Television actors charge on a per-day basis. Top actors draw a fee of Rs. 60000 -1 lac per day. Some of them shoot for 25 days in a month. There is no gender bias in the industry. In fact, women dominate this industry. TV actors too are getting endorsement assignments. They are more visible, and yet cost a fraction of the remuneration of film stars. New comers in TV start with Rs. 2500 per day, and as per the agreement they get 10 per cent rise every year. It all depends upon the popularity of the serial. If both the serial and the character are appreciated, the remunerations are doubled. The production and direction department are, however, dominated by men.
Author: Shabbir Chunawalla
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Women on Heels
Christian Louboutin, the shoe designer, explains why women wear heels, though balancing her is a torture. There are so many reasons. She wants to look good and feel confident. The key reason is that she wants to bridge the gap between her and men. Previously, men wore heels, especially aristocrats and royals. It raised their stature. They looked taller. Generally, women are shorter than men. One of the reasons why there is a desire to be on heels is to have the same type of height as men.
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National Film Archives of India
It has been set up in 1964. It is housed in a campus at Law College Road, Pune. The historic Jaykar Bungalow is a part of it. It will soon be renovated. It completes 50 years on February 1, 2014. They have prepared a plan for digital library. A National Film Heritage Mission ( NFHM ) draft, 2012 is under consideration. It has 16000 archived films, of which only 329 have been digitrsed and restored and another 237 have only been digitised so far.
Acid-Detecting Process
Each film reel will be subjected to AD process. Here a strip which detects acid ( A-D strip ) is kept between reels for 24 hours. It is then taken out and observed. If the strip’s colour changes to green, it is an indication that the film is deteriorating and requires immediate measures to preserve them. In worst cases the strip turns yellow.
NFAI Treasure
Raja Harishchandra (1913) made by Dadasaheb Phalke.
Kalpana (1948) made by Uday Shankar.
Acuht Kanya (1936) by Fraz Osten.
Devdas (1935) by P C Baruah.
Chitralekha, Tamil (1948) by S S Vasan.
Hunterwali Ki Beti (1943) by Batuk Bhatt.
Lagna Pahave Karun, Marathi (1940) by Master Vinayak.
Navrang (1959) by V Shantaram
Sadahvi Meerabai (1937) by Baburao Painter.
Do Bigha Zamin (1950) by Bimal Roy.
By the time NFAI had been set up, the country had lost 70 per cent of the pre-1950 films. Many silver nitrate films were burnt, as these reels were used to extract silver.
When set up, it was called National Film Library. It occupied a small make up room of Prabhat theatre and had a budget of only Rs.25000. They started with 123 films collected by the censors. In 1969, they recovered the original print of Phalke’s Kaliya Mardan ( 1919 ). It became an independent body, NFAI in 1967.
Paramesh Krishnan ( P.K.) Nair was its founder-director.
Nair found three reels of Raja Harishchandra in two different places. He found the original print of Kidar Sharma’s Chitralekha ( 1964 ) from a cowshed in Kolkata. He got prints of Kanjibhai Rathod’s Sukanya Savitri ( 1922 ) from a cinema in Bangkok. The NFAI lost the first talkie Alam Ara to a fire.
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Real Cinema
According to Gulzar, directionally cinema is taking the shape with its strong visual language. The visual language dominates. Previously, it was sound — the written word, the audio, the dialogues which dominated. The real cinema is emerging with this generation. Real cinema is visual supported by sound. Rehman, Vishal Bhardwaj are known for their sound treatment. Rakesh Omprakash Mehra has a peculiar sense of image where even for a single scene he will cross over to Siachen to shoot.
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Ultra-high Definition TV
The 4K TV set is ultra-high definition with unbelievable clarity. It packs twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of full HD TVs, the 1080p ones. It has a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels, compared with the 1920 x 1080p of a full HD set.A HD TV packs in 2 million pixels, whereas an ultra-high definition TV packs in 8 million pixels. These TVs had the sizes of 82 inches plus to accommodate high pixel density.It is now available in size 55-65 too. They are too large for most households.Broadcasters are still stuggling with full HD channels. It is not possible for them to beam 4K content, which is four times heavier right now.The content is supported by a pre-loaded 4K media player.There is also 8K in the offing, which is 16 times the number of pixels of full HD.Ultra-high TV has a frame rate too.The TV gives sharper images, has better detailing and superior texture. High frame rate makes moving images more natural.
