The game's first scenario -- and the one I spent more than an hour playing -- serves as a sort of tutorial. Rather than simply teaching you the ropes in a consequence-less void, however, level one of The Movies will involve you setting the foundations of your budding celluloid empire, nurturing your young stars, and releasing your first few feature-length productions. But it's not all glitz and glamour. Being a high-powered studio exec means that you have to sweat the small stuff; things like making sure your staff has a place to go potty, that your grounds are attractive enough to provide a cheerful work environment, and that all the buildings on your lot are connected by foot-paths.
The tutorial process is seamless and informative. All the while, you're prodded along by pop-up bubbles guiding you -- via text and voice-over -- what you need to do in order to accomplish your goal, whatever it may be at the moment. Take turning a script into an actual movie: before your studio is able to craft its own scripts, you'll have to make due with what writers are willing to sell to you. These manifest themselves as tangible, slivered icons at the gates of your studio's lot. If you want to "make one happen," as it were, you grab it, and drop it into your casting office. From there, the building's interior will transform into a sort of interface which lets you know what sort of personnel you'll need to get things going. The pop-ups guided me through this every step of the way. My first film, entitled The Baggage Boy, required me to hire a director, two crew members, and, of course, a lead. It was off to hunt some heads.
First off was the talent. Lining up in front of my studio's acting school was a slew of willing talent. Like any good Hollywood executive, I picked two of them at random, dropped them into the building's corresponding partitions, and out emerged two soon-to-be stars. I forget their names at the moment, but no matter: they were ready for primetime, and I knew this in my bones. My disembodied hand picked each of them up, dropped them into the "director" and "lead" sections of the casting office, and off they went to rehearse.
Filling the crew roles was similarly simple; throngs of job-seekers had lined up at the door of my studio's crew facility, from whom I chose two at random, dropped them in, and out they came, fully trained, and ready to work. Once everyone was done rehearsing it was off to the set to shoot. Previously, I was prompted to construct a simple stage lot, which I was told would suffice for my first few productions. So off my cast and crew went to shoot.
