Watch What You Eat

Here's a pretty solid idea: eat well. Seems easy doesn't it? Well, you'd be quite mistaken when you realize just how messed up the food industry has become in the United States, and the world for that matter.

I just watched the film Food Inc., which is a documentary about the industrialization of food in the United States. Though parts of it were grotesque and truly horrifying to watch, I'm glad that I experienced the film and am now more aware of the types of things I'm putting into my body.

The movie starts out claiming that the concept of food has changed more in the last 50 years than it has in the last 10,000. What I find alarming about that statement is that I'm not at all familiar with the process in which I get the food I eat (when you think about it, a caveman had a lot more authority over what sorts of things he put into his body than you or I do today).

But that certainly doesn't have to be the reality. We all have a choice.

However, there are a lot of entities in our world that are against full disclosure, which is absolutely disgusting and horrible. Essentially, it all comes down to dollars and cents. Food giants have grown to such enormous sizes that they have amassed incredible power; power in the form of money (perhaps the root of all evil). Four companies control 80% of the meat industry.

This means that even when we go into our supermarkets, it is very hard to know what came from where and what things contain. For instance, food distributors won't disclose whether or not an item has any sort of genetically engineered food in it. Bills have been brought to various state legislatures in order to release the information to the public, but with little success (California governor Schwarzenegger even vetoed such a bill).

But why does it even matter? Why is this movie even being made? What's the difference if I were to buy my own produce locally or from one of these mega-corporations?

As it turns out, a lot of the mechanisms that these corporations use in order to process food as quickly and efficiently as possible are hurting our world terribly. And what does that mean?

It's hurting the world in terms of pollution. Mega-corporations use millions of gallons of fuel in order to produce the food you eventually buy. Not only that, because these corporations are so dependent on gas and oil, when the price of one of these commodities go up that effects how much you have to pay for the item. Who needs that sort of instability?

Furthermore, the way we are eating is starting to hurt our ecosystem (the interaction between living organisms on the planet). These corporations have started to overproduce cattle, and have begun feeding them corn as opposed to letting them feed on grass. They give them corn because it is a far cheaper alternative. However, the corn can have an adverse effects on the cows. If this happens, a cow can develop a bacteria like e-coli. Then, due to the processing techniques used in handling livestock, it can spread through the entire factory contaminating all the meat. There are several instances in which there have had to be recalls of beef products (usually enough to feed millions of people).

Additionally, the stranglehold that these large corporations have on the growers is immense. Take for instance this situation. A chicken grower is forced into buying new equipment by the large poultry corporation, or else they will no longer extend their contract. The grower feels pressured to do so, or else they won't be able to put food on their own table. So they give into the corporation's demands and purchase the new equipment (probably from a company the poultry executives are on the board of). The startling fact you can derive from this is: growers have an average debt of $500,000 and typically earn $18,000 a year. That is messed up.

But, every cloud has a silver lining, and the movie showed that angle too. What we can learn from this movie is that we truly have a choice. As a consumer, it is the corporation who works for you, not the other way round, and the movie put your power very poetically, "you have the opportunity to vote three times a day."

Referring to the amount of meals we have in a regular day, we have a choice with each one to determine where we are getting our food. And don't think that this is just some sort of pipe-dream, ridiculous, fantastical notion that the director of the movie wanted to leave me with. There is solid evidence that change happens.

Recently, Wal-Mart, the biggest store in all the world, switched from milk with human growth hormone to milk without human growth hormone. Why did they do this according to the head of dairy procurement at Wal-Mart? Because the customer asked for it. He was very insistent on that message. If the customer asks for something, Wal-Mart will deliver on it.

But now you may be wondering, why would I want to support another large corporation like Wal-Mart? The difference being that Wal-Mart is not in the production of food, but rather in the business of finding supplies of stuff consumers want. If Organic and healthy, local food starts finding its way into Wal-Mart, it is still that organic, healthy, local food, it just becomes that much more accessible to the general public.

