Janpanese director Yasujiro Ozu's tatami shotsenabled Ozu's films to Essay

Janpanese director Yasujiro Ozu's tatami shotsenabled Ozu's films to take the perspective of the audience, which draws the v - Essay Example In these films, Ozu engaged tatami shots style of cinematography in which he shoot his movies from the position below the eye level of the characters (Wood 122). This technique sensationalized his films and drew the audience to the closest engagement with the characters’ sensibilities by bringing the viewer to the nearest vicinity of the character’s emotions. In this essay, the use of the tatami shots technique will be evaluated by drawing examples from three Ozu films namely: Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951), and Tokyo Story (1953). Late Spring (1949) Late Spring (1949) is a drama film directed by Yasujiro Ozu and is based on the short story novella Father and Daughter by Kazuo Hirotsu (Bordwell & Kristin 394). The film is starring Chishu Ryu, an actress who features in almost all Ozu’s films, and Setsuko Hara, another frequent character in Ozu’s films (Wood 119). The most frequently notable aspect of the Late Spring film is the use of tatami shots ; a camera technique where the director shoots his actors from an extremely low position. The adoption of tatami shots in the Late Spring film enables the audience to engage with the emotions of the characters throughout the film. For example, the scene in which Noriko visits her friend Aya in her home. In this scene, Noriko is seen in a sitting position and the camera shoots Aya at a slightly elevated position, from which the audience can see Aya looking down towards her friend. The scene is shot in a way that the camera in both pictures is low, but the degrees are different. The shot controls the way the audience should follow and analyze the events in the narrative. Moreover, when Noriko is sitting, she does so looking up at Aya who is standing, but the camera shoots in the reverse order and concentrates on Noriko and, this way, the audience is forced to reject Aya’s point of view. Consequently, the tatami shots in this particular scene deny the viewer a chance of identify ing with Aya but with Noriko’s inhuman perspective. These shots, which are all over the film, are a reflection of a view from an individual sitting on a tatami mat (Wood 120). Interestingly, he shoots the same even when the scenes shots are taken from outside. The positioning of the camera, therefore, carries a sense of balance and order and enables the viewers to establish an emotional engagement with the characters. Early summer (1951), Another film in which Ozu used the tatami shots is Early Summer (1951); a post war film that recounts the problems of communication between generations and the emerging women role in post war Japan (Bordwell & Kristin 397). In this film, Noriko lives happily in an extended family, but this balance is threatened by her uncle’s visits and insistence that she should get married. Ozu uses the tatami shots in this film frequently. For example, there is a scene where Koichi and two older women are having a conversation concerning Norikoâ₠¬â„¢s marriage. The long shots in this scene show the three characters staring at diverse points as they talked to each other. The camera would then, at low angles, focus on one of the characters straight on the eyes different from the direction at the long shot. These tatami shots enable the viewer to read into the thoughts and emotions of the character. In yet another scene, where the mother, her daughter and her son are at the table, the characters are shot facing different

