Hollywood Economics: How extreme uncertainty shapes the film industry (Contemporary Politicaleconomy)

Book Description

Just how risky is the Movie industry? Is screenwriter William Goldman's claim that "nobody knows anything" really true? Can a star and a big opening change a movie's risks and return? Do studio executives really earn their huge paychecks?
These and many other questions are answered in Hollywood Economics. The book uses powerful analytical models to uncover the wild uncertainty that shapes the industry. The centerpiece of the analysis is the unpredictable and often chaotic dynamic behavior of motion picture audiences.
This unique and important book will be of interest to students and researchers involved in the economics of movies, industrial economics and business studies. The book will also be a real eye-opener for film writers, movie executives, finance and risk management professionals as well as more general movie fans.

Customer Reviews:

A skeptic looks at the movie business.......2007-05-28

How can you predict the success or failure of a film? Even if you can't predict with perfect accuracy, can you predict which movies will probably be a hit? For example, does a star guarantee a hit? Do big budgets matter? Do ratings ensure a certain level of profit? Does a movie's gross receipts in its first week predict its total gross over the entire run?

The media clearly shows that movie makers go for big stars in expensive racy or violent films that are widely distributed from the first week they open. This is what Hollywood thinks creates true hits. But think twice about trusting Hollywood instincts: Arthur De Vany looks at the empirical evidence on movie revenue and concludes that this conventional wisdom should be rejected.

De Vany shows that while stars and big budgets do indicate a movie's revenue scale, they do not predict its success. Big stars have made expensive turkeys (e.g. Waterworld starring Kevin Costner) while on the other hand huge hits have been produced without stars (e.g. Home Alone). One of the more interesting conclusions is that the old movie studio system understood implicitly that this business was unpredictable. Until the antitrust laws were used to break them up, the studios contracted stars, script writers, directors, distribution networks and movie theaters in order to own the entire stream of revenues all their movies would generate.

This way the old studio bosses could diversify their risk in what was essentially a portfolio of movies. They knew that they could not predict which of their films would be a hit so they insisted on owning them all and on managing costs so that the hits would pay for the turkeys, while leaving shareholders with a healthy return.

These results are fascinating and have a wide range of application beyond Hollywood, particularly in uncertain hit-or-miss industries as unrelated to the movies as are gold mining and oil drilling.

One word of warning. Despite what the blurb says, the book is technical. Each of the twelve chapters is a peer-reviewed academic paper in economics making full use of all the quantitative analysis tools available to a professional researcher. To get the full message, you need enough basic statistics to understand conditional probabilities, first and second moments, cumulative functions, linear regression, etc. However, each of these chapters also comes with an intro and conclusion worded in plain English. So as long as you're willing to trust the peer reviews, you don't actually need to do the math yourself.

Vincent Poirier, Dublin

profound and imaginative treatment of the movie biz.......2005-08-12

De Vany presents a profound and imaginative treatment of the economics of the movie business, one that has implications, not only for similar businesses such as publishing and music, but for our understanding of the dynamics of culture. When Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" he unwittingly paved the way for tons and tons of sexy but shallow commentary on human culture. Though that is not what he set out to do - "meme" never shows up in the book - De Vany has given mathematical form to the behavior of movie memes and has demonstrated that it is the people who are in change, not the memes.

In the words of screen writer William Goldman, "nobody knows anything" about what happens to movies once they are released to the theatres. Most movies don't even break even, much less make a profit - not in theatrical release, which is what De Vany investigates. [These days, movies make money on DVDs and TV, but that's another story, told by Jay Epstein.] That's no way to run a business, but the problems are inherent in the nature of movies as a business venture. The deep and ineradicable condition of the business is that there is no reliable way to find out whether or not your movie has a market other than putting it on screens across the country and seeing if people come to watch.

Does having "bankable" names of the marquee guarantee that the movie will make bank? No. Does opening big on thousands of screens with PR from here to the moon guarantee that the movie will make bank? No. Does a small opening mean the film is doomed? No. Hence Goldman's remark.

But all is not chaos. Or rather it is, but chaos of the mathematical kind. De Vany shows that about 3 or 4 weeks into circulation movie dynamics (that is, the dynamics of people coming to theatres to watch a movie) hit a bifurcation. Most movies enter a trajectory that leads to diminishing attendance and no profits. But a few enter a trajectory that leads to continuing attendance and, eventually, a profit. Among these, a very few become block busters.

And those few come to dominate the statistics of movie economics. From the point of view of statistics based on the normal distribution those few are movies outliers and should be discounted. De Vany develops a statistical framework - he calls is the stable Paretian model - that gives proper attention to those block busters. The model is stable in the sense that it exhibits the same structure at all scales.

