THE THIRD FLOOR in Los Angeles was enlisted to create previs and storyboards for key action in Steven Spielberg’s cinematic film Ready Player One (Warner Bros.). Having worked on four prior projects with the director, THE THIRD FLOOR was excited to help visualize creative ideas and provide a sandbox to explore concepts, visual treatments and functional rules for the unique real and virtual worlds.

Doug Lefler, story department head at THE THIRD FLOOR, illustrated boards for some sequences, also sketching recurring thematic elements. Modelers at THE THIRD FLOOR, under previs creative director Joshua Wassung and previs supervisor Todd Constantine, worked with production designer Adam Stockhausen to build a large library of digital assets — including pop-culture material that would appear in the story, to support experimentation with characters, locations and VR POVs. Much of the universe of the film is captured in the opening race scene, which THE THIRD FLOOR previsualized over multiple months in addition to key moments of the end battle.