03 Dec

Posted at 12:23h in Film Fundamentals
What do the last election and modern Hollywood have in common?  I mean, aside from ridiculous out-of-control budgets and delusional assumptions. The answer is data analytics. For example, Mitt Romney really thought he was going to win the election because of his polling data and his use of Orca, the database system that was supposed to do almost everything (including coffee, I suspect). However there were fatal flaws in their methodology on the polling data, and Orca blew up on election day morning.

30 Nov

Posted at 14:21h in Outside Looking In
On my first day of kindergarten,  the morning rush was more hectic than usual as my parents verified that I had all my school supplies and was properly dressed to exit the house (at the age of five, I still occasionally forgot to put on some crucial article of clothing). After making sure that I was indeed wearing pants, my mother bundled me onto the bus. Since I hadn’t had time to eat, she thrust two quarters into my hand and told me to buy my breakfast in the school cafeteria. That evening, my mother asked me how everything had gone. Fine, I replied, except I hadn’t been able to eat breakfast. It had cost forty cents. Since I had fifty cents-not the correct amount- I hadn’t tried to buy anything. Managing to keep a straight face, my mother explained the concept of receiving change. And my worldview shifted slightly....

26 Nov

Posted at 11:40h in Film Fundamentals

According to the British philosopher Ebeneezer Scrooge, this is that time of the year when we balance our books and note our deficits. So I guess the Huffington Post slide-show, Box Office Flops: 2012's Biggest Turkeys, is the first step in the process. Going where much...

19 Nov

Posted at 11:14h in Credit Spectrum

In the summer of my sophomore and junior years of college, 2010-2011, I interned at R&R Consulting, where I researched and modeled Asset-Backed Security deals. Through building excel models, I familiarized myself with the assets and liabilities accounts of ABS and MBS deals, building the defaults,...

19 Nov

Posted at 08:14h in Film Fundamentals

Over the past several years, I have noted the raw and increasing power of digital media. A wide variety of sites have blossomed across the internet, covering everything from animation to household tips and vast new extremes in personal narcissism. The result is a digital...

18 Nov

Posted at 11:15h in Credit Spectrum

My name is Josh Morris-Levenson. I am an Economics Major in the University of Chicago Class of 2014. I interned at R&R Consulting during the summer of 2012. I worked closely with each member of the R&R team, while also completing significant projects independently. The...

09 Nov

Posted at 15:44h in Film Fundamentals

Do you need music in your movie? I don't know. Do you need salt and butter with your popcorn?  You can eat it plain. You won't like that way but you can do it. The same is true with music in movies. At its best, the...

05 Nov

Posted at 10:28h in Film Fundamentals
Movies are irrelevant. It's official. The New York Times says so. Well, not exactly. But a recent article plays with the idea. For more than a year, countless bloggers (myself included) have been saying the same thing. The Times is a bit late to the party and seems determined to sneak in through the back door, basing part of their thinking on the Academy's decision to have Seth MacFarlane as the next Oscar host. Note to The Times: the choice of MacFarlane actually makes more sense than the David Letterman fiasco back in 1995. At least MacFarlane's movie made money (unlike the Letterman production of Cabin Boy). But it is a valid question for reasons The Times article barely mentions.

31 Oct

Posted at 16:05h in Outside Looking In
At the end of October, 2012, executive recruiter Emerson Nagel and I were emailing each other about her current risk management job openings when she casually let it drop she'd be putting on a Halloween party (she lives in Mexico) for 250 kids in the neighborhood. 250 kids!!! I was stunned, not to mention impressed, and said so. She wrote back with a description so charming, so filled with generosity and imagination, that I asked her permission to blog it: "These are all kids from our neighborhood, mostly from families that have very little, and they really seem to have fun with it, though it's quite chaotic. Over the years we've made 9 fair-type games: piranha tank grab-bag, pumpkin toss, that kind of thing....

29 Oct

Posted at 14:17h in Film Fundamentals
Early this month, a quiet revolution started in movie theater management. Called Movie Pass, it is a rapidly emerging new system that links the box office straight to the digital universe. It is simultaneously ticking off theater managers across the country while developing a growing list of enthusiastic subscribers. Hollywood companies are roughly divided between opposition and support and are mostly waiting to see further developments. Some folks in the indie business thinks that it just might be the ticket to the future for low budget films. Personally, I think everybody is half-right. That also means that they are half-wrong. I think I just covered all my bases. The system was originally beta tested