Favorite Memory

Samantha Vega Eng 073-08 My Favorite memory My Favorite memory was when I first played in a softball game, it was very exciting, nerve reckon and challenging. Stepping into the field was the best feeling in the world. The air was so fresh. The field was very smooth and the dirt was crispy brown. I remembered watching girl’s plays softball at a young age and I always wanted to see how it felt to play. I became fascinated and was amazed how older girls played amongst themselves and I actually learned just by watching. Playing softball for the first time was exciting.The weather was very nice, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the birds chirped and the wing blew so smoothly. I could also hear the crowed yelling and shouting excited to see the game. My parents were also there supporting me at my first game. Lincoln high school, a school that wasn’t very good in softball but that was my team. We were facing a school from Parsippany. It was a home game so we played in ou r field in Lincoln Park. It was diamond shape. The dirt was very smooth as I entered the field with my team. The grass on the outfield was wet and green, it was very shiny.Being my first time I was very happy and excited to play. I couldn’t imagine how much fun I was going to have. Softball is very nerve reckon sport. Trying to catch every ball that comes your way or hitting the ball to make a run. Having two strikes on you, 2 outs, last inning and the game is tied makes you really nervous. In my memory, after the team got ready and prepared to face the opponents, number 23 stepped up to the plate and started of the game. I was in center field on the outfield. I was going to give it my all and have our first win. So number 23 had 2 strikes and 1 ball.Yari, our team captain was pitching; everyone was rooting her on to make that out. Number 23 was a big girl, she looked strong and hit the ball all the way to outfield were I was playing my position. I ran as quickly as I could t o catch that ball and I actually caught it. It was fun running and forcing me to catch it. I was very excited that the ball came to me and it was up to me to catch it. I was so nervous and thought to myself â€Å"What way should I run? † â€Å"What to do? † When I caught it the crowd got so happy and screamed my name rooting me on. Lastly, playing in my first game was very challenging.I didn’t expect it was going to be as challenging as I thought it would. Stepping into the plate for the first time made me feel strong and proud to wear my royal blue with the lion logo uniform. My uniform was crisp and ready to get dirty. The wind was blowing in my face as I was holding my bat ready to swing as hard as I could. The first pitch came my way all you heard was â€Å"STRIKE†, â€Å"STRIKE TWO† the umpire yelled. I hit the ball the third time and hit it to 3 rd base and ran as fast as I could after I ran to first base I tripped on the base but quickly got up before they called me out.I was safe. It was a great feeling being safe but it was very challenging when the girl on first almost got me out. Although, in this game there is so much competition, but the whole point of this game is to have fun and be the best you can. In my case, I had the best time playing my first game. We actually won our first game with the score of 10-8. I had so much fun and worked hard to get my spot in the team. It isn’t all about winning or losing it about having the best time and creating friendships with team members.

Video Vault Case

Introduction: The Video Vault was dominant is the location of major route connecting Westborough to the neighbour communities of Hopkinton and Upton with floor space at 750 square feet, the owners were innovative in displaying their roughly 10,000 units (or 8,000 titles) of inventory, 700 of which were in the DVD format. Peaslee and St. Angelo had 6,000 registered customers, with about half that number being active renters. In order to rent videos at the store, customers provided a credit card number or a $35 deposit, protecting the business against unreturned product or unpaid late fees. New releases, adult videos, and video games rented for $4 per day, catalogue titles rented for $3 per day. The average late fee was $2. 75. Total late fees in 2001 were $6,133. Supply chain performances In revenue sharing contract, the store shares the revenue from the customer with the studio through which it gets its inventory. The widespread use of revenue sharing fundamentally changed the economics of the industry. Under this, distributors sold the tape to the retailer at a much lower price- from $3 to $8 per tape- in return for a percentage of the rental revenue and a percentage of eventual used-tape sales to consumer. But as the same time there were some disadvantages that were came with revenue sharing contract. Store had to share data with the studio and also had to keep maximum and minimum inventory of inventory as per the contract which diluted the controllability of store owners. Since they opened their store, Peaslee and St. Angelo had seen the regular distribution channels and pricing change dramatically. In the past, the partners bought roughly 150 to 200 titles per year, one-third from established distributors that bought directly from studios, and the rest from â€Å"sideways selling†Ã¢â‚¬â€a practice of buying product from other video stores, retailers, or individual traders. The top tier A titles were roughly $70 from distributors and were shipped to stores prior to the video rental release date. Buying product from other avenues resulted in lower prices, but it could take weeks or months after the release date to obtain copies. During 2000 and 2001, however, the Video Vault bought 90% of its product directly from studios, with a few distributors acting as â€Å"fulfillment centers,† shipping product from studios without owning it

