The secret to operating a successful film festival

Nowadays, audience's eyes always been attracted by some actresses' fancy shape in some film festivals. All kinds of medias like to use the glamorous red carpet to be theirs headline, while how many people know the secret to making a film festival successful?

There are many strategies to make that happen.

The first and the most easiest way is to form an alliance with other professional organization. Within the alliance, members could share their own advantage resources including film resources, finance resources, media resources and insider networking in the industry.

Moreover, the film festival has to have its clear-cut identity. People will notice that the biggest three film festivals in Europ all have their distinguishing feature. Venice International Film Festival regards art and pioneering films; Cannes International Film Festival focus on the combination of business and art; Berlin International Film Festival pay close attention to politic and society. For a successful film festival, it has to have its unique feature, and then film producers could combine the film's feature with the film festival's advantages.

The other important element is the structure of joint hosts. Every big film festival have a very complicated structure of joint organizers. Generally, it including organizer and organizations; clients and the honored guest; board of directors and sponsors. Each of them plays an important role. The organizers include planner, event manager, director etc. They will use their connection to get more foreign films. Clients and the honored guests are the status symbol of a film festival. Sponsors for commercial or charity purposes will provide the financial resources, in cash or in-kind, for the film festival. If a film festival could get a sponsor from some big international companies it will prove the film festival's influence.

            Furthermore, the film festival's location, schedule, film resource reserve and authorized                       organization are the other important elements of a successful film festival. Meanwhile, a film               festival's success can not without every participant's effort.

Reference
Alex Fischer. Conceptualising Basic Film Festival Operation: An Open system Paradigm[D]. 2009.

Distribution Blog Post

I have read a research paper talked about the history of how major studios are constantly changing their revenue stream. Even box office is the major income for the film business while there are still a lot of ways to make a profit for movies. With the technology and competition improving the main sources of revenues for the studios changed very fast. Let me introduce a little bit about how they work.

On the early 1970s, going to movie theater or film festival is the major way to enjoy movies, if people missed the theatrical release period they have to wait for a long time for the three major television networks (ABC, NBC, or CBS) to release. At that time, studio’s major income came from the theatrical release, international sales, and network television.

In 1972, Home Box Office (HBO) offered the first cable television network subscription service. In 1975, a Japan company called Victor Company (JVC) invented a video home system, which makes films could be purchased by normal people became possible. In 1977, the first video store and the first video rental store showed in the United States. This made the studios got a new way to generate more revenues for the films they had produced.

For studios, their goal is to make their content be distributed through as many channels as possible. Nowadays, studios major revenue outside theater releases come from home video, network, cable television, satellite, international distribution, the Internet, and mobile devices.

By 1986, the studio earned more revenues from domestic home video sales or rentals than their theatrical release income, which shows the huge potential of film revenues streams outside the theatrical release.

Nowadays, studios could also earn revenues from after film products. Disney and Universal are the best examples for developing their merchandise. The production company should plan for the whole revenue stream structure before the film released and develop it as much as possible.

Industry Liabilities Blog

There are three e-commerce related lawsuits I am going to analyze. The first one is an e-commerce retailer, Gotham City Online, sue Art.com for allegedly stealing information. The second one is that Amazon be accused by its Prime member that claims Amazon is cheating customers through "so-called" free shipping. The last one is the famous law firm, Jones Day, sue Block Shopper, an e-commerce company, for linking back to it.

In the first case, both parties are e-commerce company. Art.com sells fine arts online while Gotham City Online that sells discount brand-name shoes. According to San Jose Mercury News, Gotham City Online claims that Art.com illegally accessed their web server and changed the security passwords and ownership credentials to prevent Gotham City employees from accessing email or company files. In the news, it also mentioned that Gotham City files have been copied and altered during the process. The lawsuit already been filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Art.com be accused of trade secret violations and computer fraud. In my opinion, if the server attack has been proved coming from Art.com the charge should be convicted. The attacker accessed Gotham City's servers that could easily to get their customer list. However, a customer list is an important trade secret, and the attacker acquisition of the trade secret through an illegal act. This behavior should be punished.