I'd highly recommend going to see the movie if any of this resonated in you. Or perhaps, go to a farmer's market the next time you want to go shopping. The end of the movie is filled with really great ideas of taking the lessons learned in the film and using them in your life. I'm going to try.

Ocean's 14?

About a week ago, I had the chance to go to the Arlington Park Racetrack, which is a venue quite close to where I live, in which you can watch and bet a little bit of money on the ponies. It was my first time I had ever been to a horse racing track, and I have to say it was quite a lot of fun to put down some money. I can see how a lot of people can get addicted to it and gambling in general.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to come away the big winner for the day. I probably ended up losing around $20 or $30, but over a stretch of about 5 or 6 hours, I don't think thats too bad. Either way, I had a lot of fun.

I was with some of my friends and I'll tell you the story of one guy in particular. I have to admit that this is one of the most improbable scenarios I've ever seen, and I guess it part of the motivation for my most recent idea.

A friend of mine was betting some money before a race. He was putting $10 down on various types of bets. He put down a show, in which he had to pick a particular horse who will come first, second, or third, a win, in which he had to pick the horse who is going to win in order to succeed, but after this had about $1 left to put down on a bet. He didn't really know anything about the horses or the race in general, so he decided to go with this particular type of bet called a superfecta.

I came to learn that a superfecta is a particular type of bet in which you have to correctly predict the first four horses that come in. That is, you have to pick the first, second, third, and fourth horses in the exact order in order to make any return on your wager. This is by far and away one of the most ludicrous, outrageous, and downright improbable things to ever occur in my opinion.

I had hard enough trouble correctly predicting a horse to come in the top three, a show, and now here was this most ridiculous bet called the superfecta. Regardless, my friend decided to make the minimum $1 wager (and in my opinion, it's pretty much throwing away that $1). So, we were revved up and looking forward to the next race. I had a couple bucks on the race and was hoping to see my combinations come in.

And then, before you knew it, the race had finished. It's a quick burst of excitement, and then it's over. Yet again, none of my horses came in the order I would have liked to see them. However, my friend sitting right next to me was looking over his betting receipts and was frantically looking up at the television screen with the results and then back again at his receipts. I asked if any of his combinations came in.

Apparently, after needing further verification from about three other people, my friend had correctly predicted the superfecta. We were all speechless. How is it possible that my friend who knew absolutely nothing about betting on horses came through with the mother of them all?

The superfecta ended up paying out huge. The payout is dependent on the odds of the four horses that you predict, but due to the severe unlikely nature of this actually occurring, the payout is typically always a large amount. In this case my friend made a quick $125 by simply making a $1 bet. Not a bad day at the races.

The first thing that this got me thinking about, and I'm a little embarrassed to say it, is how on earth it would be possible to fix such an event such as horse racing? I was just thinking that with such an immense payoff, figuring out a way to fix one event could make a bundle of cash very quickly. However, very soon into my thought process, I started to think of more effective, and legal, ways in which to capitalize on the coolness of horse racing.

This is what led me to my idea of Ocean's 14. The Ocean's series has all revolved around very slick, cool, and fun ways of stealing money from Las Vegas or valuables from museums. Each movie has been really entertaining and has a blockbuster cast to go along with it. I thought what might be interesting is if they altered the theme slightly and entered the realm of horse racing.

In all of the Ocean Movies, there is always some ingenious plan that works flawlessly. Half of the time, you think they're all about to get busted, and even when they do get busted, it was all seemingly part of the plan. It would be really cool to see what sort of awesome strategy they could come up with to fix a crazily unpredictable event such as horse racing. They have already exhibited quite a competency in fixing Vegas, so why not move into a new realm, the realm of horse racing?

Yet, I also realized that there wouldn't be a good enough reason to make a fourth movie in a series if it wasn't necessarily going to be profitable. This led me to investigate the benefits of actually creating a fourth Ocean's movie.

