Thursday, October 31, 2019

Photography Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Photography - Research Paper Example Part 3 Digital photography has changed the way we see the world around us. It has opened up the world of photography to anyone with the ability to peer through a viewfinder and push a button. It has made it possible for us to easily pull images into our computers and change the captured reality. For this reason, it has become a concern that digital photography has changed the face of photography forever. We can no longer look at an image and assume that it is depicting what really happened at the time the photograph was taken. Many people remain suspicious about digital photography because of the ease with which photos can be manipulated, but this aspect of photography hasn't really changed since its earliest days. Part 3 Digital photography has changed the way we see the world around us. It has opened up the world of photography to anyone with the ability to peer through a viewfinder and push a button. It has made it possible for us to easily pull images into our computers and chang e the captured reality. For this reason, it has become a concern that digital photography has changed the face of photography forever. We can no longer look at an image and assume that it is depicting what really happened at the time the photograph was taken. Many people remain suspicious about digital photography because of the ease with which photos can be manipulated, but this aspect of photography hasn't really changed since its earliest days. By looking at the history of photography and how it has been affected by digital technology, I plan to show that manipulation of photos is something that has been a part of photography for as long as cameras existed. To do this, I will show how the function of the digital camera is not really that different from the function of the traditional film camera and then show how each method is easily manipulated to create an impression of reality. The only true difference is our realization that this is possible. Digital Technology Has Not Chang ed Photography Student name Course name Instructor name Date Student name Instructor name Course name Date Digital Technology Has Not Changed Photography The world as we see it today is mostly shaped by what is captured in the form of digital photography. Film cameras are almost non-existent as more and more people have found the ease and cost-convenience of digital to far outweigh the hassles of film for most applications. Because of its widespread use, we are all now much more aware of just how easy it is to manipulate photographs to change what we think we see. While most of us embrace the ease of digital photography for ourselves, there is a group of individuals who are outraged at the idea that news photographers are also able to use digital technologies in reporting the news. These people feel that the only way we can get an accurate representation of what's happening in other parts of the world is through the use of film cameras, which produce images that are not as easy to m anipulate. My role in the following research is to investigate how film cameras and digital cameras operate to see if there are any differences in the actual capturing of an image and then to compare how images are processed, again with the purpose of comparing techniques and the level to which they can be manipulated. In conducting this research, I bring my own experience as a film and digital amateur photographer as well as someone interested in how the media works to shape our understanding of the world. I have studied how images are used in print ads, video

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Trends in Music Supervision for film industry Essay Example for Free

Trends in Music Supervision for film industry Essay Music can be defined as a rare combination of sounds that are able to project specific rhythms and melodies, which have the power to convey a message that words cannot express (Fleser, 2000). Music has the unique power to bring out the true emotions of people and touch their souls. Being such a powerful aspect of human nature and life, people involved in the profession of music have always tried to present it in the best possible manner that will be soothing to every soul who listens to it, as the saying goes that â€Å"Music is food for the soul. † Music is now one of the largest industries of the world which embraces with itself millions of individuals who work in this field. The growing success of the music industry has made people think that making a reputation in this industry just a piece of cake, but indeed making music is the toughest job for an individual. Music has always had the power to influence its listeners, that is why music is now widely used in almost every cultural and performing arts activities. The global film industry also happens to be one of these branches of the performing arts which have made great use of music not only for its promotion but also as a medium in which music can always be utilized to convey the story to the audience in a much more effective manner. Film as a medium is a great platform for conveying different stories and messages to its audiences and when it is incorporated with music than the goal to convey the message becomes much easier. Film music is now considered to be a necessity without which the success of any film can be put into doubts. Body Film music was probably introduced as a means to cover the sounds of projectors which presented the films in the late 1800s and early 1900’s (Passman, 2006). But the question that rises over here is that what allowed the film music to survive? The simple answer is that film music made it easier to convey the message in a much realistic form. Therefore the true introduction of music in the films came from the reason of covering clanking sounds of projectors. Before the addition of color into motion picture music was also a definite part of black and