Charging for Plastic Bags Essay

Nowadays, many billions of plastic bags have been using every year, and it seems to be increased more and more. According to Noland (2013), in the UK, the number of plastic has risen up to 5.4% in 2010 to 2011. Another statistic illustrates that 90 percent of plastic bags do not be reused or recycled (Bobby, 2013). This shows that people do not care much about the effect of plastic bags. Therefore, the government should intervene to solve this problem: to introduce a charge for plastic bags. Plastic bag is one of major environmental issues. It provides many disadvantages for environments, animals, and even humans, so people should be aware for using plastic bags. In order to reduce using plastic bags, the government has to make a law of charging for using them. According to Noland (2013), Ireland has definitely decreased 95 percent of using plastic bags since they had a plastic bag tax in 2002. Wales’ statistic shows that rate of plastic bags had reduced to 22 percent because of introduced charging (Noland, 2013). It means that this project can persuade or support consumers to not use a lot of plastic bags, so it can protect the environment. In the United States, people use 100 billion plastic bags a year (Bobby, 2013). A huge of people is using plastic bags, so another reason of charging for plastic bags is it is impossible to stop use plastic bags because people still need them in daily life for carrying things. Moreover, producing plastic bags is a part of businesses. This will hard to ban plastic bags. Hence, people who want to use plastic bags should pay for it so that the government can use money from charging or taxes for doing other things that are useful. Opponents of charging for plastic bags say that this project does not help much about saving the environment. There is a better way of solving this problem, including alternatives to plastic bags. People can reuse and recycle the bags. However, alternatives to plastic bags still give harmful for the environment. According to Bobby (2013), reusable plastic bags can cause a brains and kidneys problems. Even though paper bags can break down, it provides a gas that leads to global warming (Bobby, 2013). Bobby also refers that cloth bags are more harmful than plastic bags because people require trees for making bags (2013). As with most things, there are pros and cons of both sides, but, overall, to introduce a charge for plastic bags provides more advantages. It is certainty that charging for plastic bags can reduce people to not use plastic bags. Moreover, it is nothing to do with people who produce plastic bags because they cannot ban plastic bags anyway, so having a charity are more benefits that banning plastic bags.