Factors Affecting Firm Size

Factors Affecting Firm Size Before explaining the factors that exert limits on the size of firms, it is very important to understand what a firm is and how do we measure its size. Lets start with a basic definition of a firm. In simple terms, a firm is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods, services or both to consumers or tertiary business in exchange for money( Sullivan Arthur; Steven M. Sheffrin (2003). Now that we have an idea of what a firm is lets move on to the ways in which we can measure its size. A lot of ways can be used to measure the size of a firm. One can measure its size by the total revenue it generates, but this does not tell us anything about the scope of a firms underlying activity. Another way is value added( i.e.the sum of factor inputs). This gives us a precise measure of activity in the firm , but this data is generally not available from the company. Lastly, there is the number of employees working in the firm, which is the most widely used measure with more than 80 percent of the studies using it (Kimberley(1976, 587). The size of a firm has been measured as per the number of employees working in a firm in this essay. Before we embark on the long list of factors that exert limits on a firms size, lets just see if these limits are just theoretical aspects or do they actually exist. Have you ever wondered why do big companies like Toyota only limit their area of operations to a few sectors like automobiles? Why dont these companies expand in different directions and produce a wide array of products like food products, milk, laptops etc.? Everyone talks about how important size is, but if size was such a great advantage, the smaller companies would have soon disappeared. But as we see around us, this is not happening. If there had been no limits to the size of a firm then there would have been an inexorable concentration of industries and economies until there was only one global firm left. Since this is not happening, this proves that there do exist certain factors that exert certain limits on the size of a firm. Lets study these factors in detail: FACTORS LIMITING FIRM SIZE Diseconomies of scale It is a well documented fact that higher levels of production permit the use of more efficient techniques. They vindicate the investment in cost reducing technologies and allow workers to be more specialized. But however persuasive they may be, returns to scale have their limits. Machines related to two production units can be advantageously pulled together only if they are not employed to their capacities, similarly the law of large numbers becomes smaller and smaller as the firm grows, ultimately leading to increasing cost of production of goods and services for the larger firms leading to diseconomies of scale. Williamson(1975) identified four main categories of diseconomies of scale Communications Failure due to bounded rationality It is impossible to expand a firm without adding hierarchical layers. As information is passed between layers their is a high probability that it gets distorted, reducing the ability of high level managers to make decisions based on facts and leads to declining return to entrepreneurial function. Bureaucratic insularity Williamson argued that as firms increase in size the senior managers are less accountable to the lower ranks of the organization and to the shareholders. They thus become insulated and will strive to maximize their personal benefits rather than the profits of the firm. The consequences are that large firms tend to more easily accept organizational slack and resources are misallocated Employee alienation As firms expand there will be increased specialization, but also less moral involvement of the employees, according to Williamson (1975, 128-129). The decline in moral involvement is due to the difficulty for the employee to understand the purpose of activities as well as the small contribution each employee makes to the totality. Thus, alienation is more likely to occur in large firms. Misalignment of incentives Firms can not compensate their employees perfectly due to a number of limitations according to Williamson (1975, 129-130). First, large bonus payments may threaten senior managers. Second, performance related bonuses might affect the employment contract so that less than optimal behavior is encouraged. The outcome is that large firms tend to pay based on tenure and position rather than on merit. This is especially important in product and process development where the large firms are at a disadvantage to smaller enterprises. Availability of Finance/Capital Every firm at some point or the other needs to employ some external capital to grow. There is a strong and positive relationship between the amount of finance that a firm can raise and the managerial ability and entrepreneurial capital that the firm has, i.e. higher the entrepreneurial capital higher the amount that the firm can borrow. Also, given the existence of capital market imperfections, it would be unwise to assume that finance is never a real problem. It has been generally observed that the average size of firms is larger in countries with better financial markets, suggesting that financial constraints keep firms small. An example in this regard can be of Finland, where the size of the firms are large, despite the countrys small size, as compared to say Spain or Italy because it has a very efficient financial system, as measured by its accounting standards. Role of Government/Judicial Factors Government also plays a crucial role in determining the freedom that the firm enjoys in performing its operations with full capacity. Governments often employ certain regulations which put a limit on the size of the firm. Many costly regulations apply to larger firms (for example the obligation to provide health insurance in the US or Union Laws in Italy). This tilts the playing field towards small firms. Other regulations, such as strong product liability laws, favor the creation of separate legal entities that can avail the protection afforded by limited liability. This further leads to smaller firms. High corporate taxes could also drive many economic activities into the informal sector, and reduce reduce the incentive to create larger firms, this is probably why Italy has so many small firms. It has been observed in certain countries, that the government in order to protect the local market sometimes puts restrictions on the import of certain raw materials or machinery. This