white movies. Even you take a look at movies not just from the West but also from the East than you will notice that music had great influence in movies on both sides of the globe. Introduction of music in films was indeed considered as an innovation, one which later had progressed into vast fields of soundtracks and background scores. In the late 1900’s the cinema industry was going through a crisis as he number of theatres had increased tremendously but the producers found themselves to be short of films. At first music was introduced in the films through a live orchestra or piano that played along the projection of the film but later on in the 1900s theatre goers were introduced to a new technique which included a much more classified form of music through which competent musicians performed along with the orchestra. The regular trend of music accompanying the films was introduced much later and before that the owners of different theaters tried to make the sound of the cinema somewhat close to live theaters. At that time all film projections were accompanied by human voice that is to say that dialogues were spoken live and music was also included as a live orchestra. To omit this non-satisfactory and at times irritating mechanism of sound from the films a lot of experimentations were carried out by converting the sound on disc and synchronizing it. A lot of experiments were carried out in this regard so that a better sound can be achieved. After a lot of failures the experiment proved to be a successful one through Camera phone. The camera phone was a device which merged the sound and pictures at an inexpensive cost which made it easy to be distributed amongst the theater owners. It would right to say that the camera phone was the breakthrough in the field of merging music and sound with motion picture. The camera phone paved way for a lot of other devices which resulted because of various experiments based on the camera phone itself. These experimentations included the phonoscope, picture phone, etc. But all these experimentations were mainly focused on producing a synchronized form of the human sound that before was spoken live in the theater so as such these innovations were not a major breakthrough but they definitely provided the room for improvement and further experimentation. Later a campaign was introduced by producers through which the synchronized disc system was considered outdated and producers encouraged the theater owners to actually include the titles within the film only which sort of decreased the work assigned to the narrator. This step can be witnessed as a gradual change for omitting live narrations completely from the film. Music became an important part of the films when the audience had started demanding music in between inter-titles or other parts of the movie. This led the theater owners to play separate discs which contained music at the time of the presentation of the titles. At that time Vita-phone was also introduced which was an advanced form for the synchronized disc systems but it proved a little more successful because it lead to an innovating idea to project sound within the theater. In the late 1926 the vita-phone was used in a meaning full manner by placing one speaker behind the other, one in the narrative podium and another where the orchestra played. The films produced with Vita-phone at that time led many renowned production companies including Warner’s to give a further thought to disc synchronization and the importance that it holds for the progress of the theater sound and music industry. They even found the vita-phone appropriate to serve as speakers for public addresses. The Vita-phone was a source for the main entry of music into films. Its first use included a major portion of incorporating music in films. Vita-phone also proved to be a source for amplifying whatever sound is passed through it. But like every invention its use also had to come to an end with other inventions. Music in films was deeply felt by the audiences for the first time in a movie called the e Jazz Singer which was introduced in October 1927. The reason for this reaction of the audience was simply the fact that a new kind of sound was presented in front of them, one which was completely different especially from the projected sounds and one which provided them with a refreshing change of sound. In many scenes of some movies the producers tried to develop a relationship between the actors who perform and the amplification system. By 1929 a lot of changes had been improvised in the style of filmmaking especially in the sound and music department. These changes were brought forth by revising a lot of configurations of the loudspeaker. The 1926 music in films found the orchestra to be the only and the main source through which the audience were entertained with some kind of music within the film. But after this a gradual diversion of the film music towards the screen was witnessed. This means that the speakers were placed exactly behind the screen so that it appeared to be completely well coordinated with the scenes it was to play along with. This idea was used by Hollywood a lot in its beginning days. If looked at closely than it might seem to be a completely illogical idea but this technique was brought into practice so that the real source of sound can be hidden and brought along with the attributes of whatever is being played on the screen. The technique of placing the speakers behind the image on the screen was also appreciated as a move to create identification between the sound or music and the picture. But this proved to be a difficult task for technicians. The technicians had to more mobile compared to as before placing the speaker carefully so that perfect correspondence between the sound and picture would be visible to the audience. The year 1933 brought with it the major breakthrough in the American Industry in terms of sound system. The Bell Labs had experimented with the sound stereo and in 