Comparing the psyche of immigrants as depicted in the novels Call it Essay

Comparing the psyche of immigrants as depicted in the novels Call it Sleep By Henry Roth (1934) and Bread Givers by Anzia Yizierska (1925) - Essay Example But these historical migrations were triggered by single dimension grounds. As the modern era arrived into the scene it was found that the act of migration was the cause of a web structure that contained a multi strata formation and is far more complex than the previous historical migrations. This complexity developed in the minds of the immigrants themselves. This is particularly depicted in the novels "Call it Sleep" By Henry Roth written in 1934 and "Bread Givers" written by Anzia Yizierska in 1925. 'Bread Givers' written by Anzia Yezierska and 'Call It Sleep' written by Henry Roth each would give us unique perspectives on the lives of immigrants in the earliest years of the twentieth century. The comparisons between the two are quite interesting, as the contrasts would also be. The settings are similar; the families which are central figures in each book are far from that in the numbers of members and the areas they would come from. The texts enable the reader the ability to almost sense the differences and similarities between Sara Smolinsky and young David as they live their lives in the New York area. Comparing their life experiences and then contrasting their ideals of the life they would in America would indeed be intriguing. Call It Sleep exemplifies Henry Roth's fascination with modernist ... As a cultural portrait, Call It Sleep paints a vivid picture of immigrant life in early twentieth century New York, specifically that of the very large immigrant Jewish population. As a commentary upon the struggles of a minority group, Call It Sleep offers a poignant tale of a young boy and his often unsettling experiences both at home and in his community. On the contrary, Bread Givers, Anzia Yezierska's autobiographical novel, endures for the way it relates universal truths about the poverty and despair of new immigrants to America at the turn of the century. Within that universality, Yezierska's voice emerges as strong, female, and idiosyncratic as it reveals the particulars of her characters' inner lives. Like many of her female protagonists, Yezierska immigrated to New York's Lower East Side in her early teens. She was born in around Warsaw in the early 1880s - the exact year is not known. Her older brother Meyer had immigrated to America a few years earlier and had saved enough money to bring his parents and seven siblings to New York. Like many immigrants who passed through Ellis Island, Meyer was renamed, and Max Meyer set out to reinvent himself accordingly. Anzia, called Harriet Meyer when she joined him, later reclaimed her identity and took back her given name. "Bread Givers" can be regarded as a source of cultural and social history because, even though it is fictionalized, it gives rich details of life in the early 20th century and illustrates many social conditions. It should be noted that the book is not a primary history source, but rather a secondary source, full of facts that would be of immense value to get a notion of the insight and the psyche of an immigrant at that juncture of the period in American history. This book is the story of a young

How Brand Awareness Can Gain Competitive Advantage To Companies A Case Dissertation

How Brand Awareness Can Gain Competitive Advantage To Companies A Case Study Of Coca Cola Company In UK - Dissertation Example This dissertation focuses on the Coca-cola company that is a competitive brand and its use of marketing techniques seems to be a bullet proof formula for success. Therefore the intention of this dissertation is to identify exactly how coca-cola uses brand awareness to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. This is extremely important in terms of emerging markets like the technology sector. If companies can identify exactly how to imitate the coca-cola method to brand awareness, then they will be able to capture a leading position within the category. The researcher of this dissertation discusses various aims and objectives of this work, such as: to identify the tactics used by Coca-Cola to maximize its brand awareness, to critically evaluate the methods used by Coca-Cola within the context of the â€Å"22 Immutable Laws of Marketing† by Al Ries and Jack Trout, to Compare and Contrast the methods used by Coca-Cola and Pepsi, to identify other sectors that may benefi t from mimicking Cola’s marketing platform and to identify areas where Coke may be vulnerable. In conclusion, the researcher tries to explore the consumer aptitude regarding the efficacy of Coca-Cola branding campaign. This will help us determine how individuals perceive the brand, where they developed those perceptions, and how likely their perceptions are to change. After analyzing how consumers feel about the brand, the researcher states that he will be able to developed a formula for brand efficiency.

Financial and marketing analysis Research Paper

Financial and marketing analysis - Research Paper Example Apart from financial analysis, the study also highlights the information pertaining to different sections of the real estate market in Russia. It is worth mentioning that the whole study gives emphasis on JLL operating in Russia. In Russia, JLL plays an important role in drawing investment from real estate investors. It is one of the major places in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region, in which JLL has developed lucrative business. The company has offered huge space for office purposes and has covered 323,000 square meters of space. It has also delivered about 11 office buildings to Russians. There are three types of real estate investment in Russia: commercial, residential and industrial. All the three mentioned sectors are crucial for the company as it drives revenue. The company has encountered increasing revenue and profit trend over the years from 2004 to 2013. However, there were a series of challenges for the company, which made significant changes in its financials following changes in earning per share. The challenges were exchange rate volatility, slow down of the Russian economy and most importantly uncertainty in Ukraine, which affected the confidence of investors in real estate marke t. The investor confidence decreased with the decrease in investment patterns in the first two quarters of 2014. In February 2014, the armed forces of Russia began to take over Crimean Peninsula that is situated in Ukraine. Till date the conflict continued as a result there are huge changes in the financial markets in Russia. It caused turbulence in the financial markets and fell drastically due to instability. After the event the real estate market in Russia is also affected. However, after the financial shock in 2008 to 2009, the country’s real estate market was recovering excellently but the sudden conflict made the situation worse for the real estate companies in Russia (The Economic Newspaper Limited, 2014). The