• Explanation

My sample was made up of movies that have a minimum of four in the series. My results include 9 movies that have had four parts in their series. This list includes:

1. Harry Potter
2. Rocky
3. Indiana Jones
4. Star Wars
5. Star Trek
6. Rambo
7. Superman
8. Saw
9. Die Hard

For each of the 9 movies, I gathered information relating to the Gross Box Office Revenue each part in the series brought in, the Budget for each movie in the series, and then, based on this information, evaluated the Net Box Office Revenue for each movie in the series. For all of the movies, I made sure to adjust for inflation. In order to accomplish this, I used WestEgg.com, which is an inflation calculator that dates back to 1800. All the figures are therefore based upon 2007 dollars.

After compiling all of my data, I then made a determination about each movie in the series return on investment (ROI), which is easily calculated by taking the gain from an investment and subtracting the cost of an investment and dividing this difference by the cost of investment.

In our scenario, the mathematical equation is depicted as:
ROI = ((Net Box Office Revenue - Budget)/Budget)

I thought ROI would be a good measure to evaluate going forward with a fourth Ocean's movie, because it represents the benefit and rate of return that the large investment for the movie would necessitate.

Finally, at the end, I averaged my data from the 9 different movies with a minimum of four parts in the series to determine whether the intent of creating a fourth movie truly had any merit.

• Results

The data that I gathered can be summarized in the following chart:

First, let us take a look at some of the data. The highest grossing film in this sample of movies was the original Star Wars from 1977. When you adjust for inflation, the film grossed over 1.163 Billion dollars. That came from a measly investment of just 46.86 Million dollars. On the opposite spectrum of that, the lowest grossing movie was the fourth sequence in the Superman series. I am personally a big fan of Superman, and am unsure as to why this film did so poorly in 1987.

According to Imdb.com, the Internet Movie Database, the tagline for this movie was, "Nuclear Power. In the best hands, it is dangerous. In the hands of Lex Luthor, it is pure evil. This is Superman's greatest battle. And it is for all of us." It only grossed 29.32 Million dollars, and actually ended up losing 2.43 Million.

These two movies help contrast the impact of the first movie in a series and the fourth movie in a series. The highest grossing movie, Star Wars, was the first in the series, whereas, the lowest grossing movie was the fourth in the series. This is a general trend, as the average gross for the first movie in a series was 308 Million, and the average gross for the fourth movie in a series was 167 Million (a reduction of %).

However, in order to truly get to our desired valuation of ROI, it was important to seek out information regarding to the budget of each movie as well.

As you may notice, there is a wide array of budgets used on movies. However, to try and organize some of this data, it is best to look at what the overall average of budgets do as another movie is made in a series. My data leads me to the following deduction: the more movies one makes in a particular series the larger the budget gets. On average, I found that the first movie's budget was around 69 million, while the budget of the fourth movie was typically around 89 million (or an increase of 29%).

The largest budget was used in the original Superman movie. It had a budget of 186 million. The smallest budget was used on the original Saw movie. It cost a mere 1.35 million. The Saw series has consistently had the lowest budget in the group and thus has helped their ROI tremendously.

Next, it would be helpful to look at the Net Revenue that is associated with movies in a series with a minimum of four movies. To find net revenue, you just take the gross revenue and subtract the budget requirement for the movie. This will also be helpful in determining ROI.

Our chart of Net Revenues for these 9 movies reveal that as another movie is added to the series, the variance in the net revenue becomes less substantial. For instance, in the net revenue amongst the first movie in the series, the net revenue varies by 94% (1163.33M to 60.78M). However, by the time the movie gets to the fourth in the series, this variation decreases tremendously. The upper and lower bounds of Net Revenue have shrunk from 400.3M to -7.3M, a far tighter space. This ultimately means that there is far less uncertainty when it comes to how well the movie should fare.

On average, the Net Revenue from these 9 movies varied from 333M, for the first movie in a series, to 119M for the fourth movie in a series, or a decline of 64%.

