Roger Guyett Interview: ‘Ready Player One’ visual effects

For visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett, “Ready Player One” was “incredibly complicated to make.” But at the same time it was also a rewarding collaborative experience, with every department head working closely together to bring Ernest Cline‘s novel to the screen. Watch our exclusive video interview with Guyett above.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film imagines a future in which people escape their dystopian lives through an immersive virtual reality game known as the OASIS. Guyett explains, “The design aspect of it was one of the hugest challenges on the movie in the sense that you’re literally building and designing a world.” He and his effects team worked closely with production designer Adam Stockhausen to create “this fantastic place that is incredibly exciting” and also references classic pop culture for almost 90 minutes of the film’s runtime.

He was also tasked with designing the various digital avatars that the characters assume while in the OASIS. “At the heart, it’s a story about characters, their emotional journey,” he says, so he wanted the design of those avatars to “feel sincere in respect to their characters in the story.” Therefore, “every choice that the writers would make would influence choices that we would make.”

Guyett’s work on “Ready Player One” has earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects. He previously competed at the Oscars for his work on “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004), “Star Trek” (2009), “Star Trek Into Darkness” (2013) and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015).

He hasn’t won an Oscar yet, but “The Force Awakens” brought him victories from BAFTA and the Visual Effects Society. He picked up an additional BAFTA Award for “Saving Private Ryan” (1998) and another VES prize for “Azkaban.”