Tye Sheridan Ready Player One

An Adventure Too Big For The Real World

Cast: Ben Mendelsohn, Tye Sheridan, Mark Rylance, Olivia Cooke
Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Action, Thriller
Rated: M
Running Time: 140 minutes

Synopsis: From filmmaker Steven Spielberg comes the action adventure Ready Player One, based on Ernest Cline's bestseller of the same name, which has become a worldwide phenomenon.

In the year 2045, the real world is a harsh place. The only time Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) truly feels alive is when he escapes to the OASIS, an immersive virtual universe where most of humanity spend their days. In the OASIS, you can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone"the only limits are your own imagination. The OASIS was created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance), who left his immense fortune and total control of the OASIS to the winner of a three-part contest he designed to find a worthy heir. When Wade conquers the first challenge of the reality-bending treasure hunt, he and his friends"known as the High Five"are hurled into a fantastical universe of discovery and danger to save the OASIS and their world.

Ready Player One
Release Date: March 29th, 2018

About The Production

Book To Screen
People come to the OASIS for all the things they can do. But they stay because of all the things they can be.

Little more than 30 years ago, it seemed almost inconceivable that you could log onto a computer, create your own profile"true or not"and connect with people anywhere on the globe in real time. But what if, 30 years from now, you could log in, become your own personal avatar"true or not"and interact with people in an infinite virtual world? Consider the possibilities...and the perils.

That is the basic premise of Ernest Cline's bestseller Ready Player One, which captured the imagination of one of the most revered and successful filmmakers of all time: Steven Spielberg. 'It's a huge, sprawling adventure that intercuts between two completely different worlds," he says. 'I think Ernest Cline is a visionary who wrote of a future that's actually not so far away from where we're heading with the evolution of virtual reality."

The author credits Spielberg with being one of his greatest influences in creating his first novel. 'It's hard to quantify what a profound effect Steven Spielberg's work has had on my life and my interests, but I could not have written Ready Player One if I had not grown up on a steady diet of his films. Just as anyone who grew up with a passion for movies in the 1970s and `80s, his work is woven into the fabric of my life. So much of it ended up informing the story and the way I chose to write it, and the evidence of that is seen throughout the book."

'Ready Player One" is set in 2045, when people will have the ability to enter into a digital universe called the OASIS, where you go wherever you want, do whatever you like, be whomever or whatever you choose to be. With the population beset by unemployment, poverty, overcrowding, and utter hopelessness, 'it's a good time to escape into a virtual world where you can live an extraordinary life through your avatar," says Steven Spielberg. 'All you need is an imagination, and that will take you far in the OASIS. But when you escape from reality, you're also, in a way, divesting yourself of any real human contact. So, the story is entertaining, but there is also a bit of a social commentary."

Producer Kristie Macosko Krieger, who has been working alongside Steven Spielberg for more than two decades, adds, 'What's special about this film is that, amidst all the action, it highlights some compelling themes that are both timely and timeless. It's a coming-of-age story that celebrates the bonds of friendship, the discovery of first love, and acceptance, both of yourself and others. It's a sci-fi epic with a heart that's quintessentially Steven Spielberg."

Cline reveals that his inspiration for the story came from some of the touchstones of his youth. 'The initial idea came from the Atari game Adventure, which was the very first videogame to have an Easter egg in it"its designer, Warren Robinett, had created a secret room within the game that had his name inside it. It was my first time finding something inside a virtual world hidden by the creator of that world. It was a profound experience that really stuck with me. I was also a huge fan of Roald Dahl's works, especially the Willy Wonka books, and one day the idea occurred to me: What if Willy Wonka had been a videogame designer instead of a candy maker? I started thinking about all the riddles and puzzles this eccentric billionaire could leave behind to find a worthy successor, and I knew I was on to something."

Cline's eccentric billionaire became the character of James Halliday, the reclusive cocreator of the OASIS, played by Mark Rylance. 'The entire world lives within his dream"the dream from which he built an entire world," says Steven Spielberg. 'But when he died he had no heirs, so he left behind a contest: the first to defeat three challenges, each rewarded with a key, and then find the Egg hidden somewhere inside the OASIS, will inherit everything." In life, Halliday gave people an escape from reality. In death, he gave them a future to hope for"a game within a game, with his vast fortune and full ownership of the OASIS as its prize.

Steven Spielberg remarks, 'As you can imagine, everybody is trying to locate Halliday's Easter egg, including our unlikely young hero, Wade Watts."

Winning would be the ultimate gamechanger and Wade has devoted every waking hour to deciphering the clues and being, as his rallying cry says, 'first to the key, first to the Egg." However, the quest becomes much more than a treasure hunt, as he and his friends, collectively called the High Five, come to discover there is something more important than money at stake.

Tye Sheridan, who stars as Wade Watts, says, 'This giant corporation, Innovative Online Industries, or IOI, is trying to gain the OASIS, so they'll have total control over everything. Our five characters, who are called -Gunters,' as in egg hunters, are the underdogs, and you cheer for them because they are in it for the right reason. They want to win the contest to save the OASIS."

The buzz surrounding the book Ready Player One was already at a high pitch when it was first published in August 2011. It not only lived up to expectations; it surpassed them in spectacular fashion. A runaway hit, the #1 New York Times Best Seller has been published in more than 50 countries. However, well before its release, plans for a movie were already in the works.

