Advanced Movie-Maker

The single most powerful building in the game is the Custom Script Office, inside which is the Advanced Movie-Maker room (referred to hereafter as AMM). Beside that room will always be a blank script. Clicking and dragging it into the room starts the process of writing your own movie; even if you don't publish them online, you'll have a lot of fun creating your own movies.

Before I go on, also note that you can click-drag a completed script here to edit it (even if the computer wrote it), or click-drag a movie that's finished or in the process of shooting here to edit and re-shoot scenes. Either way, the process is the same; and even better, once you get the hang of the tools, they're VERY easy to use.

As in the other sections, I make no comment on your view of artistic design. What I recommend for scene usages is just that: a recommendation. The primary goal of this section is to educate and instruct you on how to use the tools to their fullest potential no matter what movie you're planning.

Throughout all the screens of the AMM is a button in the top-right corner with a lowercase "I." Clicking this will lead you to the different tutorials of the AMM, with video, to help explain things. Not all things are covered however, but you can trust us to fill in any holes.

The initial screen isn't necessarily the "fun" part, but it does contain quite a few options for your consideration. First and foremost, at the top, is a place for you to name your movie. The button at the far right of the text line (with a die) allows you randomize the name, and the randomization will be based on whatever genre you selected.

Speaking of genre, you can select that here, as well as the template structure. If you're making a movie for any reason other than the game itself—that is, if you're making one for online publication or just your own amusement—you can ignore the genre selection. Exported movies leave no marks of a certain genre, and remember the actors' actual performance does not differ no matter what their experience level.

Now, for the structure, there will be absolutely no difference on the final product no matter what you choose here. The structure template only is supposed to be for your benefit and notes, and to allow the game to suggest scenes to you. When using the Freeform structure (which essentially means no structure), the computer cannot make suggestions for scenes. Of course, if you're making a movie for online publication, you probably know what's going where anyway.

Okay, the bottom three boxes are your star boxes. These will show you who is going to be the lead actor and two supporting actors. You can disable a position by clicking the small checkbox in the top-left of the person preview boxes. You could theoretically disable all three, and have a movie containing only extras, but that's just silly, isn't it?

To assign an actor to the given role, click-drag their Star Card on the left side to the given positions. You can also assign mannequins too, but we'll touch on that in a second (including what a mannequin is).

At the bottom, you can rename the characters they portray. Probably if you're making a movie for online publication, you'll want to change these. The names will only appear in the credits of the movie, but going into detail here gives it that "professional edge."

Finally, from here, you can assign an actor's wardrobe. First, assign them to one of the top three positions. Then drag their Star Card to the right side of the screen where the clothes hanger sits (it's about halfway up the screen). This will take you to the Makeover Department, where you can assign them a costume and customize the heck out of it.

In the top-left corner of the screen is a text box with the actor's name. If you change this, the actor's name will be permanently altered unless you send them to another trip to the Makeover Department. The only way to change character names is from the front screen.

Setting the costume here (from the first screen) basically sets that actor's costume for the whole movie. However, you can still change their costume by scene as necessary per scene. (PyroFalkon in the example movie uses three costumes, two of which are nearly identical.) Details of changing costumes for specific scenes and why it may be a good idea will come soon.

Okay, with your movie titled and your big three positions filled, it's time to hit the big checkmark and move on! But before we get to more fun stuff, I need to address…

You'll soon be adding scenes, so we have to talk about what mannequins are and what they represent. In any given scene, you can have people positioned in many different places. Mannequins are needed to basically show you animation without confusing you with too many colors. Mannequins are, in short and literally, stand-ins for your actors.

You can assign mannequins to your three main acting positions as needed. It's preferred that you know ahead of time who's going to be in those positions, but sometimes that's not possible.

There are five colors of mannequins, and each color represents a specific use…

The red mannequin is your lead actor.
Remember that just because he's your lead actor doesn't mean he has to be the hero, or survive, or whatever. If you're making a movie for the game itself, it seems like the only difference is that your lead actor's performance is more heavily weighted than the supporting actors' performances when it comes to the movie's final rating.

The green and blue mannequins are your supporting actors.
Just don't mix them up!

The grayish-white mannequins are extras.
Typically, extras will only be in one scene. Of course, thanks to the Makeover Department, you could have them in many scenes and no one would recognize them.

Light brown mannequins don't actually exist.
They allow you to see the animation of a given position. If a light brown mannequin is holding or manipulating a prop, the prop will not actually be seen in the final shot. Also, if you disable one of the three lead positions of the movie, a wooden mannequin will be in the main box instead of the actor. These mannequins are extremely important, and you'll see why in a moment.

