Production
After the moderate success of the Ring novel, written by Kōji Suzuki and published in 1991, Kadokawa Shoten decided to make a motion picture adaptation of Ring.
Screenwriter, Hiroshi Takahashi, and director, Hideo Nakata, collaborated to work on the script after reading Suzuki's novel and watching Ringu: Jiko ka! Henshi ka! 4-tsu no inochi wo ubau shôjo no onnen (Ring: Accident?! Or Unnatural Death?! The Young Girl Whose Hatred Steals Four Lives), Fuji Television Network's 1995 made-for-TV film, directed by Chisui Takigawa. However, the TV version was re-edited and released on VHS under a new title, Ringu: Kanzenban (Ring: The Complete Edition). Nakata did not state which TV version he and Takahashi watched.
For their film script, Takashi and Nakata amended the protagonist's gender (from male to female), name (from Kazuyuki Asakawa to Reiko Asakawa), marital status (from married to divorced) and child's gender and name (from daughter Yoko to son Yoichi).
With the budget of 1.2 million USD, the shooting began which took five weeks to complete. The special effects on the cursed videotape and some parts in the films was shot on a 35 mm film which was passed on in a laboratory in which a computer added a 'grainy' effect. One part of the film in which extended visual effects were used is the part in which the ghost of Sadako Yamamura climbs out of the television. First, they shot the Kabuki Theater actress Rie Ino'o walking backwards in a jerky, exaggerated motion. They then played the film in reverse to portray an unnatural looking walk for Sadako.
The close-up of Sadako's eye which appears towards the end of the film—and also on the cover of the UK DVD release by Tartan—was actually performed by a male crew member rather than Ino'o herself. The entire production took nine months and one week.
Read more about this topic: Ring (film)
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“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)