puts the firms in such countries at handicap when competing with foreign firm and in turn puts a limit on the size of the firm, as their area of operation remains limited to the local market. An efficient government and legal system on the other hand eases managements ability to use critical resources other thaan physical assets as source power, which leads to establishment of firms of larger size(Rajan and Zingales(1998c)). It also protects outside investors better and allows larger firms to be financed . Finally, an efficient government and legal system reduces coordination costs and allows larger organisations(Becker and Murphy(1992)). Limitations of the market Another major factor that limits the size of the firm is the limitations posed by the market, the expansion of which would require unprofitable price reductions or increase in selling cost. Adam Smith(1776) had suggested that the extent of specialization was limited by the size of the market. If a worker needs to acquire task specific human capital, there is a set-up cost incurred every time the worker is assigned a new task. It is, therefore reasonable to expect workers to perform specialized tasks and to expect a firm to hire more workers when its production process becomes more specialized. Therefore, one would expect not only the extent of specialization but also the size of the firms to be limited by the size of the market that is being served. Security There are always considerations of security to take into account- both security against bankruptcy and security against a takeover bid. The faster a firm attempts to expand, the more it will be driven to accept high-risk investments and the more it may have to rely on fixed interest debt. Both endanger the future of the firm. The failure of a major investment or the high level of fixed charges that a firm is obliged to meet when trade is depressed may bring it to its knees. Too rapid a rate of growth may also expose the firm to the danger of a takeover bid. This may occur if rapid expansion depresses the firms profitability or if it results in high retention of profits and low dividend payments to shareholders.Too low a rate on the other hand, may also attract a takeover bid. A profitable firm with a high conservative management may have a high level of liquidity. A prospective acquirer may feel confident that the funds can be put to more profitable use. Thus, this fear of security m ay also limit the size of the firm in that the firm may not be inclined to accept high risk investments in view of the fixed costs they have to pay off, thus limiting growth. Fear of expropriation Fear of expropriation is also a key factor that limits the size of the firm. This fear has been appropriately analyzed by Rajan and Zingales(1998c) with the help of a stylized model where an entrepreneur has a critical resource with which he wants to produce. In order to produce he has to offer employees access to the resource and its mode of employ. There are constant returns to scale in production but increasing returns to scale in marketing so that a larger firm captures a disproportionate share of the market. The problem is that the property rights of the entrepreneur are not fully secure. As a result he has to limit the number of employees who have access to the resource. The reason is that while he has a noyeaux dur of employees who have specialized to the firms business, have high switching costs, and are therefor loyal, new unspecialized employees on the other hand have low switching costs. If there are sufficient number of them, they will know they can capture a large market share if they band together and make away with a copy of the critical resource. thus, the entrepreneur can employ only a few employees, and has to wait until they specialize and become loyal before admitting new ones. It turns out that not only does this fear of expropriation limit the rate of growth of the number of employees in the firm, it also limits its eventual size. An example in this regard can be taken of the Venezuelan steel company Sidetur, which was recently expropriated by the government. Availability of Technology Sometimes the availability of a particular technology also limits the size of the firm. For example a person may have patented a particular technology and might be the only one who can use it for some time to come. In that scenario a firm producing the same product is handicapped as they do not have the access to the same technology that its competitor has and thus cannot increase its size and becomes stagnant. Another example in this regard can be a strict government policy which does not allow the firms in a particular country to import a particular technology, thereby limiting the size of the firm by not allowing the firm to compete in the global market. Uncertainty Uncertainty plays a crucial role in limiting the size of the firm. It is clear that the seriousness of this problem can be reduced, but only at the cost of additional management effort, which may affect the pattern as well as the rate of growth. This can be illustrated by considering some of the ways in which a firm might respond to uncertainty. One possible response is to increase the variety of goods produced . This would clearly affect the pattern of growth and might increase the managerial resources needed to coordinate the firms activities. Indeed, management problems in a diversified firm might be so acute that they lead either to voluntary disinvestments(can be expanded ;), or to exposure of the firm to a takeover bid.Part of the attraction of a takeover for the predator might also be the profitable sale of subsidiaries of the acquired company to more specialist producers. Another response may be to emphasize short-term projects to the neglect of the long term ones, which agai n would affect the pattern of growth as well as the long term growth rate. Yet another response is to take longer in arriving at investment decisions : for instance, by carrying out more market research before deciding to launch a new product. In this respect different attributes would have a crucial impact on business performance, for the firm that is perfectly risk averse may find that it delays for so long before making a decision that it loses a potential position of market leadership to a competitor. Given the managerial resources available, uncertainty will place a limit on the rate of expansion or size by affecting the volume of managerial services required for a given amount of expansion.

