Lionhead's The Movies may not have been the blockbuster that Activision would have hoped for, however the movie-making sim certainly caught the interest of a passionate audience. Eager to extend the experience with fresh content as the title naturally implies but still uncertain over the continued future of the brand, Lionhead does have at least one further reward for the loyal fans in the shape of the forthcoming expansion pack, Stunts & Effects.

Coming soon after Microsoft's acquisition of the UK developer TVG had an opportunity to chat with Lionhead's Brynley Gibson, Project Lead on The Movies: Stunts & Effects, about the title and the hopes for the series future.

The Movies appears to have split audiences down the middle, winning critical acclaim but suffering from poor sales; what was your opinion on The Movies performance and is there still a future in the brand beyond Stunt & Effects?

The concept of The Movies was unique but not terribly difficult to either get across to people or to get them excited over. Pretty much everyone loves movies and loves (or hates) the cult of celebrity and this is what the game used at its core. As you say it did receive critical acclaim and is the highest rated game Lionhead have ever produced. However the PC market had some serious issues when release time came and still does. The anticipation of the next generation certainly stunted sales across all games platforms which is a real shame. On the future of the franchise; Lionhead currently want to concentrate on new IP and that is a good deal of what Lionhead is about, new concepts, new challenges, ultimately resulting in new ambitious IP. However as they say never say never again.

Using examples can you elaborate on the role of stuntmen within the expansion pack and the new avenues for filmmaking that these allow; are they an additional resource like writers, actors and directors?

"Lionhead currently want to concentrate on new IP and that is a good deal of what Lionhead is about..."

Stuntmen are a new staff type for players to manage and there is lovely mechanic in balancing what stunts the player should set people to do and how successful they are. Stuntmen and Stars have two new stats, a stunt skill and condition. When choosing a stunt for a film players need to look at the difficulty and then the skill of who they want to take on the task. The harder the stunt, the higher the scene can get rated but of course the greater the risk of a horrific injury. Another choice facing players is whether to use a Stuntman or the Star themselves for the stunt. Audiences love a Star to do their own stunts but the risk of having your star in hospital for the next month may simply be too expensive. We've added a way of training stuntmen with some neat little training facilities and these alongside the Stunt school and the Hospital cover the new facilities in the expansion.

Similarly perhaps you could elaborate on the role that special effects have within the game now, and the lengths to which players will have control over these?

It could be said that the phrase 'Special FX' for us sums up our aim of raising the bar visually in the expansion. Make it more action packed, make it more visually stimulating, add a wow factor in the Movies people can make. Primarily we have done this by adding a particle FX engine to The Movies which allows for spectacular effects that simply were not possible in the original. This means better fire, smoke and explosions, new weather effects such as intensity of rain and wind, shattering glass, upgraded muzzle flashes, lasers, space ship engines and even flashing police car lights. Other effects include outside of these are destructible cars, parallaxing backdrop technology and miniature remote controlled models. The 'effects' also then refer to a game play aspect, that is the player using the technologies, scenes and sets that are counted as 'effects' to improve the rating of their movies.

In terms of numbers how many new props, costumes and sets will be added with the expansion pack and perhaps you could describe some of these to us?

Asset wise the add on pack contains 15 sets, 58 costumes with variations, 9 new vehicles, countless supporting props and miniature models and over 1100 scenes across sets both old and new. An interesting set to mention is that of the Miniature City. On this set, one of several miniatures the scenes allow for giant monsters, UFO invasions, sweeping establishing shots, city wide fire and destruction, miniature model car chases and more. Many costumes support the action nature of the expansion with emergency service outfits and new sci-fi factions in abundance as well as more contemporary clothing. The new vehicles include full size helicopters, space shuttles and a range of vans. We very much believe that we have achieved the goal of supporting the original sku by adding a huge number of new assets that work with the original yet are fresh, exciting and will enable players to make a whole range of new looking movies.

"We all love The Movies here at Lionhead..."

What developments to the "Advanced Movie Maker" will Stunts & Effects bring; will players have an even greater level of control over the movies they're making?

We have made several tweaks to the Advanced Movie Maker such as easier prop placement (saving & copying etc), thumbnail pickers in the costume screen and the addition of the camera overlays feature. This feature allows the player to place overlays such as flecks of mud on the lens or add an overlay to make the shot seem as if it was being recorded by a video camera and has similar customisation possibilities as the backdrops.