* * * * *

De Vany devotes particular attention to the structure of the movie business. During its glory years the industry was organized by the studio system. The studios owned both the means of production and the means of distribution. Stars, directors, writers, and craftspeople, all were on staff at the studios. When it came time to release films, the studio's distribution system went to work and the films went out to theaters owned by the studios and to independent theaters with long-term booking arrangement. The system worked well.

But in the 1950s an anti-trust action was brought against the studios and they were ordered to divest themselves of their theaters and stop the cozy booking arrangements. The result of that was that was that they lost the stars, directors, writers, and producers - who became independent contractors - and the costs of production went up. And those increased costs were passed on to the movie-goer.

De Vany argues, convincingly, that the studios were not a cartel that drove up prices for their own benefit. Rather, their arrangements, their ownership of theaters, helped them cope with the extreme uncertainty of the business. They had just enough direct control over exhibition practices to stabilize their income so that they could afford to keep the talent on staff. Once that stability was taken from them, they had to let the talent go. And that, in turn, meant that, each time a film was to be made, someone had to go out into the marketplace and put the team together, thus incurring transaction costs that didn't exist in the studio system.

* * * * *

An excellent book. Note that it's thick with mathmatics. But it also has lots of charts. You can read those even if you can't make sense of the equations.

Wow........2005-01-14

I skipped the high-falutin' parts with integral calculus...BUT: Anyone who is investing a nickel in ANY entertainment medium should read this book. The buying public is discerning, fickle and SMART. Crap stinks and the first to catch a wiff of a film that stinks are like Paul Revere coming out of the theater. On the other hand, a great film can fizzle due to any number of peculiar reasons such as distribution decisions or competing releases. There is also interesting treatment of the demise of studio-owned movie houses and an argument in favor of lifting the ban.

William Goldman ("nobody knows nothin'", or something like that) has it figured out: write screenplays and wait. The Princess Bride, case in point. He even wrote the book AFTER the movie hit big.

Let somebody else put his money into film production. There is a fine line between genius and lunacy...the buying public determines which he is.

Movies can be Diverse. Will the execs heed?.......2004-06-14

Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry by Arthur De Vanyn (Routledge) (Hardcover)
What do stars do for a movie? Aside from earning a higher least revenue, a star movie has only a slightly higher chance of making a profit than a non-star movie De Vanyn shows. If the star's agent extracts the higher expected profit in the star's fee, then the movie almost surely will lose money. This De Vanyn calls the curse of the superstar.
Opening big and leading at the box office is a momentary success. A movie has to attain or sustain box-office dominance over many weeks to make major money. The size of the opening does not predict how the ensuing battles will evolve or how much money the film will take in. Why do executives compete so strongly for stars when they can assure no more than a higher expectation of a movie's least revenue? It seems to be based on a belief that the opening predicts how much a movie will make. That turns out to be false, as this study shows.
The articles are grouped into four parts: dynamics, wild uncertainty, judges and lawyers and extremes. There are three chapters in each of these parts. De Vanyn writes a brief introduction to each part noting the main issues, techniques and results of the papers contained therein. De Vanyn has not sacrificed rigor or completeness; these are refereed articles, published in scientific journals and their results have been independently confirmed and replicated by other authors many times over.
De Vanyn also provides a couple of new chapters that were not published previously. One of these concerns artists, primarily actors and directors. It examines how productive they are and how they are paid. De Vanyn establishes the Price-Evans law of artists, estimate the half life of a star and see if one can separate luck from talent in career patterns. In another new work for this book, De Vanyn puts all this work into a more complete model, a model that begins to bridge the gap between standard management and economic models and the reality of the business.
In the Epilogue he muses on how one might manage a business where nobody knows anything. It is here that De Vanyn takes up the fundamental flaws his research reveals about the way the modern corporate studio manages the movie business.
Finally perhaps we will see why conventional models fail spectacularly to explain the movies and why De Vanyn had to invent a new kind of economics to come to grips with this endlessly fascinating business. Perhaps De Vanyn has built a consistent and fundamental model of the industry that is of interest not just to scientists, but to movie fans and moviemakers, too. And De Vanyn shows that these models can be applied to other industries as well.
In science, as in the movies, creativity takes you to unexpected places. This study is exciting because we get unexpected and wonderful discoveries. It is hard to imagine at the outset that by applying high-brow mathematical and statistical science we end up proving Goldman's fundamental truth that, in the movies, "nobody knows anything."
None of these results is more surprising than finding out that, hard-headed science puts the creative process at the very center of the motion picture universe. There is no fool proof formula. Outcomes cannot be predicted. There is no reason for management to get in the way of the creative process. Now tell then that! Character, creativity and good story-telling trump everything else. Now let's see some fresh movies made!

