The Movies Copyrighted 2005 Josh Shearer Table of Contents =================================================================== 1. Introduction/Contact Info 2. Updates/Version Info 3. Basics 4. Buildings 5. The Stars 6. The Studio 7. Movie Criteria 8. Certificates 9. Notes =================================================================== Introduction/Contact Info =================================================================== This strategy guide is for the use of any people who wish to achieve the awards in The Movies. I ask that people do not use this strategy guide and take it as their own for I will gladly give permission if you ask for it first. All strategies are subject to change and may become out of date as the game expands and is patched. Please note that all requirements for this guide are still subject to change as to a firm requirement for each is not known for sure. If there is one blatantly wrong please contact me with the proper requirements. Any person contributing to this strategy guide will be given their own spot in the guide with their strategy. Please follow the basic format that is being used when giving information. Please send only serious strategies. My contact is Soccer862923@earthlink.net, and please make sure to put in the subject that this is for the strategy guide or I will blow it away right away. Some awards will not have a personal strategy on them because I have not yet received the award, and therefore they will stay without a strategy until someone sends one or I am able to get the award myself. Please contact also if you see any typos or grammatical errors. =================================================================== Updates/Version Info =================================================================== 12/3/05 This is the first version of the FAQ changes may come and will be noted here. =================================================================== Basics =================================================================== /Getting Started/ After you get your basic studio up and running you will probably have about 4 people who you can train to be stars and/or directors. It is smart to have 2 directors and 2 stars in the beginning, so you can have 1 film running and 1 in rehearsal. Practice makes better movies.After you make your first couple of movies you will see that the movies that are being produced are not that great.Have your movie stars and directors practice one or two genres.The best two genres that are usually safe to have at all times is action and romance.Have 1 duo of a star and director practice each genre for a good amount of time.After they have had a good amount of practice you will notice better scores on your movies atleast in the area of the stars capabilities. Always build better and different sets or buildings as soon as you can.Unless there is something that is totally wrong then you will be able to build the new sets as soon as they come out. /Scripts/ Crank out scripts like the world is going to end.Another big factor in how well your movies are ranked is the the script.In the beginning your movies will score fairly poor in the script area. You will more than likely be able to churn out more movies than you can produce.It is very wise to shell out the money to be able to afford the Star & Script Selling Facility so you can sell the movies to be able to get some more money in the bank.In addition, try to look ahead in the history timeline so you can predict what kind of a good movie will be for the time and predict for that. Try to have a script line up and have it in rehearsal and ready to shoot a little bit ahead of the event.If you time it just right, you can make extra money in the novelty range of the movie ratings. /Buildings/ It is important to group all of your sets together for unity, and it will make it easier later when you want to be able to move from set to set for more advanced movies. Try to put all of your buildings where you hire people together so you can look over the area real quickly to see if there are any people that need to be hired. Although it may not seem very important in the beginning to have everything laid out in common sense you are really going to thank yourself later when it comes to building more and more buildings on your land. Connecting all of your buildings is really easy and really beneficial to your studio.It is a really easy thing to do that will improve the quality of the studio in a way that you will not really notice, but the rankings will notice. Putting all sorts of stuff around, like fountains and foliage will improve the quality of the studio.Make sure to have as grass everywhere it makes a nice little touch to the studio and quite frankly it looks very good. /Rewards/ It is very important that you work towards earning the certificates for the game.Once you get a certificate you will get a reward in the area of a building or something that you can put up that will help you in the future. The certificates usually have to deal with, the rankings of the studio, stars, or the movies that you are putting out. /Stars/ It is important to start grooming one of your stars and directors from the beginning into the establishment for your studio.It can be hard to manage all of those stars at the same time, but if you keep the number of stars and directors to about 6 then you will be able to control it quite well. Eventually you will start to get more stars from other studios who want to get a job.It is probably the best idea to turn these defectors into extras because you have already got your own stars being worked into the mainstream for your studio.It also doesn't hurt to have stars with experience to be your extras in a movie, because they will provide better experience than original extras. /Production/ When you get later into the game you will start to get movies that are longer and more involved.When that happens, you may find that some of your people will get stressed out or go for drinks during shooting. If this begins to be a big problem, you can pause the production by dragging the movie icon onto the ground and it will pause it while all of the people are off doing there own thing.Just don't forget to put the movie back into after everyone has had their fix during the break. =================================================================== Buildings =================================================================== These buildings will be presented in alphabetical order. /Bar/ This is the place where all of your people go to get a drink.You need to be able to get your people here to relax sometimes, but be careful as because some stars will get drunk and can cause a very bad spectacle for studio, but it will provide them with more publicity. /Casting Office/ This building is where you place all of the people that you need for a movie.Once you place a script in this building then the extras and the crew will be placed there automatically.You will then have to choose which of the directors and the stars that you want to appear in the film. After a script is rehearsed you have two options.You can either place the rehearsed script in the shoot it