The Movies
- Platform: PC
- Published by: Activision
- Developed by: Lionhead Studios
- Release Date: Nov 8, 2005
- Genre: Strategy
- Multiplayer: No
- Online: No
The Movies Interview
-- October 14, 2005 by: Chris Remo
Shack: The Movies has very much of a "tycoon" feel, which makes sense given Liohead's pedigree, but it's probably better known for its strong movie creation aspect. Do you see players who prefer one of those two elements being able to gravitate towards one at the exclusion of the other?
Brynley Gibson: Yes. We wanted to create a game with those two elements you mentioned, but there's the whole creating a star and nurturing a star element too, those are really the three parts of the game.
Shack: So, a little bit of The Sims in there too.
Brynley Gibson: Welllll, we don't use that word. [laughs]
Shack: Of course, of course.
Brynley Gibson: A lifestyle game, we like to say. But certainly, yes, you could play the game that way. Let's say I'm into my tycoon game or I'm into my lifestyle game but I don't really care what's in my film. You need to make films to play the game, but it's possible to make films and not fiddle around with the moviemaking side of it at all. You can go in, you can hire scriptwriters to write scripts, the game generates scripts for you, you take that script, you chuck it into casting, you throw in a director and some actors, it would fill in the extras for you, it would fill in the crew, choose the equipment for you and you just say "shoot it." You don't even have to watch it, if you were that uninterested in it. So, yes, you can definitely play it like that.
Now on the flip side, if I wasn't really too interested in how to play the game, I'm not really into tycoon games, but I did love the moviemaking aspect, I could go into sandbox mode, I could switch off certain elements of the game--the stars misbehaving, the build time to build a building, the decay of buildings. I could give myself any amount of money I wanted to have, and in that way I could go into a world, just put down the sets I wanted, get the stars I wanted, and just make films. Just play with the filmmaking side of it.
Shack: From what I've seen the of the filmmaking tool, it's a very robust engine. What went into that aspect?
Brynley Gibson: Well, it's a big part of the game, and a lot of development did go into making that part of the game. Firstly, we have the scenes that make up the films, and we went with quite a realistic animation style. It's much more realistic than the animation you'll see in the studio lot, which is much more stylized, a bit more over the top. We created a scripting tool which uses flow charts to build a scene, so rather than having to code scripting for it we use these flowcharts so it's a very quick and simple tool to build scenes quickly. As a result we have thousands upon thousands of scenes now across forty or so sets.
Shack: And how does that work in terms of the player?
Brynley Gibson: Well, there are two ways of making a film in the game. There's the simple method, which is that you take a script that's already there and you cast the actors in it, and you shoot it, and you can then click on each scene that's being shot and fiddle around with each scene.
But the complicated way is the Advanced Movie Maker, the AMM, and this is something we went through many, many iterations of. It's one screen that has to allow the player to create a whole film, but it has to be very easy to use. So this is where you pick the scenes that you want, you cast the actors in each role that you want, you place props, you add lighting, you change weather effects. You can also go into each scene and there are sliders for each scene, and the sliders can change different aspects of that scene. So, for example, it could change the level of violence in each scene. It can change the way the scene is shot; do they shoot it very slowly or is it fast-edited? You can then go in and change the props that people use in their hands, so you can change a cigar to a cigarette, that kind of element. You can also pick technology types, so you can go in and have it use a dolly, so it would film it with moving dolly shots in just that scene. So you can really go and change around any element that you want.
One thing that's kind of a late addition we've added is that the player can now turn off any role, from an extra to a main part in a scene. So I could have a scene where it's two guys talking, but there's a really nice extra role in the background of some guy smoking a cigarette or something. I think, "Well actually, I want my star to be in that," and I could just take that scene, turn off the main conversation, and just shoot the guy in the background, and just have that as my scene as kind of a moody atmospheric shot.
We've also put something in to try and help out newbies to make a story, because narrative is--well, once you've been told the idea of the Hero's Journey, or any narrative theory, it suddenly can kind of ruin films in that way. We looked at a few different structuralist theories; Vladimir Propp was a chap who wrote some stuff, and a guy called Claude Levi-Strauss, these guys had various ideas of what makes a story. We looked at this stuff and thought, is there a way we can show players a trick to help them make a story? So we have added in this guideline; it's not really to do with the game at all, but it is there as a guideline to say, these are introduction scenes, you should probably start your film with some of these. Here's a confrontation, here's a resolution. That's at its most simple. You should be able to get a good strong narrative arc with smaller arcs going on underneath it. We're always trying to help the player to achieve that.
Shack: Is that structural setup taken into account at all when it comes to the film reviews that are part of the game?
Brynley Gibson: Well, the simulation uses a lot of different elements to rate your film. The structure of the film is not really a big part of it because we took a decision quite early on that when it cames to writing the simulation, we thought we shouldn't criticize people's artistic choices. We thought it would be devastating to players, and there's no way we can check how well the VO [voiceover] they recorded was acted or written, or how the subtitles were used. There's no way we can tell that. So we didn't want players to spend hours of their lives making these films--and it is, generally, brilliant film--just for the game to go, "Your film sucks. It's rubbish." So the simulation uses much more game world-y aspects. It uses the boredom factor of the genre, if people keep on churning out the same films; it checks the technology you're using, if it's fresh technology; the quality of your script, the quality of your stars, PR marketing, the happiness of your stars, what kind of mood they were in when they acted the film. These are all really tangible things that the player can see and do.
We do have a review system for the films that you make, little clips from newspapers--kind of like the gossip pages. They're little cutouts, and we wanted them to have lots of content--take it or leave it--for the player, for those that need it to understand how to improve. So there was a question of how to tie that up into a way that people would find interesting, instead of just "plus two points" or whatever. So we wrote these review fragments that are quite amusing, and it's all part of trying to creat a real world. You're always in your studio, you never go outside your studio world. So we have these newspapers, we have the award studios, and that's really where you meet the rival studios in the game.
Now, the artistic side, that's why we have the whole online part of the game, where you can go and upload your movies. That's where, if you've made these great films, your peers can look at that film and go "Yes, that is a great movie!" or "No, your film actually sucks," you know, that kind of thing. So it's quite different, quite separate.
Shack: So there will be a rating system on the site for giving feedback?
Brynley Gibson: Right, you can go on and each person has a virtual movie studio they get when they register and they get a free bit of space where they can upload films. Then people can go on and write comments and vote on your film. So if you win all the votes, you'll get an award in a monthly award ceremony.
Shack: Like a film festival.
Brynley Gibson: Yes, and then you'll get special downloadable content that you can use in your game. There's also downloadable content that you can buy just by being on the site, by being part of the community, by uploading films, rating films; you'll earn online dollars and you can download more sets and more scenes and more costumes. So you don't have to be the greatest filmmaker in the world to still get some of the extra content and keep adding to your films. We hope through this community--well, we've already got a lot of fansites that have sprung up. Lionhead has a pretty cool fan following, and there are already these movie studios out there that have set themselves up, saying "Right, well I'm a film studio, and these are my actors," and the game hasn't even come out. But with those guys along with our official site we hope to foster a real community where people will start trading user-made content, but also will start trading things like voice acting talent. So there might be a guy who has a great voice out there, but he's not great at making films. People would hear his voice online and say "I want you to act in my film." Or there might be somebody who's great at editing films, so somebody will send him his movie, saying "Please, could you edit my film for me?" Working together, to create better movies. So we think that by cooperation, and even just by seeing other people's films, the films are going to get better and better as they go along.
Continue to the next page to read about voiceovers, star creation, and McCarthyist DJs.