1940 a major electronic company demonstrated a four-track-stereo system. This stereo system was adopted by cinema owners in the early 1950’s. The stereo was expected to fulfill the tasks of both the technicians as well as what a sound system should fulfill. That is to say it completely leveled the needs of accuracy and of providing well coordinated sound to the audience. But the surround sound also held its disadvantage. The surround sound system could be used to reinforce only specific visual effects. And it was difficult to coordinate the picture with 3 directional speakers. For this sole reason the major production companies of Hollywood including WarnerBros, Columbia Pictures and even M-G-M. \ If we look at the last forty years than we can witness a lot of progress in terms of stereo system in the movie department. This has only enhanced the performance and importance of music in Movies. But today’s position in movie sounds could never had been reached if Dolby had not introduced its optical stereo in the late 1970’s, which had an outstanding and improved nature in terms of noise reduction. The Dolby speakers were pretty popular. Most production companies tried to use these speakers especially after the success of the super hit fiction Star Wars. Conclusion For the past 40 years we have witnessed a lot of innovations in terms of sounds and music in the film m industry. At first different orchestras were brought into sing for the films but over the gradual period of time we have observed that the pop and rock culture of different individual music industries has paved a way for itself into this field. We now see artists from different music genres and industries singing for movies and their soundtracks. The quality of music has improved and is still improving. This is due to the digital age that we have entered in. But in today’s competitive world the movies demand a lot from the soundtracks. What we can expect in future is a global competition between different industries and what would really set everyone apart is not only their creativity but also their ability to market and promote themselves. No doubt music has contributed immensely in this field and will continue to do so if music composers keep on coming up with heart felt and innovative tunes for each generation especially the generation next. References Book Fleser, J. (2000). The Chord Wheel. UK. JSK Passman, D. S. (2006). All You Need To Know About Music Business. USA.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

The Benefits of Cooperative Learning for ELL Students

The Benefits of Cooperative Learning for ELL Students The first thing to consider is the fact that cooperative learning is beneficial to all students, regardless of their classification or primary language. In fact, activities where the teacher uses conceptual strategies that promote learning together or group investigation are statistically proven to be superior to instructional design focused on working alone or working in a competitive environment. Essentially, helping each other is better than competing or working alone. Three highly effective conceptual models have been determined to be those cooperative activities which can be labeled as learning together, academic controversy, or group investigation. Basically, if the cooperative learning technique you are using involves one of these three modes, then your lesson should be more effective than students working alone or in a competitive style (Johnson, D., Johnson R., Stanne, 2000). There are many examples of instructional strategies with a learning together style. Numbered Heads Together is one such activity; it is a strategy that promotes discussion, individual accountability, as well as group accountability. It is especially effective for reviewing and integrating subject matter (Numbered Heads Together, 2010). Academic controversy, another effective style of cooperative learning mentioned in the previous paragraph, is essentially informed and educated debate, with one important twist: the students argue both sides of the issue or contentious theory. One example of this type of cooperative learning strategy involves six steps: create the best case for a position on the controversy, present this best case, engage in open discussion, reverse perspectives, synthesize and come to consensus, and prepare a report (Academic Controversy, 2010). The last highly-effective type of cooperative learning noted above in the research is called group investigation. One school district website describes group investigation as an activity where à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦students collaborate to produce a group product for presentation à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ [in] an open-ended investigationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦structured to promote higher-order thinking skills. (Regina Public Schools, 2003). This type of group activity is probably best known as the very popular WebQuest design where students surf the internet in a guided, but self-directed, group investigation into a topic which ultimately leads to a finalized presentation or product. (Dodge, 2007). There are many more types of cooperative learning possibilities and conceptual categories to consider than learning together, academic controversy, and group investigation, however the conceptual types mentioned above are noted to be especially easy to learn, easy to implement, and easy to maintain once put into use (Johnson et al., 2000). Not only are cooperative learning strategies effective for all learners, but they are especially effective for ELL students specifically. Language learners tend to pick up social language much faster than academic language. ELL students basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) are practiced in a meaningful context in a variety of social settings, but CALP is not normally practiced outside of the classroom. Rather, CALP is the language used in subject area content