Producer Donald De Line recalls, 'I read the book more than a year before it was published and thought it was fantastic. I believe the story appeals to so many people for different reasons; everybody can find something in this world they can connect to. You don't have to be a gamer because you can relate to the human aspects and the road Wade Watts has to travel to become the hero in the story. And then there's the amazing adventure and all the pop culture references."

Almost all of those references evoke the zeitgeist of a specific decade to which Cline feels a strong connection: the 1980s. He explains, 'Halliday built his game around the things he loved, and that got me excited because I realised his passions could mirror my own. For me, the `80s were the most formative time in my life because that was the decade in which I was a teenager. It was also when I got my first videogame console and my first home computer. And it was the dawn of the internet age.

'I wondered if perhaps the book would only appeal to people around my age who were nostalgic for the `80s," Cline continues. 'But that has not been the case because it speaks to the way we live our lives now. Most of us have an actual identity and a virtual identity in the form of our social media profiles. And, not unlike the avatars in the story, you can shape those based on how you want other people to see you."

Producer Dan Farah, Cline's longtime colleague and the first person to whom he entrusted his book, adds, 'I was fortunate to have Ernie share the earliest draft of his book with me. From the start, I could see how culturally relevant the story was. And as time goes on, it seems we are getting more and more disconnected from real-world personal interactions"we text, we post, we keep in touch and get caught up on one another's lives via social media.

Ready Player One paints a picture of what society could look like if we continue down that road. It's fiction, but it doesn't feel too far-fetched. It depicts what our future could really look like."

Screenwriter Zak Penn reveals that, coincidentally, he had already become acquainted with Cline through another game-related project. Penn notes, 'I was working on a documentary about the fall of Atari, and one of the people I was asked to approach was Ernie Cline, so we ended up meeting and becoming friendly even before I put pen to paper, as they say."
Cline offers, 'When Zak came on board, he wrote an amazing draft that captured the spirit of my novel while also making the story more cinematic. He was also kind enough to consult with me on all the changes he made. It was his draft that got Steven Spielberg interested enough to read my novel. It was such a wonderful process, and I'm so grateful to Zak for the huge role he played in bringing Ready Player One to the screen."

With a draft of the script in hand, it came time to put someone at the helm. De Line says, 'We knew we needed a brilliant storyteller, visually and narratively, and a director who could also handle the technology"all of the things that Steven Spielberg obviously is. Of course, he is always going to be at the top of your list, but, realistically, what are the odds that you're actually going to get him? But it's good to have a dream," he smiles, 'so I said, -Sure, let's give it to Steven Spielberg.' And he read it right away and loved it."

Steven Spielberg confirms, 'They sent me the book, as well as the script, which I read first. I became completely enthralled with the idea of this juxtaposition of two worlds. Then I read the book and it really spun me out because it was so deep and so layered. It was esoteric; it was scary; it was accessible... I was hooked!"

Both Cline and Farah share that having Steven Spielberg direct the film was, as they both put it, 'beyond a dream come true." Farah expands, 'When you're on a set with Steven Spielberg, you can't help but be almost preemptively nostalgic"aware of the fact that you're going to remember and want to relive those moments for the rest of your life."

Cline adds, 'Even now, it seems surreal to me...I'm still awestruck."

It is a sentiment shared by the cast. Lena Waithe, who plays Wade's best friend, Aech, attests, 'Steven Spielberg literally defined cinema for people in my generation, and changed our culture. I think if someone were to put all his movies in a time capsule, together they would provide a sense of how our world has evolved and grown. So to be part of his legacy was of such huge importance to me and all of us."

In bringing the novel to the screen, it was vital to the filmmakers to be respectful of the source material, as well as its many fans. 'But," Steven Spielberg acknowledges, 'every book has to go through a process of adaptation when it goes from a literary work to a cinematic one. I think we ended up with just the right elements to tell a truly wonderful story."

'We had to amalgamate a lot of things and move some things around for the film, but it's still the heart of my original story," assures Cline. 'When fans of the book ask me about it, I just tell them not to worry"that I haven't worried since the day Steven Spielberg signed on to make the movie."

One of the changes involved the director himself. He explains, 'The book had a lot of references to my own movies as a director and producer from the `80s, but I did not want the film to be me holding up a mirror to myself from that time. We left a couple of references in, but it mainly features the cultural imprints that other filmmakers, artists, fashion designers and musicians from that era had made."

Although set in Columbus, Ohio, 'Ready Player One" was filmed in England, with the bulk of principal photography being achieved at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden. The production pushed the envelope of filmmaking technology, with Steven Spielberg collaborating with the visual effects wizards at ILM and Digital Domain, among others, to take audiences into the fantastical world of the OASIS. To further accentuate the stark contrast between the OASIS and the grittier real world, Steven Spielberg shot scenes in the latter on film while scenes in the virtual universe were shot digitally.

'The layers we had to achieve to put the OASIS on screen made it one of the most complicated things I've ever done," the veteran filmmaker states. 'There was motion capture, live action, computer animation... It was really like making four movies at the same time."

Spielberg even utilized today's virtual reality tools to direct shots in the futuristic virtual reality of the OASIS. Macosko Krieger details, 'Using VR goggles, he could actually step into the digital sets, get a 360-degree view of the environments and figure out camera angles and how he was going to shoot it. It was a first for us, and it opened up so many possibilities for Steven Spielberg. But it was a difficult process, so I'm very glad this movie was in his hands."

Despite the advancements, Steven Spielberg emphasises, 'I never make movies for the sake of technology; I only use it to tell a better story. The technology is there to help this kind of film come into existence, but then it should disappear so all you're focused on is the story and the characters."

