A movie producer sent the following memo to the head of the movie studio.
"We need to increase the funding for the movie Working Title by 10% in order to ensure a quality product. As you know, we are working with a first-time director, whose only previous experience has been shooting commercials for a shampoo company. Since the advertising business is notoriously wasteful, it stands to reason that our director will expect to be able to shoot take after take, without concern for how much time is being spent on any one scene. In addition, while we have saved money by hiring relatively inexperienced assistant producers and directors, this savings in salary will undoubtedly translate to greater expenditures in paying the actors and unionized crew overtime for the extra hours they will spend on the set waiting for the assistant directors and producers to arrange things. If we don't get this extra money, the movie is virtually assured to be a failure."
The prompt represents a memo that was sent by a movie producer to the studio-head demanding more money for his film to be a success. The author has reached the conclusion based on assumptions that they will make a good movie when they get the money and the director being very bad, they will need extra money for their wastages of shots and more time staying on the set. However, the underlying assumptions need to be calrified for this to be a valid judgement.
First of all, the author is bluntly making an assumption that as they are working with a first-time director, he is very likely to be a bad one. For reinforcing his statement, he gave an example of a shampoo commercial where the director worked and he produced quite a waste of money from retaking one shot again and again. Well question remains about the overall shooting scenario. What if the actor/actress that worked on the commercial was bad? If they were bad, then it would not be surprising that they may need extra time to get the shot right. This surely does not fall on the director. Also, there might have been production difficulties for the delay, we do not know. All that can be gathered from the prompt is, the director is responsible for the long time and retakes. But if the underlying assumption falls apart, then the whole argument does, because, the director may actually be a good one who has attented academics of this sort and being jugdged over his first job without thinking about other possible reasons.
Secondly, the author states that as the director could spend as he liked in the advertising, he will do just the same in case of movies. It is not clear if the author is thinking that the director does not know the difference between a movie and an advertisement. For argument's sake, let's say the advertising busniess is wasteful but the movie is not. What if the director is well -aware of the fact and he will do as norm suggests on the movie set. So the author is blindly assuming about the director's approach without even testing him. If this, in fact, holds true, then the author's argument does not hold water.
Third, the author is very rapidly presuming, that if he gets the money, he WILL make a quality movie. Well, what are the odds here? Plenty of things can go wrong. What if, a lot of money was invested, but the acting or the story-line is so bizzare that it cause the public to turn away from the film? Or what if, most of the funding they get from is spent on the actors that they have very scanty amount left for their production? If these were true, then the film will not be a success despite having ton loads of money as budget.
So, in light of these questions,
the argument the author is making, stands mostly faulty. He/she did not provide any circumstantial evidence for their claims and is making a lot of assumptions without even evaluating other considerations. If the author can answer the aforementioned questions and propose a logically sound plan, then this might turn out to be a reasonable judgment.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
one argument missed:
In addition, while we have saved money by hiring relatively inexperienced assistant producers and directors, this savings in salary will undoubtedly translate to greater expenditures in paying the actors and unionized crew overtime for the extra hours they will spend on the set waiting for the assistant directors and producers to arrange things.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 545 350
No. of Characters: 2424 1500
No. of Different Words: 250 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.832 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.448 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.453 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 137 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 75 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.185 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.262 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.741 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.28 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.466 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.115 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 579, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... If this, in fact, holds true, then the authors argument does not hold water. Third,...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, third, well, in fact, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 34.0 19.6327345309 173% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 47.0 28.8173652695 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2500.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 543.0 441.139720559 123% => OK
Chars per words: 4.60405156538 5.12650576532 90% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.82725184711 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.53712635291 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 259.0 204.123752495 127% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.476979742173 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 758.7 705.55239521 108% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.4 1.59920159681 88% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 19.7664670659 137% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.849497301 57.8364921388 90% => OK
Chars per sentence: 92.5925925926 119.503703932 77% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.1111111111 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.0 5.70786347227 70% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.188928044665 0.218282227539 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0532395491142 0.0743258471296 72% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0553876461565 0.0701772020484 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0839924815313 0.128457276422 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0709248849381 0.0628817314937 113% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.3 14.3799401198 72% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 68.1 48.3550499002 141% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.7 12.197005988 71% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 9.4 12.5979740519 75% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.59 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.5 12.3882235529 101% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.