Tips for making money

[DemonViper]

Played multiple times with difference tactics and i constantly lose money.

Im only employing staff on a per movie basis to keep costs down but cant work out what im doing wrong. any tips or advise? i do buy cinemas but lthats not helping

[nosavynada]

Well... here goes...
- at first only can control seating #s so the closer you get to 100% each week makes more money. two factors go into this as you know. guessing how many you can get and advertising. for those my current strategy that works on hard mode is.
= Take the commercial value of the movie after post production (Example 6.4) and multiply by 3 (literally) so 6.4 x 3=19.2 so you would set 1st week to 19.2 perhaps round up.
Then for week 2 it will drop 10 to 50% depending on the commercial rating. if 8 or 9 then perhaps 10-20% for 6 or 7 then figure 1/3rd anything less is 50% ish.
Repeat for weeks 3 and 4.
So our example for 6.4 would be:
20
13
6
3
Note the above are in K so 20K etc.

you should make a decent profit at the above.

Advertising....
I advertise 6 weeks in front of release and through release.
depending on the audience i go with
newspaper and radio (Nate and NBG) and Spark (almost always) plus if love interest or romance i include Velvet) If can be shown kids then i include spice) I normally go with 4 or 5 choices for ads (they pay for themselves in seating) if you are only going with 3 choose Nate, NBG and Spark (may substitute Velvet for NBG.

Also always choose the cheap builder option (but for maintenance you should choose repair 2nd if choose Medium Landscaping otherwise 1st. You will be into your 3rd choice before need to repair perhaps 4th choice.

Dont waste money on speeding up upgrades under 2 or 3 hundred days.

As early as you can remember to buy the gifts (watches, cigars, whiskey etc.)
Use this when starting a project from script.
each position (cinematographer etc.) will show their happiness. If they are not green then there will be a gift box icon in upper right click that and give them gift(s) to make the happier. (you can give 2 of each type of gift max before it deducts from happiness).
You do this because happier staff do better work and a happy filming crew will make even a crap script into a decent or better one.
This applies for all stages but is very important for the Pre-production phase.

Also couple of other bits of advice for start...
- build the security building at start as well. Then when complete open it and after hiring manager - click on the people icon and hire at least 1 lvl 3 and 2 or 3 level 1s.
This way when the secret pops up you can assign the lvl 3 to it and clear it sooner.

Also this way you have bodyguards to assign to movies in the production phase which make it go smoother / allows you better choices when events pop up.

I typically research bodyguard then the one on the right to allow investigations into events.



That should do you.

There is a more in depth guide on the advertising... i had already gotten a good idea and it is working on the hard setting as well.

Good luck

[DemonViper]

Cant thank you enough for this. Actually making some money now. Assume my issue was actually the amount of cinemas and only do 1 advertising at a time. i thought because the cost of doing multiple was high i would lose more money

[Oobie]

Like he said the ads pay for themselves, usually in that opening week. I usually do 3-4 options, sometimes more if the film is like a 9+.

Also, you can fire the dept heads at the start, some of them are making 10-20K per month. Replace them with cheaper people, but try to make sure they are level 0 so they will level up quickly, allowing you to select the 10% CASH option. This will help make research faster overall later.

Doing the same with talent is tricky. Some of your starting crew have very high potential, but are asking for, say 5K/month, or 10K. I used to replace them, but now I just eat that cost because early on getting the 4-5* script is worth the 50-100K a year to pay that scriptwriter, or the editors, composers, etc. So, I keep them and just eat the cost. But fire those department heads!

[nosavynada]

You are welcome. After you get that down you use the two other ad options for more critic value movies and or to get .....more sophisticated movie goers and reviews. I mostly use the upper one (not at computer at the moment also if using...adult themes like nudity or if using non-standard themes like a woman lead etc.

[BANDIT-JACK 27]

Okay now here's some advice on how to survive the first 3 years of the film industry,
You have to understand that the game at the initial stage does not quite like it when you try to use non-linear improvements, I also 2-3 times started the passages and almost had bankrupt the most important thing to remember is that as soon as you are given the task to improve the landscape at the studio immediately switch on and then turn off immediately, the money it eats unrealistically much, so it is better to upgrade the possibility that the mood of employees does not fall at low landscaping.
Write as fast as possible scripts and hire no more than 6 writers, so you will shoot scripts faster.
Do not put your own post-production departments yet or you will go broke on utility costs, choose only specific advertising for tags and genres look in the manuals what genres are well combined with tags and who it is more likely to go, do not hire a huge number of actors and crew if you will not use them.
Pump up the hegemonic politics to gather a whole audience for 3 months, remember that all the themes that are proposed: the fight against the American way, sex, brutal violence will be banned, yes you can distribute these films but then you will have to pay fines, after 3 times you will get expelled from FSAA.
Also buy and sell movie theaters, when you first time will lose money - but your closer goal
Buy at least 100 then 300 - 750 - 900 movie theaters, then choose in Alliance ban
ban rentals for 8 weeks or more so that others competitors starts to sell their cinemas.
also buy analytics that really helps a lot
That at least first tips but then later - you figure out what's doing next

[fedostio]

Pay no attention to anyone and do only one thing:

Raise ticket prices as soon as you can. You have to survive until the academy is established, and then use all your influence to rise the prices.

[flu007]

Originally posted by BANDIT-JACK 27:

Okay now here's some advice on how to survive the first 3 years of the film industry,
You have to understand that the game at the initial stage does not quite like it when you try to use non-linear improvements, I also 2-3 times started the passages and almost had bankrupt the most important thing to remember is that as soon as you are given the task to improve the landscape at the studio immediately switch on and then turn off immediately, the money it eats unrealistically much, so it is better to upgrade the possibility that the mood of employees does not fall at low landscaping.

