Nannying the Stars The Movies Guide

One of the most important rules in the movies is that you can make every employee do everything. If you want to, you can make a superstar out of a janitor and vice versa (although cleaning up trash won't be good for the star's mood). The most important people in the movie's credits are of course actors and a director. Hiring them is a choice that deserves deliberation. Before you decide to hire somebody, check out his statistics. Remember that potential employee's experience isn't the most important factor at all, because it is easily built up during the practice sessions (the situation is different when you need a star right away to, for example, fill in a gap in the credits to start shooting immediately). If you want to save yourself a lot of trouble later on, choose your stars looking at their resistance towards stress and addictions. What you're looking for are perks like "Doesn't stress easily" or so, and beware of "Loves alcohol" etc. It isn't really complicated, but quite often you won't really have the choice. Probably the biggest bug in The Movies' is the lack of people looking for a job. The point is to choose the best ones from the very narrow range you have, then.

Grumpy stars can be a pain in the arse if you don't take action early enough. Their tantrums, addictions and unexpected walkaways from the sets can delay the movie production to the extent that can cause serious financial problems (mostly in later phase of the game, when you can't really react with producing another movie on a short notice). To avoid such situations always monitor the Stress parameter of your stars, as it is the reason for 90% of Star-related problems. The Boredom factor isn't really an issue, because you can always make a star do some practicing (and thus kill two birds with one stone).

Lives to Eat, Easily Stressed, Easily Bored, Can't turn down a drink? Don't call us, we'll call you.

Three ways of de-stressing your stars are food, alcohol, and having fun with all the studio attractions like benches, playfields or trailers. In a way, it even helps just to give stars some free time to spend on their own, but it is the least efficient way ("let me do the thinking", you say). Food is a safer way than alcohol when it comes to addictions, but on the other hand it isn't as fast and effective. The only thing we have to keep in mind when letting a star drink or eat is how likely he is to become an addict. If he does, his work's effectiveness will suffer greatly and our movies will take even longer to shoot. The only solution then is the Rehab (which takes a lot of valuable time). Remember that sometimes you can just drag deserting stars back to the set. It isn't best for their mood, but helps to finish shooting. Try to avoid sending stars to Rehab during the movie production, it takes really too long for that.