The final piece of the puzzle was to determine whether or not going ahead with producing and investing in the fourth film in a series was indeed profitable. The mechanism through which this was evaluated was based on our model of return on investment (ROI).

The results of this are well summarized in the following graph:

Your attention may first be drawn to the extreme spike in the ROI for the first movie in the series of Rocky. This is valid observation. The first Rocky movie was unbelievably successful, but only needed a budget of 4.2 million to produce a net box office revenue of 442.81 million. This is a ROI of 10,443%. The following Rocky movies were successful, but not nearly in the same stratosphere.

As a general trend, I was able to determine that on average, the first film in a series of a minimum of four returns 1,782%, the second, 403%, the third, 175%, and the fourth, 35%. These are significant declines, but the ROI is still quite decent even in the fourth movie.

Additionally, it is important to add that just because the overall average shows a positive ROI, this is certainly not always the case. For instance, Die Hard, Superman, Rambo, Indiana Jones, and Harry Potter have all had instances in which they have had negative ROI.

• Ocean's Movie Recommendation

Based on my analysis, I have the following recommendation for the potential creation of a fourth movie in this series.

According to Imdb.com, Ocean's Thirteen (the most recent movie in the Ocean's series), grossed 117.2M, had a budget of 85M, and therefore netted 32.2M. The ROI on Ocean's Thirteen was dismal, -62%. According to Those Answers Inc. estimates on the change in average gross, average budget, and average net revenue earned between the third and fourth movies in a series, Ocean's 14 can expect the following results:

• An 11.2% decline in Gross Revenue
• A 16.3% increase in budget spending
• A 21.4% decline in Net Revenue

Therefore, Ocean's 14 should expect to gross 104.1M, have a budget of 98.9M, and therefore net 5.2M. This predicts a ROI of -94.7%. Additionally, both Ocean's 12 (2nd in the series) and Ocean's 13 (3rd in the series) had negative ROI's which does not predict any more favorably for a positive ROI in the 4th movie in the series.

The series of Harry Potter, Rambo, Superman, and Die Hard have not achieved positive ROI since falling into negative territory. There is no direct evidence to support the possibility of Ocean's 14 having this capability.

Therefore, although it would be a really fun movie and very entertaining to watch, Those Answers Inc. does not recommend a fourth motion picture in the Ocean's series.

ReelEstate.com

This idea came to me as I was touring around Italy during my Spring break while I'm studying in Europe. I was traveling with a friend of mine and we were in Venice for the day. Walking around in Venice is a great time, because there are winding streets and getting lost is probably the most fun thing to do there. It's incredibly unique and ridiculous because of all of the canals, and its a great city to just chat with someone.

As we walked into the Ca' d'Oro, which is an ancient palace located on the Grand Canal in Venice, me and my friend began talking about movies for some reason. He happened to share with me that one time, a film was shot on location at his home, and the film company (whoever was producing the film) had to put a light on a portion of his home's property and was paid around $300 for his troubles.

That was some pretty awesome news. I realized then that it would also be pretty cool if someone came across my house and wanted to film on location, because then I would make some money off of just living somewhere. I'd sit back and one day, someone would knock on the door and say, "We're shooting a movie across the street, but we have to stick this light on your lawn.

You don't have to say yes, but if you do, we'll give you $300." To me, that is one of the simplest and easiest ways to make some cash, and you didn't even have to do anything, except for being in the right place at the right time. But maybe, you could improve your chances somehow.

That is where ReelEstate.com (or some other catchy domain name like that) comes in. Essentially, the website would be a place where people, just ordinary (or extraordinary) people like you and me upload pictures of your homes, both inside and outside if you'd like, into a huge database. From there, you create a little profile for your location.

There would also have to be a profile that you set up about yourself (which is not searchable) so that the website can get in touch with you if a producer wants to film on location. For the location's profile (which is searchable) You provide a city and state, no physical address, and describe it a little. You can put anything in the description. It's your way of selling the location to prospective producers (we'll get to them in a second).