The Cast
The High Five

At first glance, Wade Watts would not appear to be your typical image of a hero.
Steven Spielberg says, 'Every film I produced or directed in the `80s had underdogs as heroes, and Wade is certainly an underdog. He's a smart but somewhat disenfranchised young man who is in a very unhappy place in his life: his parents have died and he's living with his aunt and her current boyfriend in a rundown vertical trailer park in Columbus, Ohio, called the Stacks. His only personal satisfaction comes in trying to win Halliday's contest in the OASIS."

Tye Sheridan affirms, 'Wade idolises James Halliday and has devoted countless hours to studying every detail of his life, looking for any insight that will help him in his quest to be -first to the Egg.'"

Wade is the only Gunter introduced first as his true self. Once in the OASIS, Wade disappears into his avatar, Parzival, a name inspired by the knight who found the Holy Grail. Describing his dual role, Sheridan says, 'Wade and Parzival are very different people; Parzival is everything Wade is not. Wade is kind of this skittish guy who's shy and closed off from everyone, while Parzival is confident, brave, resourceful and very skilled."

Parzival is also more social. In fact, Steven Spielberg comments, 'His only friends are in the OASIS. He's never met any of them as anything but their avatars and he's happy with that. Everything that matters to him exists on this virtual plane."

Parzival's closest, and distinctly largest, friend is the towering Aech, whom Lena Waithe identifies as 'part human, part machine. He's got huge muscles, but he's also very chill, just super cool. Aech is well known in the OASIS as a top-rated mechanic who can build or fix just about anything. It's just an awesome persona that my character created for herself, but at the same time she knows she is keeping something from her best friend."

Waithe's use of feminine pronouns divulges her character's secret. Steven Spielberg shares, 'Aech turns out to stand for Helen, an African-American woman who has, for her own reasons, chosen a different gender for her avatar."

'I think it's because Helen doesn't want people to judge her or assume she isn't capable based solely on her gender, and that made sense to me," says Waithe. 'As a guy, certain things aren't questioned"like the fact that she's a great mechanic. There were a lot of layers to this role that I really appreciated. I love that this character is referred to as both a he and a she, which is very forward thinking and speaks to the way we live now. We can determine the pronouns with which we identify."

'Lena is an amazing force of nature and she hit it out of the park with her performance," Spielberg states. 'She made Helen one of our most beloved characters"the perfect combination of strong, hip and fun."

Although Parzival and Aech are friends, Parzival is adamant that, when it comes to the game, he does not 'clan up," preferring to work alone. But everything changes for him when he comes face to face with Art3mis, who will open his mind and heart in ways he never could have expected. Named for the Greek goddess of the hunt, Art3mis is something of a legend among the Gunters for her kickass style of play.

'Art3mis is tough, fearless and very driven, so she seems a bit cutthroat in that sense," says Olivia Cooke, who stars as Art3mis and her real-world alter ego, Samantha. 'But her reasons for competing are different from the other Gunters. She knows from personal experience the terrible things that will happen if IOI takes sole control of the OASIS, so she wants to win for the greater good."

Unlike some humans and their avatars, 'Samantha and Art3mis are essentially the same person, apart from some physical differences, including one that has caused Samantha to have some insecurities," Cooke relates. 'But as far as personality, goals and morals go...those are qualities Samantha strives to keep consistent."

Halliday's first challenge is a no-holds-barred race through a virtual New York City"a race that no one has ever won and most who try 'lose their s**t," meaning it costs them everything.

At the start of the race, Parzival is stunned to see the famed Art3mis take up a position right next to him"she riding her Kaneda bike from 'Akira," and he driving his 'Back to the Future" DeLorean. Cooke remarks, 'Parzival has kind of idolized her from afar, but Art3mis barely notices him until he proves himself during the race. And that's how their tumultuous, budding romance begins. At first, she thinks his heart isn't in the right place"that he just wants to win the game for his own personal gain. But then she discovers that he genuinely cares about people and about preserving Halliday's vision for the OASIS, which takes her by surprise. But still, Art3mis keeps her eyes on the prize...until Parzival wins the first challenge and things turn insidious with IOI. That's when the real Samantha knows she has to step out and meet Wade."

However, Wade has no idea what he's in store for when Samantha greets him with the stunning declaration, -Welcome to the rebellion, Wade.'"

Steven Spielberg remarks, 'One of the most fascinating aspects of this story is what happens when these characters"who've only known one another as avatars"meet as human beings. When they finally come together in the real world, they have some very interesting awakenings."

Tye Sheridan adds, 'I love that -Ready Player One' delivers such an important message about embracing who you are. All the heroes in our movie are different types of people. It shouldn't matter what your race, gender, age or physical appearance is."

Cooke was cast before Sheridan, so his chemistry with her was integral to him landing his role. Macosko Krieger recalls, 'We were already 99 percent sure Tye Sheridan was our Wade, but we needed him to come in and read with Olivia. We knew the second the two of them acted together that they were the perfect Wade and Samantha."

When, after five long years, Parzival is the first and only name to top the OASIS Leaderboard, he becomes an overnight celebrity...and a target. The powerful head of IOI, Nolan Sorrento, seeing Wade as a threat, has drastically upped the ante of the game"to life or death.