material; CALP is essential for success in school. While BICS will develop in as little as six months, CALP may take as long as seven years (Haynes, 1998). So we can see that the faster CALP is developed, the sooner our ELL students will succeed in content curricular areas. One way that cooperative learning helps CALP to be developed is through comprehensible input and comprehensible output. ELL students will often fail to understand a lecture, but if they are assisted by classmates it can be made more comprehensible to them. Comprehensive output means that the student has the opportunity to practice at whatever level of English fluency they have attained. CL helps to develop comprehensible input and comprehensible output in several ways. First, small groups make it possible for the teacher or group members to adapt the message to the ELL student. Second, feedback, correction, and checking of comprehension are easier in small groups and are non-judgmental. Also, ELL students have the opportunity to practice their oral language skills, get repetition, and peer assistance related to the current task at hand (Haynes, 1998). Another way that cooperative learning is helpful to ELL students is by lowering their anxiety level so that they feel more at ease and are able to comfortably focus on learning the language. Wang Qiangs work on cooperative learning (Qiang, 2007, as cited in Yang, 2008) shows us that speaking in small groups is natural, because in real life, this is how spontaneous communication occurs. If they speak in front of a large group of people it is usually a more formal situation where they have a prepared speech (Yang, 2009). Furthermore, according to Krashens Affective Filter hypothesis, anxiety is a negative factor in second language acquisition whereby the ELL student will retain less language under stress than in a relaxed state (Schutz, 2007). Since cooperative learning lowers the affective filter (Willis, 2007), it is logical that cooperative learning would make second language learning less threatening and therefore more effective. Consider this powerful quote about neuroimaging of t he anxious brain: In MRI scans of adolescents in states of affective, emotional anxiety, when the amygdala is metabolically hyperactive, the pathways that normally conduct information in and out of the amygdala show greatly reduced activity. Thus, new information is blocked from entering the memory banks (Toga Thompson, 2003, as stated in Willis, 2007). Two early studies done by Pica and Doughty in 1984 and 1985 (as stated in Liang, Mohan, and Early, 1998) compared the efficacy of teacher-fronted classes to small-group interactive classes. They found that in small groups students were able to practice more, receive more feedback, and produce more examples of the target language. This suggests that in small groups the ELL students have more opportunity to work on those specific curricular words, or academic language, that TESL instructors strive to develop. Pica and Doughtys study also found that in group work over 65% of students were engaged in negotiation for meaning versus 45% of the students in teacher-fronted classes. This statistic seems to suggest that ELL students will talk more freely and frequently in group settings about what unfamiliar language terms and structures mean. Thus, CALP is likely developed faster in CL groups than in teacher-fronted classes (Liang et al, 1998). Two interesting handbooks may help teachers improve their ability to foster CALP in the ELL classroom. One is the very popular Calla Handbook and the other is titled Building Academic Language, by Jeff Zweirs. The CALLA handbook: Implementing the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach, was written by Anna Uhl Chamot, and was presented in workshop format, by the author, in Wyoming in February of 2007. In her presentation on her popular book, Dr. Chamot stresses several key aspects of the CALLA approach. CALLA instruction is based on educational research and focuses on those language skills needed in school for academic success. Students are encouraged to value their prior knowledge and to relate it to new academic learning, a new culture, and a new language. Students are also tasked with learning to work cooperatively and socially, as well as internalizing learning strategies and applying them to new situations. Teachers are advised to use interesting topics and content which is linked to prior experiences and knowledge as well as presenting content through hands-on, investigative, or cooperative activities (Chamot Robbins, 2007). A book review of Building Academic Language: Essential Practices for Content Classrooms illuminates its value for building CALP in ELL education. This handbook is described as being very practical, full of strategies for the classroom, and focused on academic literacy. Important concepts in the book include using in-depth conversation as a scaffolding technique for building academic language, using metacognition to help students analyze classroom interactions, as well as the use of visual aids to help develop academic thought processes. The book stresses the need to think about the quality of student discourse, as well as the quantity, whereby the style of academic verbal interactions is guided by teaching processes, is modeled by the teacher, and ultimately leads to a deeper academic vocabulary and a deeper comprehension. (Huerta-Macias, 2007). In conclusion, this paper has reviewed and discussed how certain styles of cooperative learning are particularly valuable for all learners, including ELL students. Cooperative learning research and scholarly writings have been reviewed which demonstrate further that CL facilitates second language acquisition, in particular, because it lowers anxiety, makes input and output more comprehensible, and leads to more frequent use of the target language being studied. Finally, two respected TESL handbooks were reviewed for their merits in helping ELL teachers develop CALP.