The biggest change in AMM is that of the Free Camera mode. We believe this feature is possibly the most important in the entire expansion. The player will be able to place the camera anywhere and smoothly blend between two camera set ups whilst also altering the field of view. This means that every scene will now be able to be re-shot in the way the movie makers out there want it. It is simple, powerful and will hugely expand the options to film makers.

Do you believe Stunts & Effects will bolster interest within The Movies and is it a brand that can continue selling as opposed to one that shifts a million units within the first week?

We all love The Movies here at Lionhead; it is a unique game and still the only dedicated mass market 3D film maker title out there. We believe that The Movies will be one of those games not just looked upon fondly in the future but one that keeps selling even when current technology far outstrips its requirements.

The Movies seems to be ideally suited to community created content and there does seem to be a little about; do you have any plans to release an SDK opening up the ability for gamers to create new content in light of reduced support for The Propshop?

At the moment we cannot really talk about how we will be supporting The Movies in the future or if and when we will be releasing any of the tools for making scenes and controlling other aspects of the game. However it should be noted that those clever chaps out there in the community have created many mod tools already. We have seen some great modded props, sets and costumes and hope that with some of the features provided in the expansion this escalates.

How will the connectivity between the original and the expansion pack work; will it be possible to transfer your old movies to Stunts & Effects in order to make use of the new features?

Early on we decided we wanted to make a product that would fully integrate with the original sku and expand upon both the content and the game play. We identified three types of possible players of this expansion. Those who had never played The Movies, players midway through a game and those who have already played and completed The Movies. For the newbie it is possible to play the game from the start with all interface upgrades available. For those already playing the game Stunts & Effects will seamlessly integrate and they will be able to carry on playing their save game. Finally for those who have already completed the game and just want to get straight into the action then they can use the quick start mode. This is a scenario which starts the player in 1960 with a basic lot, money, stars and staff at the start of the stunt tutorial.

How will the blue screen be featured; will it be possible to substitute your own created backdrops onto the blue-screen or select from pre-determined ones?

We have created two new backdrop style sets dubbed the Blue and the Green Screen sets. The Blue Screen set is one for the movie makers out there. The set consists of a large open space with a curved backdrop with a great number of scenes placed on the set. What makes this set different is that the floor texture can also be changed with a slider and like backdrops the player can add their own floors into the game. By adding props and changing the floor and backdrops this set can become near any environment the players wants to create.

The Green Screen Set is similar to the car set from the original game. It has two backdrops, a side backdrop that curves round onto the floor and a 'rear projection' backdrop at one end. It is built for scenes with miniature models and aerial vehicles. Many of the new backdrops now have parallax scrolling so an added sense of depth exists in the art work. The 'rear' projection backdrops allow forward and backwards motion rather than just side to side motion

These 'rear projection' backdrops also now appear on the screens of the space bridge sets and on the car set from the original game. We can now shoot through a cars windscreen with it driving down the street or show a space ship travelling into hyper space from the POV of the captain's chair.

Have your overall thoughts for The Movies changed since its release; what have you learnt and what do you hope for Stunts & Effects?

A big question we all had was what aspect of the movies would capture people's imagination, the tycoon element or the movie making. In many of the reviews it has been the movie making aspect that has caught the eye of people. It is also worth noting that our online site has seen a much higher take up than predicted so it seems making movies is the popular choice. With this being the case although we were working on the concept of doing an expansion that was content heavy this leant us towards putting in more for the movie makers both in the assets and the functionality.

Working on the add on pack was much easier in that so many of the questions we had to answer on making The Movies such as how on earth are we going to let players make movies? Are already answered and so we can concentrate on the polish, the game play, the balance and getting the content super cool

We hope and believe that the content in Stunts & Effects blow people away and that the new features stimulate the imaginations and experimental nature of our community. There are plenty of new items to play with and with the free camera especially Stunts & Effects should attract new and old players to The Movies. Although it may be a cliché, overall our hope would be that people enjoy what we have created as much as we have had making it and that people are in agreement that it is a perfect accompaniment to The Movies.

TVG would like to thank Brynley Gibson for answering our questions and Cathy Campos for providing this opportunity. The Movies: Stunts & Effects is scheduled for a UK release during the summer, so look out for further coverage soon...