Steven Spielberg says, 'Sorrento doesn't want some upstart winning Halliday's fortune. He wants it for himself and will do anything to stop Wade. And I mean anything. Now Wade has to clan up to win the next two challenges before IOI's army of players, called the Sixers, do." The High Five is born: Wade/Parzival, Samantha/Art3mis, Helen/Aech and, completing the team, Daito and Sho.

Win Morisaki plays Daito, a powerful Japanese Samurai warrior who is supremely skilled with a sword and in martial arts. He is the avatar of a very zen young man named Toshiro. Morisaki remembers, 'I auditioned in Japan and then came to Los Angeles to meet Steven Spielberg. When they told me I got the part, I couldn't believe it. It's my first international film and it's so exciting."

Newcomer Philip Zhao plays the role of Sho, a tough ninja fighter, whose real-world name is Zhou and whose age comes as a surprise to his friends. The young actor won the role over hundreds of other young hopefuls in an open casting call when his father sent in a video of him in action. Zhao says, 'Sho is a sassy 11 year old who hates being judged by his age. He looks up to Daito and tries to act like an adult because he's hiding his true identity." With courage and maturity that belie his youth, Zhou more than gains the respect of his peers. 'For me, it's always great to work with young actors, so I had the most fun casting Tye Sheridan, Olivia, Lena, Win and Philip," Steven Spielberg says. 'They were able to take their characters and make them into something even beyond what's on the page, and that's always what I look for."

The Creator

The OASIS"as well as the three-part contest to inherit it"was conceived by the gifted but eccentric James Halliday. Because he had provided the populace an escape from their otherwise hopeless lives, James Halliday is idolized, especially by the Gunters. They pride themselves on knowing everything there is to know about James Halliday, down to the most trivial minutiae. Ironically, after his passing, the famously reclusive multibillionaire granted anyone and everyone total access to his life through his meticulously detailed living journals"chronicling every event, every predilection, every triumph and every regret. Buried somewhere within those annals are all the clues needed to win the game.

'It's quite nice to play a character who is rather elusive," says Mark Rylance, who plays James Halliday, as well as his wizard-like avatar, Anorak, who presides over the game. While he is the catalyst for the story and his presence is felt throughout, 'James Halliday is rarely seen, which allowed us not to sacrifice the questions and the mystery about him," the actor adds.

'Ready Player One" marks Rylance's third collaboration with Spielberg, who observes, 'Mark brought James Halliday lovingly to life with a bit of vulnerability and a kind of terminal shyness. He created a character who is near and dear to my heart."

Mark Rylance says he welcomed the opportunity to team again with the director. 'You can definitely go to different places and risk a little more when you work with someone repeatedly. But the most fun thing about being on set with Steven is when something unexpected happens"when a scene goes off in a particular direction or develops into something more spontaneous. He gets very excited by that and encourages it, which was kind of remarkable on this film when you consider that he was also having to deal with a lot of new technology."

The OASIS was James Halliday's brainchild, but he had developed it with his best friend, Ogden Morrow, who was also his partner in their company, Gregarious Games. De Line explains, 'James Halliday and Morrow were both brilliant men and dear friends. James Halliday loved computers, but he wasn't as good with interpersonal relationships on the human side of things, which is interesting because it's something of a parallel to Wade Watts. But Morrow was very different from him."

Cast in the role of Ogden Morrow, Simon Pegg remarks, 'James Halliday was the driving creative force behind the OASIS, but it was Ogden Morrow who was there to help make it a reality and bring his idea to the masses. They had a friendship that lasted for many years, until it became complicated. It was lovely to play a character like that."

In the early days of Gregarious Games, when the OASIS was in its infancy, James Halliday and Morrow had an over-eager intern, whose main responsibility was getting their coffee order right. His name? Nolan Sorrento.

IOI

Nolan Sorrento has come a long way since those gofer days at Gregarious Games. Ben Mendelsohn, who plays the role, offers, 'Nolan started out as a bit of a loser, but he was able to become the head of the world's second-largest corporation, Innovative Online Industries. They control all the hardware and gear you need to play in the OASIS. In other words, -You want visors, a haptic suit, gloves or whatever? Fine. Come see me.'"

However, in spite of having amassed enormous wealth and power, the Machiavellian Sorrento is not content with being number two, and taking over the OASIS would make him unstoppable. He will do whatever it takes to win Halliday's contest"not that he's actually doing any of the work. 'Sorrento has enormous resources, so all the little gamers out there? He can buy thousands of them and send them into the OASIS to find those three keys for him," says Mendelsohn.

Sorrento's minions are called the Sixers because they are known only by numbers, no names. To arm the Sixers with information, he also has an Oology Department"a collection of bright young men and women who spend all day, every day, trying to decode Halliday's secrets. But true Gunters, like the High Five, are not for sale. Cline says, 'Wade and the other Gunters know that if IOI gets control of the OASIS, the whole nature of the place will change, so the idea of it being taken over by a conglomerate that would monetize it and take away their freedom is horrifying to them. And Nolan, as a kind of soulless corporate drone, personifies everything they're afraid of. For him, it's all about money and control, not about love of the OASIS as it was always meant to be."

Before casting Mendelsohn in 'Ready Player One," Steven Spielberg was already a fan. He attests, 'I first saw Ben in the TV series -Bloodline,' which I was completely infatuated with. I said to myself, -I don't know when or in what, but I am going to work with that guy.' Ben is a very eclectic, multilayered actor. He can do anything; he can play anybody."

The admiration is mutual. 'If you're familiar with Steven's canon, and then experience the way he works, you can feel that he's got a more visceral sense of cinema"the movement of it, the emotional peaks, the story beats...," Mendelsohn remarks. 'In the arena of making films, he is the governor. There is no one who has what he has. No one."