Femininity In Greek Myth Essay -- essays research papers

Is femininity in mythology? Yes because there is a division between men and women in mythology. Biology tells us that we are two different people. Men and women see the world in different ways. Women are passive, intuitive, submissive, and subjective. Women value love, communication, beauty, and relationships. Men are aggressive, rational, dominant, and objective and they value power, competency, efficiency, and achievement. The ways we see the world are different because we are either man or women. We are also similar as well as different. This paper will discuss the how women/goddess are viewed in the works of â€Å"Works and Days†, â€Å"Theogony† and â€Å"Hymn to Demeter.† And see that these women/goddess similar to real life women. In the Works and Days, women are seen as beautiful things and men strong and fighting creatures. Zeus, the king of gods, had Hephaestus fashion a woman endowed with everything, which he called Pandora. Pandora is described as a sweetly seductive female and her name refers to the gifts that all the gods give to mankind. She is made as a tempting snare for Epimetheus. She was sent with an urn full of plagues as a gift to Epimetheus. Pandora opened the jar and out came all the plagues and finally hope. This woman reminds men that not all-beautiful things are good and can be a pain in a man’s side. This lesson can be true for the world today. Women are not all sweetly seductive but they can be a real pain in the ass, especially for their boyfriends. In the Th...

Popular Girls Essay

â€Å"Popular girls† is a short story from 2001 by Karen Shephard. She is born and raised in New York and her work has been published in several papers. The short-story sets in the early 80’s where we get some insight in the life of five rich and popular girls. They are self-centered and don’t have the slightest interest in other people. Their entire life is about maintaining their image as a group. The setting is New York, which is the riches city in the US. The city is also known as The big Apple and The city that never sleeps. This reflects in the mentality of these girls. They do speed, and not weed, because they want to get through school as fast as possible. They want to live life in the fast-lane and do extravagant things. Every paragraph of the text concerns some aspect of their life described in details. Every little thing about their life is mentioned. Their life and how they live it, is basically written as some kind of guidebook to popularity. A very important part of this popularity is the labels and the famous places of New York. This just underlines the superficiality of these girls’ lives. Throughout the entire text, the narrator addresses the reader. The narrator seems to be a †us† and a †we†. Somehow it is someone within the group of girls narrating or the entire group as one single unit addressing the reader. By saying things like †You know who we are†(p.1 l.1) and †You can’t get enough of us† makes it very clear, that they are aware of their status. It can also be a way of reaching out to the reader and making the reader remember how school was in the 80’s. Many people could have certain girls in their mind when reading this short story. Even from the very first sentence. The attitude of the text is a bit provoking. The first sentence is also a good example of this. By continuously addressing the reader, it keeps on having the effect of them being superior to not just other people, but you. As if you were actually there at the time. It is very clear that the narrator is focused on the †us† an d †you† and †them†. The popular girls against the rest of the world. You can’t be a part of their clique, but you can be a †friend† of the clique. This can be seen physically by their moat of backpack’s (p.1 l.22).Their other friends can sit on the other side of their moat, but cannot be let in. These girls only focus on their appearance  and of how other people perceive them. They don’t exactly worry about these things, but it constitutes their entire life. Where they go, where they sit, how they sit, it has to be the right way. They are not interested in other people and neither are they in each other,†You’re crying† we say, pointing.†(p.7 l.169) as if this is just a mere fact and they how no idea of how to act upon this. They only like the idea of themselves as a group of perfect friends, which is exactly what they are doing by saying †It’s a performance of us, the group of us† (p.6 l.147) and †Look at you, we are sa ying. Look at you. We are happy together, part of something and not alone, and we celebrate that out loud.†(p.149-151) their entire life is a performance of themselves and the performance of the fact that they are not alone. Perhaps they do feel alone in a life of rich parents that bring back dolls and pearls from business trips for their collection. There is a conflation of identities between these girls as they don’t work as individuals, but just as a group. This is made clear on page 2 line 58. †We walk in the formation of migrating geese.† Here the author uses humor/irony to emphasize the slight silliness of the group when comparing them to poultry. They are basically a herd of animals dependent of each other. Even though they define themselves as a group, Stephanie seems to be the leader, as she is described as a slightly more individual person: †We’re Kaethe and Alina, CJ and Sydney. Stephanie.†(p.1, l.1) here she is singled out as their frontline figur e. Stephanie is the tallest and also in the center of their †geese-formation†. She also dictates the idea of wearing these special rings, which they all obey. The girls have this special bond that consists of a strong †friendship†, but probably because they can’t see a way out. Without the rest of the pack, they would feel hopeless. None of them dares to leave anyone behind. The ending is a picture of their †friendship† whilst they perform as a group, they also make a performance for each other. No one knows them, not even their family and not even their own clique. They put on a performance of their popularity, even for their friends. Somehow, without words, they push each other to do things that are considered â€Å"cool†. But none of them knows when to stop. â€Å"Whatever happens will be performed in front of the group. We ask ourselves weather we can actually do this; (†¦)We are uneasy. Nothing about this whole thing will be graceful. No one is leaving†(p.8 l.198-201) none of the girls wants to be the one  chickening-out, no one want’s to be the one leaving the rest behind. Leaving now would be a kind of betrayal or a sign of weakness. Their obsession of being popular and someone important is a postmodern theme, also seen in: †Not yet, Jayette† by William Boyd from 1981. Although he does not reach this purpose, he has the same goals and views of life as these popular girls. None of them will ever feel complete, with or without these materialistic things.