DTH providers like Tata Sky and Videocon D2H offer 4K set top boxes.Internet is another source of 4K content.The data consumption is four times more, and there must be YouTube application supporting 4K content. Ther are services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime and these offer 4K content, but these are not available in India. Apple TV and Google Chromecast media players too do not support 4K. The downloaded content is to be stored on hard disk.
In future, 4K may become mainstream, and it is prudent to invest in a 4K TV.The HD content too looks much better on 4K.
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Clayton M Christensen — HBS Innovation Guru
Clayton M Chistensen, the HBS innovation guru, was diagnosed with follicular lymphomo, and an ischemic stroke. He fought the illness successfully and released a new book titled How Will You Measure Your Life ? which has a genesis in a lecture he delivered to graduating class of 2010. The book is co-authored by James Allworth and Karen Dillon. The sources of happiness are the relationships with the family and friends, the work we do and things you can do in life that can deny us these sources.
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On-the-Bench Employees : Back-up Talent
A pool of employees remain on-the-bench when they wait for the utilisation of their talent in the company. This period of wait can be used to develop them and impart skills to them. A bench is kept in anticipation of upcoming projects. Even those employees who are now billable, are transferred to bench when they do not perform well or when there is no immediate project they can be assigned to. A bench ensures the constant availability of trained manpower. However, if the employee remains on the bench for a longer period, it becomes demoralizing for him. Even the compensation to the bench employees is not competitive enough.
Beck employees may be trained in sunrise skills. These employees can be made to learn by observing others — this is called shadowing. They can be coached and can be used to contribute whatever they can to the billable employees by engaging them in activities such as pre-sales. Bench should be treated as an opportunity to learn even when you are being paid a salary.
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Product Development : Payment Banks
Mobile companies do some basic banking operations such as balance enquiry and remittances using applications on smart phones, but this service is akin to using internet banking on a mobile platform. Some banks use SMS for balance enquiry. But for menu-based transactions on a basic phone, banks must use USSD or unstructured supplementary service data that allows basic phones to make a live connection with a server by dial-in. Payments banks that the government envisages depend on the use of USSD platform which competes with the ATMs or branch transactions for low value banking. Banks say that ATMs and business correspondents with hand-held devices is not a viable solution for low-value banking. The target audience of the new payment banks is not the smart phone using clientele, but those who are new-to-banking customers, who do not hold any bank account. They have only numeric literacy and need an extremely simple and user-friendly interface. Telcoms may discourage the use of USSD platform, and thus may hamper the payment banks.
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Business School Evolution in the US
In the 1950s, the business schools came into vogue. The students who enrolled were engineers who acquired management vocabulary , but not necessarily the skill set.
Between 1974-78, there was a massive decline in jobs for students of humanities. Those who majored in music, history, literature and liberal arts joined MBA. The batch had both engineers and non-engineers.
In 1980s and early 1990s, private universities such as Harvard, Wharton, MIT, Northwestern, Stanford asked for work experience after undergrad degrees. As a result, people with 5-6 years experience joined business scools. These students, 75 per cent of them, go into either investment banking or consulting.
The proposed model expects business schools to run a one-year course instead of two years course.The specialisation could be in terms of discipline , say Finance or industry, say Telecom. The courses are to be designed around employability.
This write up is based on interview of Jagdish Sheth, Professor of Marketing, Emory University.
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Fancy Designations in Banks
In a business organisation, the top management consists of the CEO and the departmental heads. If the CEO is also the member of the Board, he is called a Managing Director (MD). The departmental heads are Vice Presidents. They are No. 2 in the organisation, reporting directly to the Big Boss. However in banking, there is a plethora of directors, vice presidents and even MDs. It is estimated that an astounding 40 per cent staff of Goldman are VPs, and they have 2400 MDs. This stands in sharp contrast to the non-banking sector. Such fancy designations are common to all investment banks, including those in India. In MNC banks in India, it is estimated that of the 2210 people employed, 365 are VPs, 325 are directors and 65 are MDs. It thus constitutes 25 per cent of the total staff. In I-banking in India, including both the domestic and foreign sector, there are 49 VPs, 31 directors and 32 MDs out of the total executive head-count of 782. Just key in the bank VP in LinkedIn’s search box and you are likely to get around 5 lac hits.
It is explained that these designations are not jobs, but grades that reflect seniority. However, this is not a sufficient explanation.Maybe, these titles on visiting cards are suitable for market facing executives. They are ubiquitous and are not related to the job one is doing. Even a person doing in-house tech support can be called MD, technology.