Amicus (Friend of the Court) (3rd party) Brief for specified current Research Paper

Amicus (Friend of the Court) (3rd party) Brief for specified current Suprem Court case - Research Paper Example Human Rights Watch also has a role of investigating and exposing incidences of human rights abuse abuses and violation, with an aim of putting the abuses to the task of being accountable. The organization also seeks to challenge the government and other bodies or people who hold powers to observe human rights and to end human rights abuses, particularly with reference to international human rights standards as well as that of the municipal laws. As a leading human rights body, with the aforesaid specific roles, which are highly tangential to the issues of justice , the organization has a legitimate interest to participate in the case and to present an Amicus brief for the same. The organization has a lot of interest in ensuring that justice is done to the defendant. It is the Human Rights Watch that this honorable court safeguards future systematic human rights abuses by the state, and in particular the police, against the citizens. It is the interest of the organization that the pol ice and all government organs concerned are held accountable for human rights abuses that they perpetrate. ... Incarcerated on a disorderly conduct charge, the deputies were hoping to learn more about Fields' relationship with an underage male. Fields was not given his Miranda warnings, but was told he could leave the conference room where the questioning took place at any time. During the 7 hour questioning, Fields repeatedly told the deputies that he did not want to talk about the allegations of sexual misconduct that they had leveled against him. Eventually, however, he did admit to some of the behavior that had been alleged. On the basis of that information, and over the strenuous objection of his counsel, Fields was later convicted of two counts of third-degree criminal conduct and sentenced to a term of 10-15 years.   Fields appealed claiming that when he was first removed from his cell to go to the conference room, he was given no notice of what the deputies wanted. Further, because they had not Mirandized him and continued to question him even after he told them he did not want to s peak to them, the incriminating statements should be thrown out. Throughout his appeals in the state judicial system, his arguments were denied.   Upon making a habeus corpus motion to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, however, Fields' contention that his rights had been violated was upheld. The Sixth Circuit Court affirmed that lower court ruling which contrasted with decisions made in similar cases in other federal courts. The split in the circuits virtually guaranteed that the Supreme Court would take the case. On January 24, 2011, the Supreme Court granted certiorari.   The present case presents a question as to what amounts to being in custody and in particular whether or not a prisoner is always â€Å"in

BUS599 MoD 1 SLP Assign Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

BUS599 MoD 1 SLP Assign - Essay Example ents are quite sensitive to its prices, but do not mind on issues ascribed to its performance; clients do not mind any variation caused on its performance, but mind its prices and clients prices as well as the performance of X7 is given equal priorities by its clients. This research will focus on an analysis of the financial years of the three products, basically taking into consideration; pricing, marketing strategies and allocation of resources thus creating an effective platform for development of appropriate operational strategies for the financial year 2016. Financial Year 2012: The respective prices of tablets X5, 6 and 7 during this financial year was; 285, 430 and 190 dollars. The products also experienced variations in cost allocation at rate of 34% for X5 and 33% each for X6 and X7. In summation, the company made sales amounting to 1,055,294,574 dollars after selling 3,102,177 units. The R&D, fixed and variable costs exhibited a sum of 784, 720, 740 dollars. The profit margins during this year was at 270, 573, 835 dollars, indicating a 26% increase of the total yearly revenue. Taking into consideration the profits accrued in 2011, the 2012 profit margin indicated a 10% increase. In relation to individual product market performance, product X5 sold more units as compared to product X6 and X7 by registering sales amounting to 1,647,592 units: This generated annual revenue of 469,563, 809 dollars with a product profit of $139, 504, 962, generating 30% of the overall annual revenue of the product. The product X7 indicated the lowest sa les during this year, after exhibiting sales amounting to 165, 586 units leading to reduced profit of 27% less as compared to the previous year, which was at 0%. Generally, the annual revenue generated from the three products during this year indicated an upward trend, despite the fact that product X 7 indicated decreased profit margins. Financial Year 2013: The Clipboard Tablet Company designated prices of the three products