Book Description

Winning the Knowledge Game focuses on the thinking and attitudes required to remain knowledgeable, competitive and high performing.
Topics include: having a winning strategy, improving collaboration and teamwork, creating a smarter business, competitive intelligence, protecting intellectual property, keeping talent, leveraging the latest digital technology, increasing customer loyalty and measuring the impact of your people on performance, market value and society.

Winning the Knowledge Game provides practical advice on the strategies, tactics and systems you need to remain capable and agile in this rapidly changing business world.

To help you meet this challenge, Winning the Knowledge Game explores three questions:
* How do you open the hearts and minds of people to
smarter learning?
* How do you grow competitive advantage?
* How do you sustain and ensure lasting success?

All managers need to learn the skill of acquiring and putting knowledge to work if they are to successful. Most of all they need to learn how to play the knowledge game every day of their life.

Do not leave things to chance discover the ideas and tips that will deliver a measurable improvement to your business leadership, performance and career.

Customer Reviews:

Sound coverage of basic.......2003-11-03

This is an overview of the issues in building business success, with a focus on human resource and knowledge management issues. It provides breadth rather than depth of coverage and is set out as a series of issues which require attention rather than providing an understanding of the processes needed to bring about systemic and continuing change.

The 16 chapters are arranged in three parts: Opening Hearts and Minds; Growing Competitive Advantage; Ensuring Lasting Success. Each chapter gives an overview of an issue area (e.g. recruitment and retention, managing intellectual property) and summarizes key actions needed to bring about success in that area. The presentation of each area is direct and straightforward, and illustrated with useful examples.

To use a cooking metaphor, it is nearer to a list of ingredients and how to prepare each, than a full recipe for organizational success. Selecting the ingredients and handling each well is necessary, but not sufficient to produce a delicious end-product. This is in contrast to Sydänmaanlakka: An Intelligent Organization, which takes the opposite approach of focusing strongly on the recipe, while treating the preparation of some of the ingredients rather more impressionistically.

Book Description

Published in association with the International Herbage Seed Production Research Group, this volume and its companion provide the definitive resource for anyone involved in the breeding and commercial production of grass and legume seeds, whether for grazing systems, horticulture or recreation.

Book Description

Significant recent advances in cell culture technology now permit a detailed biochemical and molecular analysis of differentiation in both normal and tumor cells. These studies are important in attempting to understand the complex factors involved in normal growth and development, as well as the abnormalities associated with carcinogenesis. Mechanisms of Differentiation, Volumes I and II, is comprised of review chapters addressing various topics of current interest in this important area of research. Topics discussed include genes controlling differentiation, changes in gene expression during differentiation, induction of differentiation, induction of differentiation as a mode of action of chemotherapeutic agents, and the effect of cell shape, growth factors and differentiation modulating agents on the differentiated cell phenotype. Mechanisms of Differentiation is valuable to researchers involved in differentiation and development, carcinogenesis, cell biology, chemotherapy, and immunology.

Book Description

In Coaching Cross Country Successfully, coach Joe Newton explains how he built and runs his cross country dynasty and how to apply his principles of teaching discipline, dedication, and teamwork to develop and improve your own program.

Combining insightful instruction with dozens of personal anecdotes, Newton explains how to

• motivate a team and individual athletes,
• teach the basics of distance-running technique,
• improve performance with carefully planned workouts,
• develop race strategies,
• prepare a team for meets, and
• evaluate runners and an entire program.

Coach Newton also shares the 12-week practice schedule he's used to train 19 of his teams to title-winning performances.

Customer Reviews:

Motivated for life.......2005-08-17

I'm 57 years old. I ran Cross Country for Joe Newton in 1963.
He STILL motivates me. Every time that I feel like quitting, I
think of Joe Newton, and it gets me going again. How's that for motivation?

Great Man, Great Book.......2004-12-05

This book is amazing. It only cracks the surface of this great man. There is now a film being made about coach Newton...

http://www.longgreenlinemovie.com

It's written by Joe Newton.. enough said.......2004-10-21

Joe Newton is without a doubt the greatest cross country coach in America and quite possibly the world. I personally have the honor of running for him and I can tell there is nobody better. The motivational speeches he gives you are truly inspiring and are what bring the York cross country team together. Buy this book to learn about cross country and to learn about life.

