THE MOVIES works best with this accompanying expansion pack STUNTS and EFFECTS. Do not buy THE MOVIES game without it. It makes ones life far easier in creating their own custom movies as it includes "free camera movement." This mode allows one to take a single "scene" and do many creative things with it. I'm not sure how many people are playing the game, but if the message board at LionHead are any indication, a large number got THE MOVIES primarily for "sandbox" mode prinrily setup to create films bypassing much of the tycoon mode.
The game includes a fair amount of canned scenes sets and costumes and it's not hard to come up with something western, science fiction, modern or something else entirely. The canned scenes, two actors conversing or a guy in a chair smoking or two people whaling the living daylights out of each other plus maybe some 50 more can be combined together with voiceovers, subtitles and music to form very interesting stories. Head over to [...] and one can see how marvelous and inventive some of these moviemakers actually are.
There are limits and some users complain endlessly about them For example: the actors in the stock scenes cannot be moved around on the stage and only follow preset paths. But fortunately the " freecam mode" allows a variety of shots to be created from that one scene and strung together in a variety of creative ways that allows deviation from the preset view to make that scene fresh and exciting. One should also invest in a three button scroll mouse to get the most out of the freecam. Freecam can be "emulated " via the keyboard, but in my opinion, a "poor" emulation.
I started the game in 1920, then switched to sandbox but was overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of choices. I decided to go back into the tycoon game and edit the "scripts" that the game automatically generated for the movie shoots. These generated movies tend to be small, 3 scenes or so but once the custom script facility is obtained, provide fertile ground to manipulate and learn the basics of THE MOVIES filmmaking style without being flooded by too many choices.
Finished films can be uploaded to LionHead's site for viewing by others or shared on other websites as they can be readily viewed in Microsoft's Media Player.
Mods, that is, user added content, can be also supplement the supplied stock art---a low end modder can take a picture, scanned it in and place it as a backdrop for a stage to set up a different location, currently not in THE MOVIES maybe Paris, London or one's own personal corner of their apartment. An artist might seize upon this to place their artwork in the game and use it as a commercial for an upcoming art show or explain their piece, as a backdrop is flat and projects on a wall surface. High end modders have gone so far as to create entire sets from retextures or scratch and added additional props and costumes to the game, all available for download.
I've had problems with the copy protection scheme of the game, and unfortunately, this did not go away with the expansion STUNTS and EFFECTS. When I tried to run the game, I got the perennial message that read something like "DVD emulation software in use. Please disable any DVD emulation software before proceeding." Unwilling to take up any of the typical tech suggestions offered for this sort of a problem -reinstall video drivers, cd Rom drivers, directx, Windows, get bios updates replace CD drive, processor, motherboard computer etc, I got a "no cd" file for the game from one of the "no CD" sites and the game ran fine without further problems. If it weren't for these sites, I could not play the game.
5 stars minus- 1 for the showstopping copy protection issues (I'd give it 0 stars if it weren't for the "no cd" sites)