In the second case, the Prime member Marcia Burke professes that Amazon encourages third-party vendors to increase their prices to Prime members by an amount they charge for un-Prime members' shipping. Marcia Burke accuses Amazon using the a portion of those "inflated" prices as its shipping cost. Burke alleges in the lawsuit that Amazon's third-party vendors will arise their goods price when it has been posted on Amazon's site. In my opinion, if what Burke said had been proved is true Amazon is chatting to their millions of members worldwide; they are using a "so-called" free shipping disguise to charge $79 a year to its Prime members.

In the last case, Block Shopper sued by Jones Day for linking to it with the anchor text "Jones Day." Block shopper is an e-commerce company that reports real estate purchases information including the buyer's name, profession, photos and the price of the real estate. Block Shopper posted a few Jones Day lawyers name and photos from their firm's website and the price and location of the house they bought. According to the lawsuit, Jones Day is suing Block Shopper using its name as anchor text for a link to its website. Jones Day believe its mark is being diluted, and it may cause confusion. In my opinion, I believe this charge it a little bit farfetched. I believe it should focus on privacy claims.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_25275836/art-com-sued-allegedly-stealing-information-from-e

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/amazon-customers-accuse-commerce-giant-cheating-prime-members/story?id=22882043

https://moz.com/blog/the-jones-day-lawsuit-big-law-firm-sues-ecommerce-site-for-linking-back-to-it

1 Million Cups Blog Post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iIYJqGrVOg

Vinny is an application that will keep people from getting ripped off when they buy their next used car. They aimed to fix the problems that most buyers overpay, took a very long time and went through a painful process when people are buying a used car.

One of the strengths of the speaker’s presentation is that he briefly introduced his background and his experience of buying his first used car. The process he went through made he have the idea about create this application. I think this is a good idea to start a presentation. Because when he introduced his background he was narrating the process his went through, and the thoughts he had. He is telling the story about himself, which attracted my attention and he introduced the application and himself at the same time. The other strength of his presentation is that he clearly presented the problem in the industry and what Vinny, his application, could do for the problem. The application could show a used car’s full detail information in seconds by scanning the VIN barcode. That would give users more confidence to negotiate with the dealers.

One of the weaknesses in this presentation is that the speaker spoke too fast. The other weakness is that the speaker introduced a few interesting function in the application, but he just simply introduced it. It would be better to show more pictures or letting audiences to download and taste of the application during the presentation. That will give the audiences more idea about the application.

In conclusion, the speak did a good presentation, and I like his business idea. But I think he should focus on one or two revenue stream. Right now, he has too much revenue streams, and none of them could support the project. They only have three people work on this projects if they cannot focus on one or two main revenue streams they may hard to developing to be a big company.

Negotiation Interview Blog

David Lee is the executive producer at Qingche Media. During his daily work, he has a lot of negotiation with his clients and team members. Yesterday, I had the honored to have David to be my interviewee, and we discussed some interesting negotiation techniques in his working process.

The first thing we discussed was how to separating the people from the problem. David told me he was good at it. He always had some warm up conversation before the negotiation to make his opponent feel relax. When they start the negotiation, he always focused on the problem itself and made the opponent felt he was not aim at them. For example, when a client asks for a quote, David always sends the official quote to the client as soon as he can. If the client think the price is too high, David will explain the details to them and let them know that is their official quote to every client not only for them. So, the client will believe the quote's authenticity, and there is no bargain space.

The second technique that David mentioned was he always show his BATNA to the clients. Meanwhile, he tells the client that he will be horned to have them but if the client does not have the budget they cannot serve them. He said, in that way, most of his clients are willing to pay the price they ask for.

At the end of the interview, I asked David, "What is the most important negotiation technique in his opinion?" David said, "Always looking for mutual benefits and be open to developing more options." He told me successful negotiation all based on mutual benefits; excellent negotiators are good at developing options that benefit both parties. Besides, he mentioned that build a better future will help negotiators reach an agreement.

