LOS ANGELES — In the fall of 2012, Ruth Vitale, a sassy independent film executive, nosed her horse into a badly directed jump and crashed in the mud.

The animal was fine. But Ms. Vitale broke her back, providing painful perspective on the need for the right mix of caution and daring when faced with an obstacle.

And the lesson may now ease her leap into another quagmire: the online piracy debate.

“It was pilot error,” Ms. Vitale said of the riding accident, though she could well have been describing the crackup, just months before her own, of Hollywood’s push for broad antipiracy legislation in both houses of Congress.

In a surprise move, Ms. Vitale, who built her executive reputation on hip films like “Hustle & Flow” and “The Virgin Suicides,” last month was named executive director of CreativeFuture, a coalition of movie and television producers, unions and companies that are bound by a common determination to get a grip, finally, on Hollywood’s digital future.