Even with his Sixers and Oologists working overtime, Sorrento isn't taking any chances that they can beat Wade. He has employed two relentless enforcers, each operating on a different plane. The bounty hunter known as i-R0k, voiced by T.J. Miller, is stalking Parzival in the OASIS. There is no mistaking how dangerous the character is, as he is fully armored, except for his torso, the entirety of which is the ominous visage of an open skull with huge fangs. Meanwhile, IOI's head of security, F'Nale Zandor, is on the trail of Wade Watts in the physical world.

Hannah John-Kamen, who plays F'Nale, says, 'She is a woman on a mission. She is bent on stopping Wade and his friends from winning by whatever means necessary. F'Nale is actually not in the book, so I didn't have that as a guide. But when Steven was describing the role to me, he said, -She is someone you wouldn't want to bring home to meet your mother,' and I totally got her," she smiles.

F'Nale and i-R0k are the only main characters seen exclusively in their sphere. Everyone else switches back and forth between their true identity and their avatar. And for the actors, director and visual effects teams, that presented a number of unique challenges.

Capturing The Performances

Through the magic of motion capture and computer animation, the actors not only portrayed their real-life roles, but also were able to bring their avatar counterparts to life. The process involved an intricate working alliance between Spielberg, his cast, production designer Adam Stockhausen, costume designer Kasia Walicka Maimone, and the two main visual effects houses, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Digital Domain.

Stockhausen and Walicka Maimone, together with ILM's VFX supervisors Roger Guyett and Grady Cofer, animation supervisor David Shirk, virtual production concept design supervisor Alex Jaeger and others, worked closely with Spielberg to evolve every aspect of the virtual characters, from their overall appearance and movement style to hairstyles, costumes, and the unique digital textures that are visible on the characters' skin.

Grady Cofer says, 'The development of the avatars was quite an effort. ILM got involved early on, working with Adam and Kasia to help prototype the designs as they evolved. We always had to keep in mind that these avatars are virtual, but they are being driven by real-world actors."

Roger Guyett agrees, noting, 'It was very important to Steven Spielberg, and to us, that we convey the distinct personalities the cast brought to their characters. And the more we got to know them, and the more we saw their work, it couldn't help but impact some of the design choices we made."

'Art3mis was an interesting character to tackle," David Shirk says, 'because she has those giant eyes and your attention immediately snaps to them when you look at her. It gives her an almost elfin quality. Parzival was one of the most difficult characters to nail down because there were so many different facets to him. He had to be the everyman that the audience could identify with; he had to be the hero, but he still had to be a kid; he had to be attractive but not too good looking... It was just a really long process to figure out a design that fit the role and that everyone liked."

The design of Aech represented the greatest disparity between a human and her alter ego. 'Adam Stockhausen came up with some really fascinating looks," Grady Cofer says. 'Aech is a mechanic so he is part machine with hydraulic parts, which was a creative launching point for that character. If you look closely, his skin resembles the tough hide of a rhinoceros and there's also some manta ray patterning on his head. Those are the kinds of visual choices Helen made to present herself in a certain way in the OASIS. She's quite a special character."

Digital Domain, led by virtual production supervisor and producer Gary Roberts, was responsible for obtaining the motion capture data and head-mounted camera footage, which was accomplished on nearly empty soundstages, called the volume"essentially a blank canvas with gridlines on the floor and only the most basic framework of set pieces and physical props.

Everything, from the avatars to their environments, would ultimately be fully created by the ILM team.

The young cast members playing the High Five"all of whom were novices in the realm of performance capture"agree that the process was demanding but singularly rewarding. Olivia Cooke affirms, 'It's a good test for an actor because you are forced to live completely in your imagination. You can't rely on anything external to get you into your role or your surroundings because you don't have anything. The best part was that because we were doing something so new and so alien to us, we naturally bonded. There were no two ways about it; we were all in it together."

'You can only learn about motion capture by doing it," adds Lena Waithe. 'It takes a beat to really get the hang of it and to embrace it, but I gotta say, I really had fun doing it.

You're in these full-body suits with little dots everywhere, and you have on a kind of helmet with a camera in your face. It can be a little daunting at first, but the cool thing about it was I felt like I could do anything. There is a lot of freedom on the mocap side, which I started to appreciate and really loved."

The actors were especially grateful for the guidance of their director. Tye Sheridan says, 'Steven was always very engaged with us and clear about his vision. It was so helpful for us to be on the same page with him and to know exactly what he wanted. The entire experience was incredible; I learned so much."

Although he had worked with motion capture on 'The Adventures of Tintin" and 'The BFG," Steven Spielberg was entering uncharted territory on 'Ready Player One""using cutting-edge VR technology as a tool to direct in a virtual environment. Wearing a VR headset, he could scout an entirely digital set, block the actors as their avatars, and plan his shots.

He details, 'Every single set in the OASIS is virtual, so they created an avatar for me that let me to walk through the space and see the actual set. And once I figured out how I was going to shoot each sequence, I asked the actors to put on the goggles so they could get a feeling of what their environment looked like. Otherwise you're acting in a big white room with a bunch of digital cameras looking down at you. It's confusing for any actor or director to walk onto a bare-naked set and try to imagine what's there. With the goggles on, we didn't have to imagine. All we had to do was remember what it looked like when we were back in the motion capture volume."