Editorial Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Editorial - Essay Example Certain situations like the case of Diane Pretty of Luton reflect that life may at times be in such a condition that death would seem to be a solution to their pains. Diane whose body had become paralyzed from the neck had to be fed through a pipe. The pain and sufferings of the woman made her wish that she died peacefully and with dignity before the disease killed her (Right-to-die case dismissed). Although courts did not allow her to take the step, but situations like these support the act of euthanasia where an individual may require the need to get ultimate relief. Several arguments point in support of the practice. A change in the outlook has been observed that reflects that doctors and professionals in countries like the United States are becoming supportive of the act if it is made legal (Otlowski, 326-327). Several organizations in Washington also support the act including National Association of Social Work, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, and many others (Cundiff, 84). The support mainly arises from the fact that an individual who would never recover may choose to die since the process would relieve the person from his pains. Others viewers believe that euthanasia should be a punishable offence. Since it is a completely private preference, no one from outside should perform such an act on another individual (Somerville, 77). The practice of euthanasia has also been opposed on ethical grounds as well that can be reflected through theories like Divine Command Theory and Kant’s Moral Theory. The Divine Command Theory opposes all sorts of activities related to euthanasia supporting normal death of an individual. Kant’s Moral Theory focuses on the main objectives of undertaking euthanasia and determines the consequences before deciding on supporting or not supporting the act (Stewart, 81-89). The main reason for majority of people not supporting the act of euthanasia is because they believe that â€Å"life is the most

Ethical Dilemma of Illegal Immigrant Seeking Treatment Article

Ethical Dilemma of Illegal Immigrant Seeking Treatment - Article Example However, the car did not stop after the hit and as a result Santana was forced to run to the nearest emergency department despite the deep pain he was in. The medical history of the patient reveals that he has no health insurance. Furthermore, the patient is one of the undocumented immigrants from Mexico who has stayed in America for three years. With notable hesitation Santana explains to the nurse that he lives with his relatives who are also illegal immigrants. The nurse discovers that the patient has a broken arm and needs immediate medical care and close monitoring. Without mush thought or delay, Susan attends to her patient by providing the recommended nursing care and treatment for the patient’s condition. Susan is approached by one of her colleagues who emphasizes that the patient she is attending to is an illegal immigrant and, thus, she is violating the provisions of the law by treating him. This does not stop Susan from providing further emergency care to Santana. S he tells her colleague that all she is doing is performing her duties as an emergency care nurse. Introduction Health care is a basic human right and, therefore, all human beings have the right to unbiased access to quality medical care services regardless of their citizenship status. Nurses are obliged to provide care with compassion, professionalism and respect while upholding the worth, uniqueness and dignity of every individual without bias (The American Nurses Association, 2001). Hence, nurses should provide quality care for patients regardless of their personal attributes, health condition, economic, social and political standing. Therefore, nurses should not discriminate patients during care based on the fact that they are illegal immigrants. Nurses should have their primary commitment while striving to protect and promote the rights, safety and health of the patient (The American Nurses Association, 2001). The federal law stipulates that illegal immigrants who have stayed in the country for a period of less than 5 years are not legally eligible for Medicaid (Winograd, 2006). This illustrates that emergency care nurses are often faced with a dilemma related to their ethical and legal obligations in the provision of unbiased care for all individuals. Position Statement This paper presents argumentative discussion of the legal ethical dilemma that emergency department nurses are faced with in the treatment of illegal immigrants. The discussion aims at illustrating why the ethical obligations of nurses, as provided by the American Nurses Association, should not be limited by the legal provisions against care for illegal immigrants. The discussion will be based on evidence from credible information materials on the issue and an accurate reflection of the implication of legal provisions on the role of nurses and their ethical obligations. This discussion will be based on the case study which provides illustrations of situations where the ethical obligation o f nurses surpasses the requirement of the law. It is important to note that for the sake of confidentiality and privacy, the names given in the case study are not the actual names of the people involved in the case. Supportive Evidence The provisions of the American Nurs