Bukowski poem †a smile to remember Essay

Analysis A smile to remember Charles Bukowski The poem is really a short story about an ordinary family with tragic problems. The child of the mother and the father, who are mentioned in the poem, is the narrator. The likely scenario is that the child in the poem represents Charles Bukowski’s childhood. In the first lines of the story, it is mentioned that the family has goldfish. We hear about a boy, whose mother keeps telling him to be happy, even though she has a miserable life because of his insane and abusive father, who beats her frequently. One day the goldfish dies and his father, being the insensible man he is, throws the goldfish to the cat, but remarkably, Henry’s mother just smiles. The first impression you get when you see the title of the poem is that this must be a ‘feel-good’- or ‘love’-poem. In the first line, the word ‘goldfish’ is mentioned. An innocent image most readers can relate to. The same goes for the line â€Å"my mother, always smiling, wanting us all to be happy†. Again, to the reader this is a good thing. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Most people agree that going through life happy, is something we all try to achieve. The fifth line reads â€Å"and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you†. Then the poet does something remarkable. The line stops after â€Å"you†, while the next line, only includes one word; â€Å"can†. Bukowski made this word a line by itself to make the reader understand the undertone of desolation in the family, because they surely cannot live the happy, picture-perfect life. By writing it this way, Bukowski leave it to the reader to decide if the mother and the child are happy. But clearly the Mother acknowledges that the child is in fact never happy, since he â€Å"never smiles† as she remarks later. Line 10-11, â€Å"raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn’t understand what was attacking him from within†. We know from earlier, that Bukowski’s childhood was terribly violent and his father was abusive to his  mother and him, but in this poem Bukowski choose to look beyond this and tries to understand why his father was abusive. In this line, the reader senses immediately that something is wrong with the father and that he is fighting his own demons. Is it mental illness, substance abuse or is he just a man with temperament? Bukowski’s mother becomes the center of the stanza; â€Å"my mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a week, telling me to be happy: ‘Henry, smile! Why don’t you ever smile?† Instead of goldfish swimming in a bowl, the goldfish now symbolize the mother (â€Å"poor fish†) who tries to show happiness even though she suffers from violence and lives in pain. However, sor row cannot be hidden, even the child knows that her happiness is not real. As the author express it â€Å"it was the saddest smile I ever saw†. In the last stanza the goldfish dies. The reader can clearly envision the dead fish â€Å"they floated on the water on their side, their eyes still open†. To return to the symbol of the fish being the mother, the reader’s viewpoint now gets completely turned upside down. It is not as simple as it looked – the poem is not about abuse. It is about a frazzled woman who tried to keep an even more broken family together. She believed in the good things in life and smiled through her pain in an attempt to raise a shelter towards the ugly reality she is confined to. Until one day, when the little part of her, still trying to fight, died and was thrown to the cat: By then she just stands there, still smiling. Perhaps she realizes that relief will also come to her some day; when death put an end to her miserable life and she can finally stop pretending that life is a happy place.

