I posted this on the subreddit and am putting it here for people who don't use it.

Advertising: No more than 4. Use common sense to figure out which demographic prefers the movie genre. Romance = Girls, Drama / Detective = Intellectuals, Adventure / Comedy = anything that's not the previous choices etc)

My best guesses.

Starting Movies: Comedy + Drama + Romance are cheap and fast to film especially if you pick the City and Town settings. Fast turnover for projects and training and more income.

Services: Researching the Gift tree beats the continuous service tree. The more gift variety you have the more you can influence the outcome of your shoots.

Happiness: Happy crew (Cinematographers, Producers, Directors and Actors) increases movie quality. If you can spend gifts before pre-production. If money is tight save it for the pre-production of a good script + quality crew.

Contracts: Contract quality Actors and Crew for X Movies over X Years and pay with cash over services and other benefits. They average 2 movies a year so you'll be saving money in the short term. Once you make bank buy them out just so your competitors can't use them.

You can spend gifts before negotiating a contract with a talent so that you can come in with a Loyalty discount.

Scout contracted talents from other companies that you want and make a not when their date is up and snipe them.

Security Actions: Don't use surveillance on your own Talents you plan on keeping. If they get spotted their Loyalty goes to 0 and they will leave with no chance of renegotiating.

Head of Departments + Research: Hire the guy who has more ranks on the left skill which lets you expedite research for money. And always upgrade that. Spend as much as you can afford to speed up research. Literally saves years off your life.

B and C teams: Write 1 script yourself accounting for your top talents. Have your other writers churn out the other crappier scripts and ideas or have them come up with more topics while you buy crappy scripts from freelance writers. Note that having more than 7 writers slows down the entire writing process. The B and C movies are to train future talents, supplement income and experiment with topic combinations or advertising demographics.

Sound Stage vs Location: Sound stages are cheaper and faster to film in compared to outdoors. But it takes longer to hit 3/4 star Sound Stages compared to Location. Get a level 2 Sound Stage and build a couple at the beginning and go straight for level 3 Location in your research.

The Code: Once the FSAA has formed be sure to familiarize yourself with what themes are restricted. I'm not sure what the drawback of being kicked out of the FSAA means though. Turns out you only pay fines and can't be kicked out at the current version (0.8)

1935: Save as much money as you can before October 1935. When you see the news of Jews fleeing Germany, the month after a large number of talents will be available. Snatch them up. (Got 2 level 7 Writers, Editors and Composers each. As well as 5 actors.)

Early Dilemmas:

Eat the 500k lawsuit, sometimes you develop too quickly that you don't have the chance to build the minimum required for it. Later you find that you need to repair the buildings slowing everything down especially in early game where you need productions going to make money. As one of the comments explained, accept the contract and ignore it. It buys you 1 year and you can research better legal teams and a legal boost from the mayor.

Always help the Police. Keeps your studio from being raided or assaulted. Nothing sucks more than a currently working crew or actor having to spend time in the hospital or jail.