Use of Force Essay Example for Free

Use of Force Essay â€Å"The Use of Force† by William Carlos Williams, the use of authorial purpose is utilized by the author. The narrator is a doctor who is making a house call to help a very sick young girl. The author tries to justify the use of force in this situation through authorial purpose. The author uses expressive, informative, and persuasive writing techniques in order to address and give a good reason for exerting force over others. He builds a rapport in this story through the members of the sick girl’s family and the doctor himself. He shows many ways that the family and doctor can relate to each other through mutual attention, mutual positivity, and coordination. The thesis that the author is trying to propose is that in some situations, using force is ethical and should not be shameful when trying to help another person. The author uses different writing techniques including authorial purpose to influence the audience that the use of force was necessary and ethical. I will be explaining the authorial purpose used in this story. I will be discussing expressive, informative, and persuasive authoritative purposes as they all apply to the doctor visiting the young child at home. To better understand the authorial purposes used, I will explain what expressive, informative, and persuasive writing techniques are more in detail and I will provide examples throughout the story that show the author William Carlos Williams uses all three writing techniques to express his purpose and intention of this story. Although this short story may show how using force can be devastating to the child in need of medical attention, it is a necessary action to provide the child with the proper medical care. Body Expressive – presenting feelings It is important to understand that expressive writing is author-centered. This means that the author will be presenting personal feelings in order to show their intent. The author will try to make meaning of an experience to express their intent in a more meaningful manner to the audience. These experiences usually include reflecting on past events, or speaking about their successes and failures in order to give the audience a sense of feeling toward the author. Informative – sharing information Informative writing is always subject-centered. The author has the need to communicate information clearly so that the audience can understand the content. This is a very important consideration when writing informative stories. Nonfiction writing is usually always informative writing. In nonfiction stories, facts and opinions are revealed about people, places, things, and events. In â€Å"The Use of Force,† the author explains the subject matter clearly to the reader by explaining that a doctor goes on a house call to visit a very sick young girl and to try and help her get better. The era in which this happened can be picked up through context clues in the story. Usually in informative writing, the information is just shared and presented to the audience. Ultimately, the conclusions and results are left to the audience to determine. Therefore, an informative writing technique is just a description and explanation of some particular information in the story – usually about the subject. The writer is constrained to explain the knowledge related to only a single topic in informative stories. Persuasive – changing the audience’s mind Persuasive writing involves taking a position on a debatable issue to convince an audience one way or the other about that controversial issue. In persuasive writing the writer presents his or her opinion and tries to convince the reader to agree. Persuasive writing is also known as presenting an argument because the writer uses words to convince the audience that their opinion in which they are writing about is correct. Persuasive writing, especially in short stories, is very commonly used. Persuasive writers employ many techniques to improve their argument and show support for their claim. Students understand that persuasive writing is audience-centered; the needs of the intended audience are the most important consideration. Conclusion – I am proposing that the use of force, even if it causes pain, is ethical and sometimes necessary in order to help someone for their own good.

