution, or change, that began approximately 11,500-5,000 years ago (â€Å"Neolithic Revolution†), essentially repeated at a time more relevant to generations closer to us. This concept, in turn, has made the subject in its entirety, an easier topic to understand.Changes are constant in this world; they have continued to be so since the beginning of the human race. In the end, the Paleolithic culture was a gateway into the Neolithic culture and ultimately served as a stepping-stone for the advancement of the Neolithic culture. The resulting innovations in society, economy, and technology in the Neolit hic Age then paved the way for all of modern civilization. The change from roaming hoards of prehistoric man to settled agriculturists allowed for the establishment of society out of a nomadic culture.