Apple - Games - Articles - The Movies: Stunts & Effects

By Brad Cook

They’re known as “gags” in moviemaking parlance: Those thrilling moments where someone leaps from a truck just before it explodes, or runs across a bullet-riddled battlefield, or performs a similar death-defying feat. Gags have been around since Buster Keaton did his own stunts in his silent films, but modern-day technology allows filmmakers to push the excitement further, and that’s where Stunts & Effects comes in.

Add this expansion pack to The Movies and start hiring stunt performers who will stand in for your regular actors, keeping them from harm when the action gets heated. Your stuntmen and women can attempt anything from basic pratfalls to rappelling out of a flying helicopter. Just make sure you use the new training facilities to build up their skills between movies, and don’t forget to build a hospital in case a stunt goes awry.

Of Particle Effects and Blue Screens

You add stunt performers to your studio the same way you groom cast, crew, directors, and screenwriters: Build a stunt school and choose from the wannabes who line up outside it. You can direct your scribes to craft scripts that include stunts, which come with varying degrees of difficulty. Don’t put an inexperienced stuntman in a film with really tough stunts, or he could fail to pull them off, leading to poor reviews and a miserable showing at the box office.

You’ll find plenty of new sets where your stunt performers can show off their skills, from a lush jungle to a bustling city street. Blue and green screen sets let you add special effects later, thanks to the expansion pack’s new miniatures, which include a devastated urban landscape and an alien mother ship. And don’t forget to add scenes featuring cars, trucks, and helicopters.

Any time something explodes or suffers an impact, Stunts & Effects comes through with advanced particle effects that give a realistic touch to fireballs, shattering glass, steam, and other dangerous situations. When you’re in Advanced Moviemaking mode, you can use the new free cam to set up dramatic angles for your shots, while the new plot construction stages give you fresh ways to tell your stories.

Get Right Into the Good Stuff

With the expansion pack installed, The Movies now lets you begin a new game in Stunts & Effects mode, which starts in the 1960s and the coming of age of big-budget blockbusters. Many of the new sets, costumes, and technologies will be unlocked, and you can take control of your studio with a fully-populated lot, or start with a fresh slate that requires you to place all of your buildings first.

Experienced movie moguls know that each five years of in-game time bring about another awards ceremony, and Stunts & Effects adds a Best Stunt Performer award to the roster. Winning one garners a prize for your studio, such as unlocking new content for your movies, and you can also earn bonuses for completing goals, like pulling off a level three difficulty stunt in a film.

We see some prospects already lined up outside your new stunt school. Hire a couple of them and see how well they can handle being thrown from an explosion and running across a battlefield. Then bask in the glory of great reviews and big box office returns.

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The Movies

Learn more about The Movies by reading our previous feature which covers the original version of the game. Take control of your own movie studio and make all the decisions, from which stars and directors to hire and fire to the types of films you want to make to the exact placement of sets.

System Requirements:

Full version of The Movies
Mac OS X version 10.4
1.67GHz PowerPC G4 or Intel processor (2GHz PowerPC G5 or Intel recommended)
512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
64MB video RAM (Does not support GMA graphics cards with shared RAM)
1GB hard disk space
DVD-ROM drive
Multi-button mouse recommended

Swimming With the Stunt Sharks

You can’t replace a stunt performer once a movie has started shooting, so if a stunt that’s beyond their ability injures them, they’ll have to try the next gag in a depleted state. If they wind up incapacitated, you’ll need to hospitalize them and let the actors attempt their own stunts, if more need to be shot. Your actors won’t be happy about that.
When a helmet icon pops out of the side of a movie’s icon along the right side of the screen, a scene involving a stunt is about to shoot. Click on the movie’s icon to head straight to the relevant set and watch the action unfold.
Hire multiple stunt performers so that one is always training while the others are shooting their scenes.
Not every movie you make has to involve stunts. Drop a screenwriter on the helmet icon within a genre in the scriptwriting building to develop a film that includes stunts. If you don’t, the script won’t include stunts, which is okay if you’re low on stunt performers and simply need to get another movie into production.
Adding stunts to a movie creates a greater risk/reward scenario: pull off spectacular stunts and you’ll receive critical acclaim, along with larger box office spoils. But the more difficult the stunt, the greater the chance your stuntman could fail to perform it well, hurting the final result.
Films with special effects and stunts take longer to shoot, so sprinkle in some less-intense projects so you always have a few movies playing in theaters at any given time.
You’ll notice robot and monster costumes among the new ones in the game. Combine them with the miniature city set and create movies on par with Toho’s classic Godzilla films.
A male stunt performer can support a female role, and vice-versa, so don’t worry about gender when assigning that part of a film. Just pick the best person for the job.