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.”
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The memo sent to the head of the movie studio by a producer argues that the movie 'Working Title' is assured to be a failure if the studio does not increase the funding by 10 percent. The producer cites several reasons such as first-time director, savings due to inexperienced assistant producers would translate to greater expenditures in paying the actors and the time spent on shooting a scene. The producer makes several unwarranted assumptions and if he does not provide reasonable explanations for the following three assumptions would severely hamper the persuasiveness of the argument.
First, the producer assumes that since the director does not have experience shooting a movie and has only been shooting commercials, the director might waste the time taken to shoot a scene. Perhaps, the director although inexperienced in movies, had plenty of techniques in his arsenal and is adept in shooting a scene. It is possible that the director might think of each scene as a commercial and would quickly wrap up the scene as he has plenty of experience in shooting the same scene countless times to perfection. If that is the case, the director would not waste time but because of his experience would save a lot of time even surpassing an arguably less experienced movie director. It is also possible that what applies to the majority of the directors who are notoriously wasteful on their advertising business, does not apply to this director. If either of these scenarios were to happen, the producers claim that the movie would become a failure does not hold water as the director is experienced and hence skillful enough to make the movie a success.
Another one of the assumptions is that, hiring relatively inexperienced assistant producers and director would save money that can be translated to greater expenditures in paying the actors and the crew for the extra hours they spend on the set. The author does not specify the relativeness of the pay and expenditure. Perhaps the extent of relativity is more than 10000 dollars, i.e, the studio saves 10000 dollars because of the relatively less experienced assistant producers and directors. If that is the case, the studio would be able to pay the actors and the crew for their work overtime without the 10 percent increase desired by the producer. The producer must provide more information regarding how much the inexperienced producers and directors receive and how much the actors and their crew charge for overtime work. And if the savings do not exceed the money saved due to the hiring of the inexperienced assistant producers and directors, the producer's claim that the movie will be a failure if the studio does not increase their funding by 10 percent is specious.
Finally, one of the most glaring assumptions is that the actors spend time waiting for the inexperienced assistant producers and directors to arrange things. Perhaps, the assistant producers and directors, arrange the set before the actors arrive and hence there is no waiting time for the actors and the crew. If that is the case no additional cost is incurred as a result of the thoughtfulness of the assistant producers and directors and hence invalidates the claim of the producer.
In sum, the producer makes several unjustified assumptions for his claim and the argument as it stands now, is unwarranted. The producer must provide more details about the expenditure of the movie, the experience of the director and the inexperienced assistant producers and directors actions, in order to vindicate his claim.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 589 350
No. of Characters: 2922 1500
No. of Different Words: 213 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.926 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.961 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.823 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 202 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 168 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 122 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 79 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29.45 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.117 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.384 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.581 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.156 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 397, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...and the time spent on shooting a scene. The producer makes several unwarranted assu...
^^^
Line 5, column 756, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...he inexperienced producers and directors receive and how much the actors and thei...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, hence, if, regarding, so, such as, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 26.0 11.1786427146 233% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2978.0 2260.96107784 132% => OK
No of words: 588.0 441.139720559 133% => OK
Chars per words: 5.06462585034 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.9242980521 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86403242876 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 225.0 204.123752495 110% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.382653061224 0.468620217663 82% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 933.3 705.55239521 132% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 17.0 8.76447105788 194% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 39.7158343737 57.8364921388 69% => OK
Chars per sentence: 148.9 119.503703932 125% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.4 23.324526521 126% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.65 5.70786347227 64% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.258975906585 0.218282227539 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0930909366569 0.0743258471296 125% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.087576996609 0.0701772020484 125% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.157185848262 0.128457276422 122% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0746038356492 0.0628817314937 119% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.1 14.3799401198 119% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.04 48.3550499002 87% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.66 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.81 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.