Steven Spielberg also utilised a custom virtual camera rig specially developed for him by motion capture production supervisor Clint Spillers, who had worked with the director on both of his previous mocap films. Having made note of Steven Spielberg's likes and dislikes on those projects, Spillers consulted with robotic engineer Jim Kundig at Digital Domain to develop and fabricate a lighter, ergonomically friendly handheld virtual camera rig, complete with its own small screen to monitor the real-time game engine render. 'Steven Spielberg could quickly toggle through lenses or adjust his perspective with the push of a button. It's the slickest camera rig ever designed," Spillers says with a smile.

Once Steven Spielberg got the performance he wanted, he would go into the V-Cam tent, where"viewing the scene on multiple screens"he could frame his shot and do all of the camera coverage that, on a typical film set, would require several takes.

All of the motion capture data and head-mounted camera footage was delivered to ILM for the final animation and rendering of each character. ILM's Oscar-winning Facial Capture System was used to replicate every detail of the actors' performances. Grady Cofer says, 'For all the advanced rendering and effects that we were bringing to bear on this film, if Steven Spielberg wasn't making an emotional connection to the character on the screen, it wouldn't work for him at all. So that was a great barometer for us in maintaining the integrity of the original performances. We weren't interested in redesigning what the actors did; we wanted to translate the essence of it to their avatars."

To populate the OASIS, especially during the climactic battle sequence, ILM developed a state-of-the-art crowd system, by which they had the ability to generate thousands of digital characters.

A World Of Pure Imagination

ILM was also responsible for realising the entire virtual universe of the OASIS, as designed by Adam Stockhausen. He shares, 'The major questions in designing the OASIS arose from the fact that we were starting with a blank sheet of paper. It's straight out of imagination, so what is it? What did we want it to be? How do we make a space that feels appropriate to the story and the characters and seems truthful even though it's not entirely based on reality?"

Nevertheless, Roger Guyett says, 'You want it to feel like an actual place, and to that end, we shifted more and more towards a realistic approach. So there's a greater degree of photorealism than we had anticipated at the start."

The lighting was integral to achieving that effect. Grady Cofer offers, 'One of the most important things to Steven was that we lit the OASIS in a live-action way. So we put on our director of photography hats and studied the terrific work that he and Janusz Kaminski have done through the years. We really worked to create cinematic lighting scenarios that underscored the action or emotion of the scenes."

Roger Guyett adds, 'Janusz came in at various steps along the way and embraced our approach, so we were happy about that. But more than anything, Steven Spielberg was the driving force. He's very sensitive to lighting and contrast and color...but of course he is. He's a consummate filmmaker."

The first challenge in Halliday's three-part competition for ownership of the OASIS is a wild, breakneck race through a virtual New York, with a crazy array of hazards"including some inspired by pop culture"popping up along the way. The sequence posed a different but equally tricky challenge to the design and VFX teams. 'It's kind of New York City, and it's kind of not," Stockhausen notes. 'Things connect that shouldn't: we have the Manhattan Bridge connecting to Liberty Island and spinning on a corkscrew like a carnival ride. The streets are moving and shifting, and the entire thing is a sort of gigantic pinball machine version of the city."

'The race sequence was so complicated," David Shirk states. 'The complexity of the shots, the detail, the effects work, the cutting… It took an enormous amount of effort to bring something to the screen that was so fast-paced and exciting, but you could still follow it. I think the only drawback to the race sequence being that fast is that the audience won't be able to see the incredible amount of detail that some of the vehicles had."

When Art3mis's bike is totaled in the race, Parzival brings her to Aech's garage to have it repaired. For astute fans, the workshop contains a veritable feast of Easter eggs, including a number of iconic vehicles and ships from among the most memorable sci-fi films. Looming in the garage is the title character from the beloved animated feature 'The Iron Giant."

Parzival and Art3mis have their first date at The Distracted Globe, a fabulous nightclub in the OASIS, where the gravity-defying dance floor is not a floor at all. To enable their characters to fly, Sheridan and Cooke were lifted on harnesses during filming on the volume stage. However, for the more intricate spinning and flipping moves, they were doubled by professional dancers and even a trapeze artist, who were similarly harnessed.

For the club sequence, Kasia Walicka Maimone dressed Art3mis in a red dress, the texture of which she says, 'is meant to suggest an aquatic creature. When we first meet her, she is in a sleek racer outfit, but her look for the club is her most feminine. We created an original vocabulary for her costumes, influenced by the `80s punk rock scene and current street trends. When you have the right elements, new things emerge, and that's how Art3mis's look came to life."

For those who prefer deathmatches to dancing there is Planet Doom, which Stockhausen describes as 'a total player-versus-player combat zone...just a 24/7 free-for-all with all these different battles going on." It is where hardcore gamers can make some serious coin and collect artifacts and power-ups.

Located within the OASIS is the entire compendium of Halliday's expansive journals, which are the main reference source for both the Gunters and IOI's oologists. They have all been catalogued into an ultra-modern library of sorts, the design of which was partially inspired by the library in 'The Breakfast Club."

The collection is administered by a rather imperious Curator, modeled after the late actor Arthur Treacher, whose name became synonymous with the quintessential English butler. The journals are presented in a composite of the virtual and real worlds as, upon request, moments in Halliday's life are replayed in live-action, three-dimensional dioramas within the digital universe.

The Real World

The filmmakers employed different techniques to denote a visual dichotomy between the wondrous virtual realm and stark reality. As the action moved from the OASIS to the physical world, Steven Spielberg switched from filming digitally to shooting on film, working closely with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.