In conclusion, David shared his negotiation experience to me centered on the concepts like, mutual benefits, BATNA and separating the people from the problem. He showed me how to apply the basic negotiation concepts in a real-world negotiation. I appreciated that.

Finance

     This month’s finance course completely subverted my conception of the capital world. More particularly, I was a completely financial illiteracy before I toke this class. I was in too deep of the pattern of study hard-work hard-live hard circle. I know most middle class do not want to admit they are middle class, or deliberately avoid the class topic. However, as lot of people, I grew up in a middle class family and more than 90% odds I will become a middle class, so as the other middle class kids.

     We all know it is very hard to span classes; only some lucky fellows could do that, and most of them are artists or athlete. If you ask the middle class why do you think you cannot span classes, they may answer because I am not smart enough, I am not work hard enough or I do not have a great degree. Before this month, if you ask me, I will give the same answer. Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad gives me a fresh concept of capital and our class. As Kiyosaki said in the book, middle class is a group of people whom tremendously insecure about their potential. Nevertheless, the great mass of tax revenue to support the country comes from their hard work. In most cases, the reason middle class always struggle for their finance situation merely because they are financial illiterate honest men. They always follow the middle class study hard-work hard pattern, and have no ideal how to play the capital games that rich people plays. They believe education may change their fate, but they forget university was build to educate professional but rich people.

     In today’s society, rich people seems have to pay the higher tax rate than middle class and lower class, but do not forget who made the rule of the games. Capitalists could hire professional accountants and attorneys helping them find legal loopholes. Moreover, they subsidize election campaign and support the politicians whom could change the law.

     In Kiyosaki’s book, he introduced the way that rich people use corporation to reasonable tax, and how to help people become financial literacy. This is not a soft advertising, but I have to say I am so glad that my instructor introduced this book to us.

Kiyosaki, R. T. (2011). Chapter 4. In Rich dad, poor dad: What the rich teach their kids about money-- that the poor and middle class do not (pp. 79-90). Scottsdale, AZ: Plata Pub.

Business Storytellers

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

When I try to find a great speaker, I opened the page of The Most Popular Talks of All Time list on TED, and I watched five videos of those twenty. Simon Sinek's How Great Leaders Inspire Action really impressed me. Not only because what he said, but also the way he communicate with his audiences. A brilliant storyteller like Sinek starts his speech with a group of questions that people familiar with but hard to answer. Why is Apple so innovative? Year after year, why Apple more innovative than all of his competitors? Why is it that Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights Movement? And why is it that the Wright Brothers invented aircraft? Why them rather than anybody else? The way Sinek starts his speech makes people concentrated with what he will say. And in the whole process, he keeps using evidences to prove his concept. Clear idea and simple concept make people easy to follow. Honest attitude and passionate speech let he built trust and share knowledge in the same time.      

     In Sinek’s speech, I cannot find any show off of speech skill or intentionally humor. What I find is an honest man sharing his knowledge in the simplest way. As an audience, what I feel is sincerity and connection. In his speech, I find out the best way to built trust and connection with audience is telling the story honestly, and using the passion to achieve that.    

     Golden Circle is the basic concept of Sinek’s lecture, which explained in the biology of human decision-making. “Why” is the core of golden circle, “How” is the second and “What” is the outermost. Sinek explained Apple, Martin Luther King and Wright Brothers’ success because they all start with “Why”. Money is not the reason that is the outcome. “Why” is the key of success. Sinek said “People don't buy what you do; people buy why you do it.” What we believe is more important than what we do in the beginning. Telling people what you believe, and if that is what they believe they will feel a connection, and then they will have interest to know what you do. Sinek also said, “If you hire people just because they can do a job, they'll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they'll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”

     Sinek’s speech inspired me in so many ways. Especially the content of his speech makes me think deeply about why I need to found a company and how it will be. Why it matters is the first question I need to consider.