You can perhaps give examples of what types of scenes your location would be good for, what types of movies would be awesome if shot there, or you can ramble on about the long history and emotional ties that you may have to this place. It can be whatever you want. Additionally, you can tag your pictures with various keywords that are searchable and what you determine to be relevant. Alright, so that's what people do.

Just simply upload pictures of their own homes, in hopes that a movie is shot there and they make some money at the same time. Sounds pretty fantastic.

Ideally, the next step would be for producers of movies to log on to this website and search either by location or keyword used by the submitter for the perfect location to shoot their movie or scene. Once they find the perfect spot, they simply click a button that says something to the effect of, "I want to contact this person to possibly shoot on location."

The website then gets in touch with the person who posted the picture to say that a film could be shot on their location that they posted, and they need to get in contact with the film company. From there, the individual who posted the picture and producer who wants to shoot the movie collaborate and the job of ReelEstate.com is done. Now that I'm done being vague, lets get into the nitty-gritty of it all.

Testing for Realism:

• Does it have a targeted demographic?

Absolutely. I think anyone who has ever been to see a movie or heard of Hollywood before would enjoy taking part in this website. There is an allure to it that I think all people enjoy; that being fame and fortune.

The fame comes from having their home or location in a movie, which is pretty cool when you think about it. The fortune aspect comes from acquiring money from simply living somewhere. I think there are a lot of people in search of fame and fortune, and this gives them the package deal right there. I can see people that use IMDB.com also enjoying this website very much. It is simple, because all the individual needs to do is upload pictures of their house.

In today's world, many people have digital cameras, and the Internet is flooded daily with millions of new pictures. The Internet Movie Database is the 33rd most hit website in the world (according to Alexa.com) and number 18 in the United States alone, so there are a lot of people interested in movies and of those people, I'm sure many of them would like to see their own house or room in a movie one day.

• Does it fill a need?

I think that you can think about this is two ways. For people who are uploading their homes in hopes of a movie being filmed there, no, it does not fill a need for them. There are other sites on the Internet where people can upload their pictures.

So, I would say for about 90% of the users of the site, a need is not filled by ReelEstate.com. However, when you think about it from the perspective of the 10% of individuals who use this site to find locations all over the US and World, I think that it does indeed fill a need. The reason is because I don't think anything like this exists, and creating a database for these people would make their jobs unbelievably more efficient and productive.

Imagine sitting down at a computer and being able to search the world for a "yellow brick home with a white fence in Torrington, Wyoming." I think that something like this definitely fills a need for these type of people, and what's even more important about that is the fact that the people searching the website, not the ones uploading pictures, are the people willing to pay for the website's services.

• Can this be setup by an individual or group of individuals?

Yes. This website can definitely be setup by a couple computer programmers that know what they're doing. It is a little complex for an amateur computer programmer like myself, but I feel like most of the functions that make this website work are simple enough to be done in a rather quick amount of time. There are some elements to consider:

First, there needs to be a mechanism for uploading and storing the pictures. Then each picture has be linked to a person's personal profile for contact to be made (not searchable). I would envision a personal profile on the website to be a really simple Facebook profile, with or without a picture, and simply a contact number or e-mail and address perhaps.

Beyond that, there has to be a mechanism to search through the website, so there must be a customized internal search engine. There has to be a way of sorting the keywords so that the most relevant search results come first. When producers are trying to contact a location, they do not do so directly, but rather through the website, so there will have to be away that the website coordinates this communication.

This can be done either manually or automatically. A standard e-mail can be forwarded to the person's e-mail address that they have listed in their profile, naming the company who is trying to contact them. Manually would have to involve a person making a phone call. This pretty much runs you through the entire set of activities that takes place on the website. I think that these are all functions that are doable by someone who is slightly computer savvy.

• Can it generate income?

