Real-Life Decision Making
You've been shooting film for your feature for about three weeks.
In the three weeks before the start of the shoot, you were in pre-production,
readying sets and doing a final rewrite of the script. But in the seventh
week of the 12-week production schedule, something goes wrong.
The lead actress in the film is involved in a car accident on the way to
the studio one morning. She'll recover fully, but she's hurt seriously
enough to keep her away from filming for two full months.
The film's financial backers are expecting to see a final version
of the movie within a month. The news of the accident might rattle some of
the investors and result in them pulling their money out.
You spend a few hours reviewing the daily "rushes" of the film and going
over the script. You come up with three potential solutions:
You could hire a new actress to complete the lead role and meld the two
portions of the film together as smoothly as possible. The actress's
part is only about two-thirds completed -- so this may make for a ragged film.
But it would be delivered on deadline.
You could hire a new actress and begin filming from scratch. This would
mean tossing out three weeks of filming, but it would allow you to complete
the movie within three weeks of the original due date.
You could also wait for the lead actress to recover. However, this will
probably mean losing some financial backing and it may not be possible to
get the money to finish production.
What will you do?