About
Reviews (1)
12 March 2009
The Movies
Around middle 2007, I became interested in film as a serious branch of art for people to display their aptitude for emotion, people direction, writing, and decor and compositionary designing. Otherwise known as acting, directing, screenwriting, art directing, and shooting a movie. Since then, my enthusiasm has grown exponentially. Eventually, it would make sense that not only would someone have enthusiasm for viewing an art form, but making it as well. To partially quote the Bible, "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle", than to get a film project finished. Therefore, I searched for some easier way for someone without any connections to make some sort of movie. I found this in the game, "The Movies". I bought this game having played a friend's copy earlier and falling in love with the idea. I would say that this game gives you an unprecedented amount of control over your product, even providing you with camera moves and character moments you might not have thought about before. The negatives are nagging. There is no concrete way to ensure continuity in your script, unless you are serious enough to write it out on paper outside of the game. The biggest lack? At the start of a new project, you are provided with certain choices as per the genre of your movie. First of all, it is personally insulting to be required to restrict your movie to a certain genre. Unless, of course, you want to make a strictly genre movie, which I'm not interested in in the least bit. Second, the genre choices are as follows: romance, sci-fi, action, horror. Where is the drama? Drama is the ultimate movie genre from which all others derive. Preferably, a drama remains a drama whether it has action, science fiction or romance elements. Alas, "The Movies" is not concerned whether a psuedo-auteur has the options he wants. The title says it all. It's not called, "Film", "Plot", "Directing", or even "Drama". This is about "The Movies". Most of the time spent playing is in making a new project. Most of the actual focus of the game is on owning your own film studio. You are forced into banal chores such as assigning directors and actors to your assorted projects starting up. Making sure the facilities are up to date, and making decisions based on budgetry limitations. This is something I abhor, being of the theory that an artist should be able to work of his own accord, regardless of budget, time, or other things. Most directors don't mind small budgets anyway. Back to the game, it is boring dealing with the money and construction and people and bathrooms. Then again, you could treat that as an artistic vision in and of itself, if you are interested in that sort of thing. I am not. All in all, if you desperately want to test out your ineptness with coherent filmmaking (and everyone is inept for at least the first movie), this game is worth the buy even if you have to wade through boring capitalist financial gaming first before you can truly create. Go ahead, buy it.