Details on How That One Amazing Movie Sequence in READY PLAYER ONE Was Recreated By ILM
If you've already seen Ready Player One, then you know what amazing movie sequence that I'm talking about in the title of this post. Even if you didn't like the movie as a whole, this is a part that everyone seems to love.
The sequence involves the second challenge that needed to be completed to obtain the second key and in an upcoming Art of Ready Player One book by Gian McIntyre, it's explained in detail how they managed to pull that scene off and I think you'll be impressed with what they had to do.
For the second challenge, Parzival and the High Five have to enter the Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining. It's there that they will find the Jade Key.
I don't know about you, but I was completely blown away when we see these characters first enter the Overlook's Grand Hall. I wasn't expecting that at all! It was such a wonderfully awesome surprise and throughout this part of the movie, there are several crucial locations from the original film that we see. Those locations include the iconic hallway, room 237, the hedge maze, the blood-filled elevator, and more. As a huge fan of The Shining I loved every second of this sequence!
One of the most impressive things about this is that it seriously looked like the characters stepped right onto the set of the 1980 film! According to the art book, there was talk of actually rebuilding the set of The Shining for Ready Player One, but since the characters that enter the film are CGI avatars, they opted to recreate it digitally!
Yep, most of what we saw in this sequence was a perfectly executed CGI recreation from the team at ILM. So how did they pull it off and make it look like 40-year-old movie footage?
According to senior visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett, ILM managed to get their hands on a “high-quality telecine transfer” of The Shining. Then they "scanned it into their computers as a reference, and began to digitally recreate the locations needed for the film." Guyett explained:
"The bar that I wanted to reach was for anyone to watch it and go, 'That’s a shot from The Shining. It just happens to have our characters in it. Of course, if you’re inventing new scenes within The Shining or new moments or new characters, then the camerawork has to [change]. We didn’t have enough coverage of the different scenes."
According to io9, the art book says that when there was a shot they could use from the original movie, they did. "So while most of The Shining sequence footage in Ready Player One is digital, it’s combined with some original footage from the film as well as a few new physical shots. Basically, anything that included a real actor, like the twins or the bathtub lady, was built and shot the old-fashioned way. Then all of those elements were combined by ILM to create one, cohesive scene."
The attention to detail was the key to making the audience think they were watching footage from The Shining and that wasn't just about recreating the sets. They had to make everything look like it was from that era. That meant they had to duplicate "Kubrick’s exact lighting, creating all the props to ensure they looked like they were made in the era—even the grain of the 1980s film stock had to be recreated."
How freakin' amazing is that!? Like I said, the team at ILM perfectly pulled this off and they should all be proud of themselves for the work they accomplished.
The Art of Ready Player One book is apparently filled a ton of concept images from The Shining sequence. It also tells more stories regarding the development of the film. The book will be released on April 17th.