Macosko Krieger states, 'Steven and Janusz wanted to give the real world a grainier appearance, and you can see the difference between what was shot on film and the glossier OASIS. So Janusz was instrumental in defining the tone of the real world."

In addition, Stockhausen utilized color"or lack thereof"to further establish the delineation. He expounds, 'The OASIS is an intense visual experience with a rich color palette, while the real world is desaturated and nearly devoid of bright colors. A lot of that came straight out of the book."

One vivid exception is the graffiti that Stockhausen says 'serves several purposes. Our characters have their presence in both worlds. We felt the graffiti could represent the OASIS kind of bursting out a bit in how these people express themselves"instead of tagging with their names, they're tagging as their avatars. So that became a subtle way of bringing their avatars into their real lives. The graffiti is also a protest against IOI and a symbol of the resistance."

'Ready Player One" opens in the Stacks, the ramshackle trailer park that Wade Watts is loath to call home. Stockhausen says that the derivation of the name is obvious. 'The trailers have literally been stacked up in this Jenga-style construction. It's a densely populated urban environment, but with mobile homes instead of apartments."

Stockhausen's team constructed a segment of the Stacks on the Leavesden backlot. 'We started by sourcing some 60 mobile homes, or caravans as they're called in England. I worked with Stuart Rose, our senior art director, to figure out how we could then stack them, using large chunks of steel to support the whole thing and then adding layer upon layer... It was like playing with an erector set," he smiles. 18

'The challenge of building the Stacks set was that it couldn't look like a carefully planned housing development designed by an architect," Stockhausen continues. 'The idea was that it started on the ground level and grew from there, as needed, in a completely haphazard way. The hardest part was making sure the structures were extremely safe while making them appear as if they are teetering and random and very unsafe. So there was a bit of a trick to that, but it was a fun one to do."

Onscreen, the Stacks appear to stretch as far as the eye can see, but only a portion of the set was physically built. The Digital Domain team, headed by visual effects supervisor Matthew Butler, was responsible for extending the unique housing project to the horizon. The devastating explosion at the Stacks was carefully controlled by the special effects team, led by SFX supervisor Neil Corbould, who only had one shot to get it right. 'There were 28 charges, set off over a five-second period, generating big flames and a lot of debris," he says. 'Then the whole thing came crashing down. We did a lot of testing for safety and installed a sprinkler system so that, after everything went off, we could switch the water on."

Digital Domain then took over, digitally intensifying the blast and the collapse of the structure. Just outside the Stacks sits a large tower of junked cars, which was assembled at Leavesden. 'We gathered a bunch of old cars and started stacking them until they looked good," Stockhausen recalls, 'and then we went back in and made sure they were safe. We installed a steel framework to support everything and ensure the cars didn't fall in on themselves or, more importantly, on anyone. We needed it to look precarious but, again, not actually be precarious."

Tucked away in the middle of the junkpile, Wade has converted an old van into his private hideaway where he keeps all of his important personal possessions. 'He has -meched out' the inside of a big econo-van, which is lined with years of cultural references to his heroes, James Halliday and Ogden Morrow," says Steven Spielberg.

In dressing Wade, Walicka Maimone comments, 'He doesn't have a lot of money, so we pulled back from glamorizing him in any way. He wears t-shirts with designs that, theoretically, he could have made himself. The grids printed on them reflect his obsession with Halliday's contest, and his clothes also reference the `80s."

James Halliday also prefers t-shirts featuring `80s pop culture, including the band Rush and classic videogames, and a blue jacket that, Walicka Maimone says, 'was classic enough that it could exist 30 years in the future. Mark's take on the character was that he was somewhat obsessive, so we just repeated the same elements over and over again in different interpretations. He's very rich, but there are still probably only five things in his closet," she laughs.

Walicka Maimone points out that while her costume designs have echoes of the 1980s, they are not meant to be exact copies. 'We know that every generation cultivates their own trends. The `80s had its own specific look, but each time it resurfaces, it's reinvented. The `80s craze as described in the book is so powerful, but nevertheless, it's that generation's version of the era. So we did a lot of research and combined styles of the `80s with what I speculated is going to be around in about 30 years and created our own fashion language."

She extended that practice to the rest of the High Five as they appear in the real world, but made sure to showcase their individual tastes. 'With Samantha," she says, 'we wanted her costume to be a total departure from Art3mis, so we put her in this big sweater over her super cool Joy Division t-shirt and ripped jeans. Zhou's jacket is a nod to -The Breakfast Club,' and the patches on Helen's jacket reference music, movies, television and other pop culture. The exception is Toshiro, whose costume is a futuristic approach to sportswear and current trends on the streets of Japan."

The design of the high-tech equipment required to enter and navigate the OASIS arose from what Walicka Maimone calls 'the brainstorming of an army of people who participated in the development of the various pieces, including [costume supervisor] Dan Grace, [specialty costume consultant] Pierre Bohanna and [researcher} Susan Gilboe. It was a fascinating process to try and project what haptic gear is going to be like in 30 years. There are functioning haptics already on the market, so that was our starting point. The rest were leaps of faith."