box, where you the film will beginning shooting right away. Or, you can place it outside and wait until you think the better time for shooting has come up. /Cosmetic Surgery/ This is where the stars go to get a boost to their Image.Placing them in here will be vital if you want to be able to have a 5 star rating for your one of your stars. There are a variety of different things that you can do to make the stars look better and each thing will make them be better in a different area of their ratings. /Crew Facility/ This is where you hire and fire your crew for the movies.It is usually smart to have about 4 of them in order to have 1 movie in production and 1 movie in rehearsal. /Custom Script Office/ This is where you can write all of your own scripts.The better you do the more possibilities that you will get when writing your own scripts. I am not going to write much about this because there is so much info that can be written about it because there are so many customization possibilities that should be tested out per person because some people will not be that interested in making their own personal. /Laboratory/ This is where all of your new stuff in the industry comes from. You will get this fairly early in the game and will be vital to keeping your studio on top.You can have up to 6 researchers at a time and have 4 working on one project. There are several categories that you will want to research in order to have a benefit on other studios.Cult Packs, Mainstream, Stars & Studio, and Movie Making.The best area to research is the Movie Making which will keep you ahead of other studios with things like color film and other improved technologies. You can research these areas in order to get the technology faster or you can just let it come to you naturally.The benefit of getting it earlier is that you will get a jump start on other studios and have a bigger drawing to your studio. /Makeover Dept/ This is the studio that he be able to make all sorts of changes to your actors/actresses.You have the capability to do the makeover yourself or you can let the actor/actress do it themself.They will be more happy that they did it themself. Make sure to do this every so often to keep the fashion sense of each of the stars up to date. /Post Production Office/ This is a not so necessary building that can be found in each of the studios.This building is mainly used in order to customize your own personal movies. /Production Office/ This building has a lot of areas and can be confusing. All films that have finished filming will be placed right outside the building.From that you can place the film in the release section where it will begin to make money. At some point a film will stop making money and it will need to be placed in the archive. Once you place the movie in the archive where the movie will be saved for viewing later. Also in the office is the finance tab, which is where you are able to check how you are doing in the movie world and how your money situation is doing. In here you can also raise the salary of your stars and directors. In here is the place for the reviews, where you can check on how each of the movies that you have already released has done.This can be very valuable as to whether or not the tactics that you have been using have been productive. After you gain the Publicity Office, the Release section will be able to control how much money is being spent to promoting the movie. /Publicity Office/ The office allows you to spend money in order to get your movie out in to the public.You can either take and place a script or a star in the PR office in order to raise awareness for the film. You can take and place the script in the office before filming in order to start to raise public awareness.You can also place it in the PR office after filming is done in order to get even more awareness on it. It may seem like a lot of work, but it can really benefit the movie when it is finally released. /Rehab/ This is where you take your stars in order to get them cured of all of their addictions.It will take a long while, 1 year, to get it done the best way possible, but it will be beneficial in the end even if you lose the star for 1 year. /Restaurants/ These are either Snack Van's or some of the more advanced food places will be where all your people get their food fix.It is necessary to have several of this per studio in order to keep all of your people happy with food. /Script Office/ This is where all of the scripts are spending their time in order to be able to make movies for you to gain money.You only have 2 writers in the beginning, and make sure you have them focus on 2 or 3 genres in order to maximize the efficency of your stars. As you do better with the studio you will be able to build better script offices that you will be able to make better movies, but they will also be more complex.It is important that you take down the old office unless you want to be able to do less advanced scripts before you do a full transfer over to the other studio. /Stage School/ The main purpose of the stage school is the ability to be able to take and transform any person who wants hiring to be placed into the role of Director, Actor, Extra, or fire the people that you have hired in the previous positions. It is very wise to be able to place whichever traits that people are very good in and place them either as a director or actor. /Star & Script Selling Facility/ This is there in order to sell any script or star that you no longer want around.The main purpose that will be used by this is in order to sell all of the extra and early on scripts that your scriptwriters churn out.You won't get a lock of money from it. /Trailers/ This another category that will be extremely beneficial in keeping your star happy.The better the trailer the happier the star will be and it is beneficial to get them a trailer as soon as possible, because that is one less thing that you will have to deal with when they become a pain. =================================================================== The Stars =================================================================== Here are the categories that are important in order to look at when dealing with all of your stars. /Stress/ This is the most important area to look at and if the stress gets to high that it is extremely important to let them rest and put the movie on hold. /Boredom/ This area really is not much of a problem so long as you let them practice whenever they are not doing a movie. /Addictions/ It is extremely important to monitor this area.The food will not be that important to look at, but the drinking will be which is why it is important to have a Rehab around that will allow for a star to get his addiction cured. Maximize Star Potential is what the name of the game is if you plan on having your studio be number 1. /Awards/ It is really hard to control this, but having them practice certain genres and have them crank out quality movies, will allow them to get points in this area. /Entourage/ This will be necessary when they get to be fairly big stars.They will begin to demand an entourage and it is smart to give them all that is really