Mannequins cannot be dressed into costume. This means that setting up scenes that have mannequins in them will essentially give your less control. You should, therefore, try to cast your actors before you're even out of the Advanced Movie-Maker area by dragging specific ones onto the scenes.

If you must use the mannequins to plan, you're not entirely out of luck. You can follow these steps anytime to get things how you want…

1. Create the movie in the AMM with the colored mannequins serving as the actors.
2. Drag the completed script icon to the casting office.
3. Cast the movie.
4. Drag the icon to the Shoot It room.
5. Drag the icon immediately back to the AMM room.
6. The actors you cast will have replaced the mannequins, and now you can outfit them however you need.

It's time to get your hands dirty with the main meat of the game! To simplify things, this subsection will give you the quick basics of how to create a scene and place actors. The next subsection will list what all the fun buttons on the right side of the screen do, as they're all completely optional and are just used to detail the scene.

At the bottom of the screen is the storyboard. If you're using a template structure, you'll see each section at the bottom with its own color. There will be a pair of white boxes in each section (or the "only" section of a Freeform structure).

The storyboard is further divided into two rows. The top row shows what set has been selected, and the bottom row shows what scene has been selected. If they're open (like they are now), you have no scene selected, but all you have to do is click one to start things in motion!

Okay, let's say for the sake of this example that we're working with an action movie with the freeform structure. Because the stage set is available from the beginning, we'll use that one.

Click either white box in the storyboard, and you'll be presented with a list of all available sets. If a set is "lit," then you have it built somewhere on the lot. If it's dimmer, it will list the cost of the set; you can still write a movie for that set, but you'll need to buy it before those scenes get shot.

Click the stage set, and the game will present you with a list of all the scenes available to you. Some scenes are locked from the beginning, and must be researched. (You're never told when scenes get unlocked, but they generally come with other technology upgrades.) Also, some scenes are dependant to the set itself.

All the buttons at the bottom are filters. If they're a brighter white, that means the filter is currently off. All filters are off when you first come to this screen, except for the "Suggested" filter, although that's disabled if you've used the freeform structure. Using those filters, you can narrow down what scene you're looking for. With the search tools at the bottom, it helps even more.

Just to practice playing with the filters, we're looking for the scene called "Showing a Card." Turn on the Intro, Incidental, and Loving filters by clicking them (which will turn them a somewhat dark gray), and you'll greatly shrink the list. Go ahead and select the "Showing a Card" scene.

The game will load, and at first nothing seems to change. That's because the camera angle is about 100 feet above the stage, at an angle where you can't see a damn thing. Hold the right mouse button down, and drag the mouse to rotate and zoom your camera. Or, even better: on the right side of the screen, the bottom-most button (it's in the black area of the storyboard) has a single eyeball on it. Click that, and you get to see the view from how it look in the movie itself.

You'll see the scene play out, with the mannequins or actors chatting. Now, each actor or mannequin you currently see represents a position an actor can occupy. If you notice, the person in the center (holding the card) is doing most of the acting. The person on the left is looking over his shoulder and reacting. The person on the right is basically wasting space.

This is why those light brown mannequins are important. Let's say for this scene that you didn't want that third person there (because maybe you only have two stars). Look above the star cards on the left side of the screen, and you'll see two arrows. Click them to find the mannequins. Now, click and drag the brown mannequin at the bottom, and hover him over the right person. An outline should appear around the person. Release the mouse button, and the mannequin will take the place of the person. Check out the before and after shots below.

Now when the movie is shot, only my alter-ego and his friend will be used for the scene. The third position will be ignored.

Moving actors who are in the scene already is just as easy. Just hover the mouse over a star until you see the off-white outline, then click-and-drag. That should "pick up" the actor, and you can place him somewhere else. Note that normally when you move an actor from one position to another, he'll be replaced by an extra (white mannequin). You'll need to then place a brown mannequin or another actor in the old position, unless you're happy having an extra there.

That's really all there is to adding a scene. Just know that some scenes for some sets are absolutely full of possible positions for actors. You may need to keep the camera in its free mode to look around and move around the actors. Just be sure to view the scene from the movie camera's eye before you go to the next scene.

If you need to edit a scene, double-click the lower row of the storyboard. You can double-click the upper row as well, but that will force you to choose a new set as well. By click-dragging a scene, you can change its order in the storyboard.

Even with the hundreds of scenes in the game, you can further customize them with all the buttons at the right side of the screen. We'll cover all of them here, from top to bottom.