The biggest leap involved the design of the form-fitting deluxe X1 Boot Suit, advertised as being 'like a second skin in the OASIS." Walicka Maimone attests, 'Basically, we needed a material that doesn't exist, so it took some major engineering from our genius team to come up with the solution. We started with the idea of a see-through suit and then added a layer underneath with the grid pattern of a body as seen by the computer. All the haptic elements live within that layer. Steven Spielberg suggested that the under layer is made up of pixels because those would be elements in direct communication with the skin. So it was pixels, the housing for the haptic wiring and the transparent overlay"that's what went into the creation of Wade's boot suit. Sorrento's haptic suit was inspired by aesthetics of luxury product designs.

'All of the costume designs," she continues, 'were the result of lengthy discussions of what the near-future might look like, based on the book and extensive research into current innovations in technology and science, as well as fashion."

Not to mention, he heads the company. The boot suits and all of the haptic gear are sold by IOI, whose building dominates the Columbus, Ohio, skyline, in stark contrast to the rundown Stacks in the distance.

Built on soundstages at Leavesden, the IOI interiors included the Loyalty Center, the Sixer war room and Nolan Sorrento's imposing office. The centerpiece of Sorrento's office is his enormous haptic throne, shaped like a half-sphere with a variety of controls right at his fingertips. From the comfort of his chair he can do more than enter the OASIS...he can bring the OASIS to him. At least in some form.

In a pivotal sequence converging the real and virtual worlds, Sorrento invites Parzival to a meeting, and then transports him instantly to his office in the form of a hologram. Digital Domain VFX supervisor Matthew Butler explains, 'So you have Wade's avatar manifested in the real world. We had to be consistent with ILM's design of the character while giving it a holographic appearance. We've all seen holograms and there is an expectation of what that's going to look like. As a visual effects person, you don't want to be derivative, but at the same time, you want the audience to recognize what it is. Coming up with something fresh was a tricky thing to solve, but I was very happy with how it came out."

As was the director. 'Digital Domain accomplished one of the greatest effects in the entire picture," Spielberg attests. 'The work they did with the hologram was amazing, but they also achieved so much more."

Sorrento's office set was raised on stilts and had a floor-to-ceiling glass wall so he could watch over his enormous war room, manned by his corps of uniformed Sixers. Each jacked into an individual rig, they work in shifts, 24/7, trying to win the challenges and get to the Egg"not that it will profit them at all.

The Sixer rigs were designed by Corbould, who says, 'A lot of development went into the initial design and construction. Once everyone was happy with the model, it was just a matter of multiplying it 80 times."

It was then up to Digital Domain to multiply the rig by hundreds more. Butler confirms, 'The war room only existed as a partial build, but it's supposed to be massive. To give it the proper scope, we created a full synthetic version of it, but you can't just have a room; you have to fill it with people. That is one instance where we did motion capture for the real world, as opposed to motion capture for the OASIS."

Digital Domain handled all of the other visual effects for scenes in the physical world, also including the drones, and the closeup shot of Wade in the instant he is transitioning into the OASIS.

In the bowels of IOI headquarters is the Loyalty Center, which consists of endless rows of small metal cells, each holding a person wearing IOI-issue gear that is locked on so they can work off their debt doing menial labor in the OASIS. Zak Penn comments, 'The Loyalty Center is a kind of insidious debtors' prison. The scam of it is they charge you for the rig and for your access and everything else, so you can never actually get out of debt. Once you go in, most of the time, you don't get out."

Apart from Leavesden, filming also took place in the city of Birmingham, England. The landmark building that was once the Typhoo Tea factory was repurposed by Stockhausen and his crew to serve as the location for the rebel safe house. The Jewellery Quarter in the center of the city became the backdrop for a climactic car chase, involving Sorrento and F'Nale in IOI armored vehicles, and the High Five in Helen's converted postal truck. Similar to Wade, she has equipped the back of her vehicle with haptic gear...although Helen's van is mobile. Additional locations included the atrium of the Holland Park School in West London, which became the IOI Oology Department, and Sun Park, in Surrey, which became the home office of Gregarious Games. The exterior of IOI was found in London.

Logging Out

When principal photography on 'Ready Player One" wrapped, the lengthy postproduction process began. As the ILM and Digital Domain teams around the world worked on finishing the complex visual effects to Spielberg's satisfaction, the director cut the film with his longtime editor, Michael Kahn, together with editor Sarah Broshar.

The final artistic element was the score by Alan Silvestri. 'Ready Player One" marks the fifth collaboration between the composer and Spielberg as a producer, including the seminal 'Back to the Future" trilogy. However, it is the first time they are working together with Spielberg at the helm.

With John Williams busy scoring Steven Spielberg's 'The Post," the director offers, 'I remember thinking, -Of all the composers, who has the `80s sensibility and possesses the musical vocabulary to create a musical narrative from beginning to end?' And the only composer I knew, besides Johnny, who could pull that off was Alan. I felt lucky that he had a small window of availability"just enough that he could do our film"and the score he created is fantastic!"

Silvestri attests, 'I had never been on that side with Steven as a director. From our very first conversation, he invited me into the process and was incredibly collaborative, which was spectacular. Steven Spielberg loves music and is profoundly aware of the power of it"what it can do and what it can't do."

'There are some musical Easter eggs in the movie," Steven Spielberg reveals, 'but Alan's score is completely and intoxicatingly original. It is bound together by a variety of themes that evoke both the plot and the characters. That's the magical marriage of music and film. His music is infused with the kind of percussive adrenaline that makes -Ready Player One' soar."

The director concludes, 'I wanted this film to be that kind of adventure...to create a movie with so much forward velocity that it blows back your hair as you go racing into the future."

Ready Player One
Release Date: March 29th, 2018