Friday, October 25, 2019

steve wynn :: essays research papers fc

Steve Wynn’s Nevada   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  What better way to set off Nevada’s centennial birthday than with the opening of the world’s most highly anticipated resort. Steve Wynn is set to open the only hotel good enough to put his signature on, Wynn Las Vegas is set to open its doors on April 28th, Elaine Wynn’s birthday. Already fully booked thru July, you will need more than an American Express black card to get a room there before Fall. At a mere $2.6 billion and counting, the classy fifty story bronze beast is home to 2,700 rooms located across from the Fashion Show Mall. Each suite has floor to ceiling windows with views of either the strip, a man made mountain and lake or the championship golf course designed by world renowned Tom Fazio. Among two new exquisite themed theaters, dozens of restaurants, a Maserati and Ferarri dealership, high-end boutiques, a spa and a huge waterfall, it will also feature Steve and Elaine Wynn’s gallery of artwork from their own private coll ection. One of the new showrooms will hopefully be worth its $100 million price tag. It seats 2,000 and is shaped like a globe with water flowing all around the divided sections. Actors will be performing throughout the theatre within forty feet of every seat, which makes for no bad seat in the house.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It’s claim to fame will be what Wynn has been known for in the past, impeccable first class service. Since October of last year close to 110,000 applied on line for a chance to work with such a successful hotelier. So to his advantage he was able to pick and choose only the best, many from his soon to be competitors. Only 9,000 made the final cut. This will be his big comeback since leaving five years ago when he sold the Mirage Resorts to MGM Grand Inc. for $6.4 billion.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Plans for expanding the mega resort that has yet to open are well under way. A proposed $200 million expansion will add eighteen luxury golf villas, extra parking, another theatre and more casino space. Later as many as 1,400 more rooms will be added which is expected to cost another half a billion dollars by the time its done.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  As a boy Wynn attended military school and would go on to attend one of the best business schools in the country, Wharton at University of Pennsylvania.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Survivor: Philippines – an Analysis Using Communication Theory

â€Å"SURVIVOR: PHILIPPINES†: An Analysis of the CBS Program Using Three Theories of Communication Sally Annabella Communications 307 Dr. Debbie Way November 2012 No one has died. Some have been medevacked. It’s a rough game. The CBS television series Survivor is one of the first ‘reality tv’ shows and is now in its 12th year. It features eighteen contestants striving to â€Å"Outwit, Outplay and Outlast† each other to win one million dollars by the end of the season.While it is important to be in good physical shape (the challenges are just that, physically challenging) it is imperative to have impeccable communication skills. In watching episodes of the current season, Survivor: Philippines, I have noticed: Communication Privacy Management Theory, Message Design Logics, Uncertainty Reduction Theory, Politeness Theory, and Social Exchange Theory. While this paper only requires three theories to be mentioned, I will show that all five are tied togeth er.Each season Survivor is filmed over a period of 39 days on a different remote island. The contestants are divided into two or three tribes that start out competing against each other in challenges for a) rewards such as fishing supplies or an elegant feast and b) the coveted Immunity Idol, a token that means they will have the chance to play another three days. The tribe that does not win the idol will have to go to Tribal Council (an event that happens generally every three days) and risk being voted out of the game, hence no chance of winning the million dollar prize.About half-way through the season, the tribes merge into one, each player now plays for himself, and the remaining challenges are centered around winning Individual Immunity. All of the remaining players now go to Tribal Council and vote out one player. These ousted players now form the Jury, and they will be the ones to ultimately vote at the end of the game (when there are three remaining players) on who will tak e home the million dollars. Communication Privacy Management Theory, as stated by Dainton and Zelley on page 68, has four main principles. The one most applicable in Survivor involves boundaries.A boundary linkage is formed when two or more parties share information (Dainton and Zelley p. 71) with each owner of the information being responsible for its privacy. Inevitably, when one player finds a hidden Immunity Idol, they cannot seem to keep the information to themselves. They feel they must entrust someone else with this extremely private information and this almost certainly is their undoing. Dainton and Zelley show on page 72 that Petronio in 2002 states that boundary turbulence occurs when the rules for privacy management are not clear.This statement implies that boundary turbulence is unintentional. In watching Survivor, I found that boundary turbulence could also be intentional. In one instance, Player A told Player B she would