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Ready Player One (2018)
Ready Player One is a 2018 American science fiction action film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline. Based on Cline's 2011 novel, the film stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, and Mark Rylance. The film is set in 2045, where much of humanity uses the OASIS, a virtual reality simulation, to escape the real world. Teenage orphan Wade…
Directed by Steven Spielberg · Shot by Janusz Kamiński · Cut by Michael Kahn, Sarah Broshar · Music by Alan Silvestri · Ratio 2.39:1 · 140 min
How it was made
- ILM produced around 900 visual effects shots for the OASIS sequences, and Spielberg met with the studio for three hours, three days a week throughout production, calling it his most difficult shoot since Saving Private Ryan.
- The film's Overlook Hotel sequence was built mainly from a digital recreation using high-quality telecine scans of Kubrick's original The Shining, supplemented by newly shot footage of real actors for scenes like the Grady twins; the new footage was processed with film grain and ageing effects to match the 1980 original, and the VFX team consulted Kubrick's own blueprints to build the hotel digitally.
- Digital Domain built virtual sets powered by game engines that Spielberg could explore by putting on a headset to scout locations and make adjustments, alongside handling motion capture and about 300 additional effects shots for the live-action portions.
- John Williams was initially set to score the film but left in 2017 to score The Post instead; Alan Silvestri took over and, at Spielberg's request, wove in his own Back to the Future themes along with quotes from Max Steiner's King Kong score and the Wendy Carlos/Rachel Elkind score for The Shining.
- Filming used Birmingham, England, standing in for Columbus, Ohio; an unannounced planned explosion at a car park there prompted local residents to call emergency services because the production had not given prior notice.
Behind the scenes
Elsewhere
More by Steven Spielberg
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