The top button, with the lowercase I, leads to the tutorials.
That's a pretty good place to start.

The second button from the top is the Dress Set button.
Dressing the set means placing props around it to make it seem a little less… boring. You can place as many of these props as you wish, although placing too many will make a scene "too busy"; in other words, your viewers' eyes can't focus on what you want them to focus on. Dressing a set should only be used to augment a scene, not make it confusing.

In my example movie, there are five scenes on the same set (Rural: Field). It looks a little dumb to have my alter-ego running through the same set five times, so each time, I dressed it differently. There's a dog and a bush in the first one, a few trees in the second, a few different trees in different positions in the third, and so on.

Additionally, dressing the set a certain way can inflect a different mood. If you chose the Musty Cellar set, dressing it with guns, knives, and axes gives off a whole different mood than dressing it with a table, water cooler, a computer, and phone.

Like when you move people around, remember to look through the movie camera's eye to make sure your new props are actually seen, but don't obstruct the camera or something.

The third button is the Change Props button.
Similar to the dress set button, this one allows you swap out props that are being used in the scene. For example, if an actor is holding a gun, you can use this button to change what kind of gun he's holding. You can also disable what they're holding, but it won't change the animation, so it will look like they're just miming.

Generally, if a prop is held by someone who doesn't exist, the prop will not be seen. For example, if an animation has a guy holding an axe, but you've assigned a brown mannequin to that position, then the axe will not be seen during shooting. No weapon will be floating, basically.

The exception to that, for some reason, is the horse. If a horse is in a scene, it will be there even if its rider is a brown mannequin. You'll need to disable the horse through this button unless you truly want a horse just standing there.

The fourth button is the Weather and Lighting button.
You'll have lighting options from the beginning, but you may have to research a couple things to get access to weather changes.

Using these sliders, you can make the lighting simulate daylight, nighttime, or evening. The weather can be clear, rainy, or foggy. Lighting and weather can subtly be used to set moods and such.

The fifth button is the Backdrop button.
Most scenes use backdrops for various background effects. Changing the backdrop from a scary dark cemetery to a lonely bright desert road may vastly change the mood of the scene.

You'll normally want to keep an eye on making your backdrop agree with your lighting and weather. Let's say you're using the Suburban Living Room 1 set. If it's nighttime, you'll want the darker lighting and the Suburban Street Night backdrop. If they disagree with each other, it may confuse your viewer at worst, or just make them think you're an amateur at best.

The sixth button toggles the brown mannequins.
By default, the brown mannequins are on. This is necessary to see all the possible positions you can place actors, and it lets you moves actors to previously empty positions. However, you may want to toggle them off as you finish up a scene to see where the actors will be without your eye being distracted by positions that won't be filled.

The seventh button can be called the Director's button.
This button makes the biggest impact of them all. It allows you to adjust various things depending on the scene. This can include the level of violence in a fight scene, the moods of the actors during conversation scenes, reactions of actors when something happens in a scene, and so on. Incorrect moods will make your movie unable to be understood.

You can also assign alternate camera angles here, provided you have the right technology. Alternate angles sort of lets you use the same scene twice without feeling redundant.

The eighth button leads to the Makeover Department.
If you are looking at a scene, you can drag an actor here to change his outfit for that scene only. Because of the way that works, you could use a single extra to look like different extras throughout the movie. Or, you can change one of your main actor's clothes for a few scenes for a specific reason. For example, after a fight, you can apply the face makeup for a scene to show them scarred and bloody.

The ninth button is the trash can.
If you need to delete a scene, click and drag it from the storyboard to this button.

Once you're done with the movie, click the checkmark in the bottom-right corner of the screen. This will exit the AMM, and the completed script will be sitting beside the Custom Script Office. Then, you can drag it to the Casting Office and start shooting it.

Remember that if there's a problem, you can drag any script or movie icon back to the AMM to edit scenes and re-shoot them. As long as you have not released the movie, you can do this.

In the finished movie (see the Post Production section of the guide for more details), there will be a credits screen at the beginning. The actors and characters who are listed are taken from the last scene you viewed in the AMM. That means, if you last viewed a scene that only had your lead actor, then only his name and character (such as "PyroFalkon as Himself") will be on the credit screen. If you want to get the names of all three of your main stars on the credits, you'll need to shoot a scene with all three, and view that one last before exiting the AMM.

NOTE: It seems that after the v1.1 patch, this has been fixed, and all the main actors' and actresses' names will be listed at the beginning with their characters regardless of what scene you were last watching. Plus, extras will never be credited. In other words, this bug has been squashed.