Absolutely! When I think about this website, I think about it in terms of a "LinkedIn" model of revenue. To truly understand what I mean when I say this, do not think about this website as a movie website, think about it as a communication website. Our task isn't to make movies, but it is to get people in touch with one another.

If you recall earlier, I broke down the websites usage to "Uploaders" equaling 90%, and "Producers" equaling 10% of the websites users. This might sound staggeringly daunting to make revenue off of just 10% of the users of the site, but it can work very effectively.

For those 10% of the users, I established that for them, this website would be a need, and it would be something that improved and optimized their job performance. So, why in world would they not pay for such a splendid service?

There are a number of revenue streams. The first is Search. In order to legitimize the website and also make it safe for people uploading, being able to search the website has to be paid for. This will put people who are uploading (90% of our website) at ease, because the only people who are searching the database are those who pay to use its services (and getting people to pay for anything on the web is a close to impossible task).

Being able to search the website can be done in two ways, as I see it. One way can be on a search by search basis. Buy a package for 500 searches for $50. Another way to make money from search is by making people pay a monthly subscription (with unlimited search) for $50. At this point, I am not sure which method is better for the bottom line.

The next revenue stream comes from "Producers" contacting "Uploaders." In order for "Producers" to get in touch with "Uploaders" to request filming on their premises, "Producers" will have to click a button to say, "I want to contact this person." If they click that button, it will cost them $1. Remember, we are a communication website. There can also be revenue from advertising, but I don't expect that to be the primary revenue stream at all.

Let's do some number crunching.

Assume there are 100,000 people who use the website. This means that 90,000 are "Uploaders" and 10,000 are "Producers." The 90,000 people don't pay a cent to use the site, so lets just forget about them.

For the 10,000 "Producers" this site fills a need for them, so they want to pay for its services. Lets next assume that it costs $30 per month to get unlimited search (about $1 a day). Lets then assume that the 10,000 "Producers" buy a yearly subscription for $360. So, revenue stream #1 = $360 x 10,000 = $3,600,000 per year. Excellent.

Next, we want to look at how much money we can make off of contact fees. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, there were 603 films released in 2007. Furthermore, according to Yahoo! Answers, there are typically 60 scenes in an average movie. This allows for 36,180 locations to be filmed on in a given year.

Let us then next assume that when "Producers" contact "Uploaders," sometimes the "Uploaders" don't respond, or the "Producer" finds out that the location is not the exact type of location that they were looking for. With this in mind, let us assume that each "Producer" has to contact 1.5 people on average in order to shoot a scene. The cost of contact is $1. So, revenue stream #2 = $1 x 1.5 x 36,180 = $54,270 per year. Great.

Next, we can look into our advertising revenue stream. According to Yahoo! Answers around 7,150 unique visits a day will lead to advertising revenue of $110 a day. By playing with the numbers a little (Approximately 13 x 7,150 = 100,000), we can see that if our website generated 100,000 unique visits a day, we can make around $1,430 a day. If we stretch this over a year we get the following: Revenue stream #3 = $1,430 x 365 = $521,950 per year. Fantastic.

By putting our three revenue streams together we get a yearly total of $4,176,220. These are conservative estimates.

• Is it marketable?

Yes. This is a simple and easy website to use, and one that people have had a lot of familiarity with (uploading pictures) so you're not changing anyone's habits too much. I think that you can start off by advertising on IMDB.com, because that is such a well established and niched demographic to target this towards.

Most of the advertising and marketing will have to be done by word-of-mouth or viral marketing. If the website is done well and runs smoothly, I see no reason why friends wouldn't discuss this around a lunch table, between classes, or at work.

I think that this website has a lot of potential and upside. There is a huge demographic of people who would want to partake in it evidenced by IMDB.com usage, and it streamlines, optimizes, and fills a need for the professionals in the film industry. It has a potential revenue stream of $4M based on conservative estimates. If the website is set up correctly by computer program professionals, I see no reason why something like this wouldn't work.