necessary. /Image/ This area is easily taken care of if you drop them off in the Makeup Department to let them take care of their wardrobe and the Cosmetic Surgery for features. /Performances/ Depending on their genre capability and the way that they are ranked on a movie, their performacnce rating will be increased enough to benefit. /Press/ This is controlled by taking a photographer and having them take pictures of the star while they are doing something newsworthy. You will eventually find out what those things are and will be able to keep them in the light of the press. /Relationships/ You can increase this area by having stars talk to one another, practice certain genres together, or have dinner or social situations together.It may seem silly but it is very important to do when it comes to rating time for the movie. Having certain directors and actors working together will naturally increase the relationship together.That is why it is important in to have the same people constantly working together. /Salary/ You will have to increase the salary eventually to keep them happy, but at certain point around 100k that will max out the rating portion. You will probably have to increase the salary to keep them happy, but that is easy enough if you have the money. /Success/ Part of the rating of a star depends on the success of any of the movies that they star in. the better their movies do the better they will do when it comes to their own rating. /Trailer/ It is important to give the star the best possible trailer possible. The better the trailer and the surrounding items the better the star will do in that area.It may seem small and insignifcant, but it will be necessary to do in order to get to that coveted 5 star rating. =================================================================== The Studio =================================================================== The rankings for the studio can be found here. /Capital/ This area is how much money that is being displayed in the upper right of the screen.Should not be much of a problem. /Movies/ This area is dependant on the the quality of movies that are being released.Crank out good movies and this area will go up like no time. /Stars/ This is dependant on the quality of the stars that you have on your roster.The better and more talented stars that you have the better this area will look. /Lot Prestige/ This is dependant on a lot of different categories. Attractiveness -------------- This is depending on the what things look like in your studio.Things will either generate good or bad benefits.Bathrooms will generate negative while foliage will generate positive benefits. Catering -------- This is dependant on the food capabilities that you have on studio. Connection ---------- This is extremely to control just make sure that everything is connected by paths. Cleanliness ----------- This is dependant upon the how much garbage you have lying around. The more janitors you have the better the chance that you studio will rank high in this area. Maintenance ----------- This is dependant on how many of the janitors and builders that you have.Hire more people in order to have the studio in constant good condition. Ornamentation ------------- This is dependant on the variety of decoration that you have on the studio lot. Sanitation ---------- This is dependant on how many bathrooms you have and how well they accomadate the number of people that you have. =================================================================== Movie Criteria =================================================================== These are the criteria in which they are based Crew Experience --------------- Dependant on the experience of the crew helping to film the movie at the time. Costume Changes --------------- The more costume changes a movie has the better the possibility there will be a higher rating. Film Length ----------- Scripts with a better quality will have an automatic longer length attached to them. Genre Popularity ---------------- It is dependant on how popular a certain genre is at the time, and can be seen on the timeline. Novelty ------- Based upon the fact that you use more than one set during the filming of a movie. Number of Extras ---------------- More extras the better the odds that the film being produced will have a higher rating. Number of Leads --------------- The more actors you have the better the odds that the this rating will be higher. Script Quality -------------- This is based upon the script studio that you have and the experience of the script writers. Set Repair ---------- Depends on how well the sets seem to be in shape during the filming of the movie. Star Experience --------------- Dependant upon the experience that they have with the genre that is associated with the film that is being produced. Star Mood --------- Based upon how the star feels the better the performance the star will give in the movie and it shows in the reviews. Star Rankings ------------- It is based upon how high ranked the stars and the director are in the movie industry at the time. Star Relationships ------------------ Dependant on the relationship between all of the people that are involved in the movie. Technology ---------- Dependant on whether or not you are using up to the date technology , behind technology, or ahead of your time. =================================================================== Certificates =================================================================== These are the requirements for each of the certificates and their respective rewards. /Number 1/ Release 5 Movies Earn 500k Release movies with a total of 5 stars Reward: Custom Script Office /Number 2/ One star reaches 2-star Release 2-star movie Studio reaches 2-star Reward: Forest Set /Number 3/ 1 Million in Bank 2 Awards 5 Movies about 2-star Reward: Proficient Script Office /Number 4/ Star reach 3-star Release 3-star movie Studio 3-star Release 15 movies Reward: Publicity Office /Number 5/ Earn 7 million Total of 35 stars 4 million in bank Receive 8 awards Rewards: Urban Wall /Number 6/ 5 movies above 3-star Star reach 4-star Release 4-star movie Studio 4-star Reward: First Class Script Office /Number 7/ Release 25 movies Earn 15 million Total of 60 stars 8 million in bank Rewards: Palatial Trailer /Number 8/ Star reaches 5-star Release 5-star movie Studio 5-star Receive 25 awards Release 5 movies above 4-star Reward: Urban Municipal Building /Number 9/ Unknown at this point Rewards: Suburban School Library & Sci-fi Starship Bridge =================================================================== Notes =================================================================== Notes/Usage of Guide -This guide is only to be used by GameFaqs and GameHelper.com and their affiliates. If this is found on any other website please contact me as soon as possible. -This may be not be reproduced under any circumstances except for personal, private use. It may not be placed on any web site or otherwise distributed publicly without advance written permission. Use of this guide on any other web site or as a part of any public display is strictly prohibited, and a violation of copyright.