not tell anyone that he (Player B) was in posses sion of a hidden immunity idol, yet she did tell someone else (Player C. ) Player C then confronted Player B, causing boundary turbulence with Player A. In another instance (and a different set of players), Players A and B together found a clue to a hidden immunity idol. They promised each other not to tell anyone else.Player A then told Player C. Player C seized an opportunity to plant the clue in Player B’s possessions, making it appear to Player A that Player B had betrayed her, thus creating boundary turbulence. In Message Design Logics Theory, there are three types of communication, expressive (p. 35), conventional and rhetorical (p. 36). Expressive is a sender-focused pattern of communication, concerned primarily with self-expression. Some players do not seem to have a ? lter and allow their thoughts to spew out, whether it be bene? cial to them or not. Conventional operates by rules.In one episode, others in the group let one player know that he was overstepping the li ne of acceptable behavior when he was snuggling with another particular contestant. They pointed out to him that it appeared to the rest of the group that he was in a strong alliance with her. He subsequently stopped sleeping next to her to show the group his allegiance was not tied to her. The more successful players of Survivor communicate in the rhetorical fashion. These individuals â€Å"view communication as a powerful tool used to create situations and negotiate multiple goals (p. 6). † They pay close attention to what others are communicating in order to be better able to understand their point of view, and therefore what they might be thinking beyond what they are saying. Those who use this type of communication are seeking a balance between their goals and keeping harmony with the receiver(s), even to the point of protecting another? s feelings (such as by not embarrassing them. ) They want to maintain a good working relationship with the other person in the future. Survivor contestants experience on a daily basis Uncertainty Reduction Theory.Dainton and Zelley point out on page 43 that, according to Berger and Calabrese (1975), humans regularly experience uncertainty, we do not like the feeling, and we use communication to reduce our uncertainties. In the game of Survivor, the players are in a constant state of uncertainty. They know that, by design of the game, they and their co-competitors all have the same goal. And only one of them is going to reach it. They go into the game knowing they are going to form friendships and they are going to have to lie and accept being lied to.One player stated that nobody wants to betray anybody else and nobody wants to feel betrayed. Politeness Theory also comes into play. Dainton and Zelley show on page 60 that if someone has more power or prestige than you, you will be more polite to them. This theory also states that if what you have to say may hurt the receiver of the information, you will be more poli te. Survivor is all about who has the power. The players all want to be the one with the power, whether they want to let the other players know or not.To tie it to Message Design Logics, if they are a rhetorical communicator, they will be more polite to the one perceived as having the power. The expressive communicator, however, will not be so aware of the need to be polite. Another theory that needs to be mentioned is Social Exchange Theory. Dainton and Zelley on page 61 show that Thibaut and Kelley in 1959 maintained that humans, by nature, are sel? sh. We determine the relationships we keep or let go by weighing the bene? ts versus the costs of these relationships. In Survivor, the players are continually assessing their relationships with each ther, strategizing which relationships will thrive and which will be detrimental to their ultimate goal of making it all 39 days and to the million dollar prize. The CBS television show Survivor is a wealth of examples of communication the ories in action. A contestant cannot possibly make it to the end and win the prize of one million dollars without being an exceptional communicator. This means not only being able to convey one’s own information (expressive Message Design Logics), but also being able to assess how his/her information is being interpreted (rhetorical Message Design Logics. They also need to be able to read the others that are communicating to them, and determine whether the information being portrayed is truthful or not. While contestants have had to be medevacked for physical issues, they have yet to be involuntarily removed from the game for lack of communication skills. References Dainton, M. , & Zelley, E. D. (2011). Applying communication theory for professional life: A practical introduction (2nd ed. ). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Website: CBS Survivor. http://www. cbs. com/shows/survivor/

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Kentucky Fried Chicken and global fast-food industry Essay Example