Using Energy Drinks Essay Example for Free

Using Energy Drinks Essay Introduction In this essay I will be talking about the cons of using energy drinks. I will give examples from articles, in which energy drinks caused people to go to the hospital. I will explain how energy drinks boosts you up and brings you down. In this essay I will be talking about a few energy drinks specifically. Using Energy Drinks According to the Colorado Gazette, Redline drink and others have been linked to health complications. Like heart problems, hypertension, and others. In Colorado, a school banned these kind of drinks and recommended a 7-11 store to stop selling these. A 15 year old girl, an athlete, was drinking the REDLINE POWER RUSH energy drink, and passed violently shaking and extreme salivitation, she died. several others have been reporting going to the er for chest tightness, shortness of breath, severe heart palpitations, increased heart rate, fixed and dilated pupils and hypertension. Recent reviews of this drink conclude a contributing factor not only an OD on caffeine, but drinking energy drinks on an empty stomach can lead to the stomach absorbing the drink, thus causing symptoms of nausea, salivating, sweating, headaches, neck pain and so on. This drink is supposed to be a dieting and energy drink. Usually people who work out a lot or diet, are eating nutritiously, mind you, that may be why some people are not affected by the ingredients in the drink. Those are: -Caffeine Citrate, Caffeine Anhydrous, Evoburnâ„ ¢ (Pure Evodiamine), N-acetyl-tyrosine, Yerbe Mate, Green Tea, 5-hydroxy-L-tryptophan, CAMP (adenosine cyclic 3? ,5? -monophosphate), Vinpocetine, Yohimbine HCL. -also the amount of caffeine in one 2 ounce bottle of this stuff is about 250 mg. that is like nearly 3x the amount recommended on a daily basis. So if you are one who drinks the energy drinks there are some warnings, so incase you are not aware of them they follow: -if you are under the age of 16 this is not recommended.- if you have any medical condition especially with the heart DO NOT DRINK THIS. if you have any type of sleeping disorder this is not for you. if you are on any type of blood thinner, bod pressure med, or anti depressants, do not drink this drink -do not take this drink with ANY other type of diet aide, this can cause a problem.. and when drinking this drink, if you have never had this please don’t drink more than 3 capfuls (. 63 fl. oz. ), dont consume more than 1/2 of the bottle, and don’t consume more than one bottle a day. Conclusion. In closing, I think using energy drinks is bad for you. Energy drinks boosts you up and when you come of that energy burst you feel drained. I am against using any form of energy drink. In Maryland, a 21 year old woman died using the energy drink four loko, an energy drink with alcohol. I wouldn’t use energy drinks, I’m one of those people who, if I know something important is coming up, I make sure I am well rested. References www. gazette. com/ www. nydailynews. com/ /2010-11-12_marylanders_want_four_loko_off_shelves_after_controversia l_cocktail_blamed_for_w. html.

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

Fake Thug Life :: English Literature Essays

Fake Thug Life There is a young man who inspired me to write this article. I thank him for doing a great service to the Muslim society. Turn where you will. Look to the East Coast or the West Coast and there are various Arab boys, Indian boys, and Pakistani guys who have adopted the look, lingo, and life of a "thug." I have seen it many times - this strange transformation from tapered jean-wearing, glasses-owning, nail biting ninny to chest-thumping, hard-acting, Nautica-wearing "thug." It begins at an early age with the use of slang, words like "werd!† ,"yo!", "jigga man!" It is followed by the gradual attraction towards mainstream rap. Ja Rule, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Jay Z. Bear in mind, this attraction to hip hop is not derived from any cultural relationship these boys feel towards "the ghetto!" Most of them have never even been to one. Regardless, they like to blare hip hop in their predominantly white high schools because it makes them stand out. Wearing ENYCE, or Sean John, on the other hand, in the predominantly white high school makes said Muslim boy stand out and makes him appear more hardcore than he would in his tapered jeans from Sears that his mother bought for him. Thus, we see that the use of slang, plus a certain social need, gives rise to a Muslim boy getting closer and closer to a certain imagined sense of "thug-life." Add to this the fact that most Muslim boys only play basketball while growing up, or "hoops" as they call it, because they are too skinny for football and too excitable for baseball. The game comes with its own infusion of hip-hop culture. Since a thug is either a "baller" or a "Playa" and since most Muslim parents would beat up their sons if they saw them with a girl, all Muslim boys end up being (self-proclaimed) "ballerz." We all know the relationship basketball has with hip-hop culture. A Muslim's transformation into a "thug" quickens. He starts using appropriately placed rap verses. Ice Cube's "check yo'self fo' you wreck yo'self" makes its way into religious discussions. Nelly's "it's getting hot in here" begins to be dropped into sermons referring to Hell. Their emails begin to be sprinkled with "kno wat im sayin" and "check it." His favorite love song, instead of being something by Sinatra, becomes Ginuwine's "My pony!" or Montel Jordan’s "Let's Ride!"