Words From The Master.......2002-12-17

Joe Newton is the GOLD STANDARD when it comes to coaching high school cross country. Year in and year out his teams challenge for state and national titles. This book is not as good as the "Long Green Line" but that is THE book on high school cross country. This book stands by itself as an excellent, practical guide for coach, fan and runner. It is broken into easy to read sections and full of interesting antedotes. Joe Newton gives solid insight into his highly successful progam.

Running With Newton.......2001-02-08

Coach Joe Newton is a great coach, infact, I have ran for him, his coaching is the best that you could wish for. If I were buying this just by his track record it would be highly recomended! He is without doubt in my mind the best coach of Cross Crunty in history, if not all sports.

Book Description

A nickname often encapsulates some quality of attribute thought of as characteristic of a particular person. Many are used to express a value judgement ('Bloody Mary') or even to serve a propagandist function. This new dictionary identifies and explains the origins of a wide range of nicknames applied to historical figures, politicians, sports people, actors, and entertainers, as well as to many places, organizations, and events. Nicknames featured range from the affectionate to the approbatory or frankly derogatory, and from Bonnie Prince Charlie to the Red Devils. Other examples include Dubya, the Beeb, Mac the Knife, Red Ken, and the Iron Lady. The dictionary is arranged alphabetically and includes appendices listing groups of nicknames, for example of football clubs. It also features a full General Index as well as a Thematic Index listing nicknames by topic from Politics to Sport.

Customer Reviews:

NameFreak.......2007-05-23

I love trivia and especially stories and backstories about names, nicknames and the naming process. This book was a lot of fun, but it's hard to remember all the details.

A Dictionary of Names and Nicknames (Oxford Reference)

Average customer rating:

A Dictionary of Names and Nicknames (Oxford Reference)
Laurence Urdang
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192828576

Oxford Dictionary Of Nicknames (oxford Paperback Reference)

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Oxford Dictionary Of Nicknames (oxford Paperback Reference)
Andrew Delahunty
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OOHTYW

Book Description

Whether you need to confirm critical diagnostic criteria before initiating treatment, or are trying to choose the best medical or surgical approach for a particular patient...Griffith's 5-Minute Clinical Consult 2005 ensures that the information you get is current, accurate, and accessible! Written by more than 330 expert clinicians, the latest edition of this trusted quick reference delivers on-the-spot facts on more than 1,000 medical and surgical conditions--in the famous two-page format that includes basics, diagnosis, treatment, medications, follow-up, and miscellaneous considerations. For easy access and rapid information retrieval, all topics are current, arranged alphabetically, and cross-indexed to synonyms. Look at all this updated edition delivers! . Broad scope covers more than 1,000 commonly encountered medical problems with the most current diagnostic and treatment information available. . Proven "5-Minute" format lets you locate and apply needed facts quickly. . ICD-9-CM code index offers quick access to disease classification and coding data. And discover all that's NEW! . More than 100 algorithms help guide your diagnostic and treatment choices, based on presenting signs and symptoms. . Additional drug information provides increased detail to help refine your prescribing choices--including drug class, warnings, formulations, interactions, and pregnancy category. . 77 new guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force assist in screening, counseling, immunizations, and chemoprophylaxis. . Free bound-in CD-ROM delivers the full text of the book. Griffith's 5-Minute Clinical Consult, 2005 is also available electronically for PDAs.

Customer Reviews:

Great Quick Reference.......2005-12-18

Excellent quick look-up book. By no means all-inclusive, but that is not the purpose. The PDA version I use more and is also excellent, but my clinic has both, and it depends on your media preference.

Griffith's 5-Minute Clinical Consult 2005 for PDA: Powered by Skyscape, Inc. (The 5-Minute Consult Series)

Average customer rating:

Griffith's 5-Minute Clinical Consult 2005 for PDA: Powered by Skyscape, Inc. (The 5-Minute Consult Series)
Mark R Dambro
Manufacturer: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

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With this comprehensive and structured clinical resource as your guide, you'll discover one-touch access to vital facts on more than 1,000 medical and surgical conditions, fully indexed with more than 7,500 terms and medications to help you locate vital facts quickly. For rapid information retrieval, all topics are current, arranged alphabetically, and cross-indexed to synonyms. Coverage of each topic includes basics, diagnosis, treatment, medications, follow-up, and miscellaneous considerations. Look at all this rapid reference delivers! . Broad scope covers over 1,000 commonly encountered medical problems with the most current diagnostic and treatment information available. . Proven "5-Minute" format provides time-saving access to essential facts. . Customizable program lets you add notes and create new personal topics. . ICD-9-CM code index offers quick access to disease classification and coding data. . New insights let you benefit from the experience of over 330 expert clinicians. Platform: Palm OS, Windows CE, and Pocket PC handheld devices

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