Kentucky Fried Chicken and global fast Kentucky Fried Chicken and global fast-food industry Paper Kentucky Fried Chicken and global fast-food industry Paper KFC is a growing company that always tries to expand its business size, by the year 2000, the number of restaurant established outside US, where KFCs headquarter resided, accounted 50% of its total restaurants. Expansion strategy of KFC followed the classic internationalization strategy, which is characterised by (1) expand first to nearest countries (market) from the KFCs headquarter in US, then (2) as those markets grow, gradually expand into farther markets. This strategy was apparently applied by KFC to maintain the control over its restaurants in another countries while learning, and preparing for further expansion in the future. This strategy apparently has the advantage of ease of control; according to KFC management, the nearer the country of expansion, the easier the control. Although this idea is sounds good to hear, it also implies the weakness of KFC management, the lack of communication ability; because of this weakness, KFC was afraid of losing the control over its subsidiaries and franchises restaurants. However, this fear is not relevant in this internet age; the fast growing capability of internet makes it easier and easier for managers around the world to communicate and thus, control their subordinates in any other parts of the world. Another strategy is to establish new smaller headquarters in the region of expansion; for example one headquarter can be established in Latin America or in Asian to control the subsidiaries in the region. This smaller headquarters are, of course, under the direction of KFCs main headquarter in Kentucky, United States; their primary responsibility is to manage and control both KFCs company-owned and franchise restaurant. This strategy, I believe, will narrowing the width of span control by the KFCs management in the main headquarters, thus in the in will ease the control task conducted. The implementation of the latter strategy must also consider the financial position of the KFC company itself; one time KFC had a difficult periods where it had to closed its restaurants in Brazil because it lacked the cash flow needed to support an expansion program in that market. However, this strategy will show its result in long-term periods, thus, considering this matter and opportunities for expansion, I argue that KFC must first focus its resources to defend its market position in the countries where KFC had already gained superior brand preference such as in some Latin America and Asian counties. Failure to defend its market because of too much focusing in early entry strategy, will expose KFC to the risk that the existing market will slip away, while the new markets are doubt-able successful. The international markets, though attractive, were also exposing some risks, including political risks, economic risks, competitive risks, and behavioural risk; beside those external risks, KFC were also exposed to the internal financial risk since there were some periods where KFC lacked the financial cash flow needed for expansion. A strategy had already launched to counter the behavioural risk (risk implied from control over the franchise operations); in Mexico for example, KFC had eliminated all of its franchises and operated only company-owned restaurants, which enabled it to better control quality, service, and restaurants cleanliness. Unfortunately, there are no further explanation in the case about KFCs strategy to offset the other risks. Therefore, herewith I suggest that some other strategy should also be crafted in order to reduce the risk. For the time sake, I will limit the discussion of my recommendation only on strategy that I believe, in the long run, has the major impact towards KFC business, the competitive risks. This risk includes the risk derived from rivalry among competitors, new market entrants and new product innovations. KFCs main business is to sell chicken, this product was actually already become a traditional dish for some part of the world, and even some culinary expertise, in just a matter of time, will probably invent a new recipe that able to compete the taste of KFC fried chicken and wrote books on it. Consumers will buy the books, and make the fried chicken ala KFC by their own, they will not need to go outside, wait for the queue, and to pay more on something that actually they can make. Therefore there is a big chance that consumer will find out that KFC fried chicken is no longer a special menu. The concept of KFCs original recipe, in my opinion, is only a matter of time before the costumer become bored and leaves the KFC. The key buzzword for overcoming this risk is differentiation and develop a sustainable competitive advantage based on the differentiation. The strategy would have to include product differentiation, KFC should invent a secret recipe that exceeds the taste of any other ordinary chicken and the most important keeping on inventing, to keep up with changing costumer tastes. This strategy requires KFC to pay more focus on its RD division for invention, and marketing as a means of communicating the differentiation, and of course, secure its trade-secret as tight as possible. When the product differentiation does not act as a major source of attractiveness any longer, KFC should move on to another differentiation, the service differentiation, and/or distribution differentiation. For example: provide a service that can bind costumers in a long term relationship, such as establishing KFCs costumer clubs, or even online order-taking; a distribution differentiation can be achieved through, for example distributions via sales agents, such as satay seller in Indonesia; they will fry the chicken directly on costumer order, in front of the costumer itself. To reduce the risk of cannibalism, these agents are hired and managed under one or group of franchise restaurants in one local area.