Buildings

This section of the guide is intended to guide you through some of the various buildings that become available to you in The Movies. Most of these will not be buildable at the beginning of the game; many of them will be unlocked at certain periods of time, some will be unlocked through research at your Laboratory, and some will be unlocked when you earn Certificates.

Stage School

The Stage School is an interesting building, and is certainly vital to the well-being of your lot. With it, you'll be able to recruit more of the movers and shakers that will contribute to your studio's money-making endeavors. Namely, it'll let you hire actors, extras, and directors.

When you first create a Stage School, you'll see a line of actor wannabes line up outside of it, waiting for you to hire them. Before you start plopping them into roles, though, pause your game and right-click on each of them to get an idea of their particular strengths and weaknesses. You'll get two bar readouts right away: Looks and Physique. Each of these are important when it comes to the appeal of that star to your audience. While there may be room for unattractive character actors in the real world, things are a bit simpler in The Movies, so you'll have to rely on your recruits' raw good looks to help get them over in the world of film. Wannabes that have poor looks or physique will be better suited to extra or directorial work than they will be for starring roles.

Next up, you'll also get a list of personality traits. Ideally, these won't come into play overmuch in the final product of your films, but these will determine how easy it is to work with the character. You'll be able to gauge your prospect's mindset in a number of areas, including how tolerant they are of other stars, their overall calmness, their tolerance for boredom, how much they like to eat or drink, and so on. Some stars are just going to be more high-maintenance than others, unfortunately. Early in the game, you're going to need all the bodies you can get, but you might want to take anyone that seems like a real boar and cast them as extras, where you won't have to worry much about keeping them happy.

Crew Facility

The Crew Facility will be where you hire and fire your movie crews. That's pretty much all there is to it; just take as many people as you want from the unemployment line as you wish and hire them as crew, and they'll move off and start working on any movies that go into the Casting Office. They have no need to return to this building when they're hired, so you can feel free to build it somewhere off to the side of your main working area; just make sure your builders can reach it to repair it when it falls into disrepair.

Casting Office

The Casting Office is where you decide who stars in and directs a film after you have a script ready to shoot. To begin casting a film, drag the script from your script office to the Begin Rehearsing room in the Casting Office; at this point, your crew and extras will automatically be assigned to the film. You will have to manually choose the primary actors and directors, however, but this is a good thing, as it will let you pick talent based on their relationships, star power, and experience with the genre that's being filmed.

You can rehearse a script without the maximum number of extras, then add the extras when you're ready to shoot, if you need to.

Note that, as soon as you put a script into the Shoot It box, the cast and crew will leave the Casting Office and head towards the set where the script will be shot. Thus, it's best to have the casting office somewhere near your sets, to reduce the amount of travel that they have to perform. Note also that, if you don't want to shoot a movie immediately after it's done rehearsing (or if you're incapable of doing so due to a missing actor or a set that's already being used), you can drag the script out of the Begin Rehearsing box, and set it down outside the building. This will let your crew and stars leave the building and do whatever they normally do in their free time; to bring them all back when things are more optimal, just drag the script back over to the Rehearsal option.

Production Office

The Production Office deals with films when they're ready to be released. When you complete filming on a movie, its icon will head to the Production Office, where you'll be able to move it onto the Release tab to send it out into the world and start making back the money you spent on its production. Alternatively, if you wish to get an idea of how it'll perform, then you can move the script directly to the Reviews tab to get some advance screening feedback. Alternately, you can move the script right to the Archives if you want to just shelve it entirely. This might be worthwhile if you've somehow produced a truly awful movie that you're afraid will drag down your studio's prestige, but in most cases you'll be able to avoid this with adequate planning.

After a movie's been released, its icon will sit in the Release tab for a while, as it constantly brings in cash during its theatrical run. Over time, the rate at which a movie brings in cash will slow down, and eventually stop, at which point you'll have to move it to the Archive, which is mainly intended to save your previously-made films in case you want to watch them again at some point in the future.

In addition to these tabs, the Production Office can also be used to check your Finances; to do so, drag the information icon in the middle of the building over to the Finance tab, which will pop up a full screen in which you can analyze your studio's financial situation. From this screen, you can give check how much films cost versus how much money they've made, check your talent's salaries compared to their market value or give them raises, and so on.

You can also right-click on the information icon to bring up a display of your studio's prestige, and all the factors that go into it, such as sanitation or connectivity. You can learn more about each of these factors in the Studio Prestige section of the Maximizing Prestige and Star Power chapter.

After you unlock the Publicity Office, the Release tab will be upgraded to allow you to spend money on promoting your film when you release it. The higher the public awareness of a film, the more money you should spend on it. If you spend a lot of money on promoting a film that has low public awareness, you'll garner negative reviews. See our discussion of the Publicity Office for more details on how to raise awareness of a film.