Hadn't even thought of that. I guess it's just easier then, though, to just not research the medium landscaping option until you're a few years in and money is no longer an issue (because you only get the prompt to upgrade it after you researched it.)

Do not put your own post-production departments yet or you will go broke on utility costs,

This one doesn't add up to me.
Your own Sound Studio costs 2120 per month, Concert Hall 2778 per month and Film Lab 3677 per month. Plus a tiny amount of electricity and water each.
I haven't pulled out a calculator or anything, but I reckon you only have to produce maybe 4 movies a year to make those worth it.


Anyway, a bunch of good tips out there to make/save money. I reckon there's several different tactics to get through the first few years.

Personally, financial caution and common sense always get me through the rocky early period just fine. My attitude in the beginning is: quality is great if it's cheap, but quantity is more important.

In the beginning, facilities are crap, screenwriters and post-production crew is low-skilled with no option to get better ones, so those will always bring the quality of your movies down. You can mitigate the screenwriters skills somewhat by using the workshop and picking elements that match, which certainly helps, but for the first few years your post production will usually drag you down a chunk.

So I don't care about hiring the best actors/directors/cinematographers for every movie at any cost, they'd just be polishing turds anyway. The starting cast and crew will do just fine.

I do still hire additional people, obviously, but gradually, as needed and/or whenever a cheap quality option comes on the market.

And then start churning out movies.

I aim to get as fast as possible to having 7 movies 'on my game screen' at any point. Meaning 1 or 2 in the theaters, a few in the distribution office waiting for release, and a few in the various stages of production. And as soon as one's theatrical run is over, I start pre-production on a new one.

Most of those will be kinda crap, but they're cheap. 3.x-4.x quality, but a budget of maybe 150-250k. (all shot in studio, some with critical scenes only, to keep the shooting period down, preferably in the modern city setting.)

They get a 4 week run in the theater - if they're on the low end of crap they only get released in my own theaters, so no expensive rental fees, and they get a tiny advertising campaign of maybe 3 weeks total (1 before release and first 2 weeks of release, with two or three outlets.) If they're slightly less crap, I may rent some extra theaters (especially early on when you barely have any of your own) and make the advertising campaign one or two weeks longer.

Obviously these don't make me rich, but it's very rare that one of them actually loses money. Most make a modest 1-200k profit, sometimes one does a bit better. But if you release one of those per month, then they cover your running costs and then some.

And then between those, I focus my higher quality cast and crew - whenever I can find those for cheap - on the better scripts to make 6.5-7.5ish quality movies, and those do get a longer run in more theaters and with a longer advertising campaign.

And over time, your cast and crew gets better, you find more good cheap ones, your facilities improve, you own more theaters, and after a few years those level 3-4 movies turn into level 5-6 and the level 6.5-7.5 turn into 8 and 9s and you're looking for ways to spend more so you don't have to pay as much taxes. :)

That's what works for me. Like I said though, plenty of room for (somewhat) different strategies.

[nosavynada]

"Most make a modest 1-200k profit, sometimes one does a bit better."

I think as long as you have or are renting about 10-12k seating for those same 3 to 4 rating and ads to 6 weeks you will see closer to 1 mil per movie. I do on 3-4 rated movies. sometimes less but on avg about 1M. might try as an experiment on one just to see. run ads on at least 4 companies big 2 Nate and Spark then something to fit the audience like Velvet or radio.

[flu007]

Originally posted by nosavynada:

"Most make a modest 1-200k profit, sometimes one does a bit better."

I think as long as you have or are renting about 10-12k seating for those same 3 to 4 rating and ads to 6 weeks you will see closer to 1 mil per movie. I do on 3-4 rated movies. sometimes less but on avg about 1M. might try as an experiment on one just to see. run ads on at least 4 companies big 2 Nate and Spark then something to fit the audience like Velvet or radio.

I believe it.

Can't really test it in my current run, I'd have to try hard and hire some extra crap crew again to make a move below 5.5ish. :)

But yea, the 1-200k is for the 3 star or lower movies, when they're closer to or above 4 stars I usually bump up the theaters and advertising slightly and the profit goes up to 3-400k.

Ballpark figures, because to be honest, as soon as I built up to this chain of always having at least one movie in the theaters (and it doesn't take all that long) then I basically stop paying attention to the numbers.
Money keeps going up, great, that's all I need. At the moment it doesn't really matter if you have 30 mil in the bank or 300 mil. Hopefully eventually it will, when the game gets into a more modern era with higher average budgets etc.
But I reckon that, by then, they'll do plenty of tweaking and balancing. (The profits seem fairly consistent and predictable at the moment, so your numbers don't particularly surprise me.

[BANDIT-JACK 27]

also i say a few thoughts - which is not obvious - nature locations boost up quality more effective then studio locations, synergy of tags also boost up your rate,
When you paying for independent cinemas you should concentrate on first two 2 weeks
then drastically reduce the amount at 3 and 4 weeks.
For example 1-2weeks 10K - 10K then 3 week 5000 4 week 4000
the audience goes down in waves after each week
Then 2 month 5K 5K then 3000K 3000K

[BANDIT-JACK 27]

A logistics office will help keep you in the mood of workers for field locations, so it's extremely important.,
Especially when the movie is running for a very long time, so you also need to put the logistics office together with the schedule adjustment office.