Jon

Jon Dear Harvey Milk I have watched every move you have made in the last few months. I have watched every thing from your beginning to the tragic end. Can I just tell you that I am so proud of you for being able to come out and not only just come out, you made something of it. I personally have nothing wrong with people that are gay. But I do know that there are people out there that totally despise the idea of two men in the act of love. I loved your camera shop. I went almost every weekend. It made me a tad uncomfortable knowing that you and your partner ran the store but I got over that quickly enough after stepping foot in the store. I love the fact that you had everything going for you but you still wanted more. You have high standards in life and I respect you for that.Harvey Milk filling in for Mayor Moscone for a day...

Professional Leadership Development Skills The WritePass Journal

Professional Leadership Development Skills Introduction and Methodology Professional Leadership Development Skills ): Who has influenced you most in your desire to be an effective leader?   This may be a positive or negative influence. My greatest influence was Mr. Koffmann who has been referred to throughout my blogs. I found him to be a very personable individual and having worked with somebody who was willing to encourage me to be creative and to try new things I was able to notice how important it was for junior people to have these key individuals that encourage them to experiment and to test their own boundaries. What skills did they illustrate that have left this marked impression on you? The main skills that I found to be particularly influential were those of his willingness to spend time teaching others in a patient manner. He was forever present and this gave me a lot of confidence in him as a teacher; however, there were times where his expectations were extremely high and he was correct in demanding I found this skill to be particularly admirable, as I found it increasingly hard to be a strong leader in this regard. What skills did they lack that you have since learnt about to add to this desire to be an effective leader? My manager was often short tempered and at times failed to delegate matters sufficiently, so that experiences were not shared amongst all individuals. Had he managed his own workload better and delegated more frequently, not only would other individuals have had opportunities to undertake tasks, but it would be likely that he would be less short tempered during busy periods. On your Professional Development Plan which objectives have you started to develop and how have you got on? My immediate focus has been on my ability to network with others and to interact more with my peer group as well. I find communicating with others difficult at times, as I dont have a high opinion of my own ability and therefore this is undeniably a skill which I need to develop over a prolonged period of time. I have, however, ensured that I regularly discuss matters with my peer group and openly engage in conversations when the opportunity arises, particularly when it comes to how we can better perform the task next time. On your Professional Development Plan which objectives have you not started to develop and why? I dont feel that I have developed leadership skills as yet, due to the fact that initially I need to focus and develop my own communication skills and ability to get my point across to my peer group, before I can suitably develop a leadership style that will enable me to engage with subordinates in such a way that they are engaged and motivated. For this reason, this element of my personal development has not yet been addressed as part of the larger picture of developing confidence. Are there any changes you would like to make to your Professional Development Plan? On the whole, I feel my development plan remains accurate and valid and aligned to my long-term goals. However, I feel that I need to place greater emphasis on my own communication and leadership skills than I had originally thought, recognising that in order to successfully run my own business, I shall need to adapt to a wide variety of different personalities and will need to strive to be better than my competitors. Motivation is a key factor for both myself and my future staff members and a greater focus needs to be placed on developing skills for motivating others and not simply focusing on myself.    References Aubrey,  B (2010) Managing Your Aspirations: Developing Personal Enterprise in the Global Workplace  McGraw-Hill Cassidy, S (2004), ‘Learning styles: an overview of theories, models and measures’, Educational Psychology, 24(4), 419–444 Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (2013) Learning and Talent Development Strategy. Available at cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/learning-talent-development-strategy.aspx Keefe, J. W. Jenkins, J. M. (2008). Personalized instruction: The key to student achievement. 2nd edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield Education. Martindale, N (2011). Leadership Styles: How to handle the different personas.  Strategic Communication Management  15  (8): 32–35. Maslow, A.H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–96 Schultz, D and P. Schultz, Sydney Ellen (2010).  Psychology and work today  : An introduction to industrial and organizational psychology  (10th ed. ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall