Mike Seymour, TyRuben Ellingson and Matt Wallin cast away with Pi Patel and journey together to discuss the visual effects in Ang Lee’s Academy Award nominated film, Life of Pi.
For additional coverage of Life of Pi on fxguide.com head over and read Life of Pi: a tiger’s tale where visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer, from Rhythm & Hues, recalls his experience of making the film with director, Ang Lee.
Show Notes:
Director: Ang Lee
Cinematographer: Claudio Miranda
VFX Supervisors and Companies:
Bill Westenhofer — Production VFX Supervisor
Matt Shumway — Rhythm & Hues
John Rosengrant — Legacy Effects
Dan Schrecker — Look FX
Guillaume Rocheron — MPC
Paul Graff — Crazy Horse Effects
Michael Fink — BUF
Julien Aullas — BUF
Geoffrey Niquet — BUF
Christov Effect and Design
Casey Allen — Lola VFX
Edson Williams — Lola VFX
Scanline
Nvizage
Bluebolt
What is Beauty – by Matthew Collins
American Cinematographer Podcast with Claudio Miranda, ASC: Life of Pi
Mantra Rendering in Houdini and Houdini FX
Suraj Sharma — Pi Patel
Irrfan Khan — Adult Pi Patel
Adil Hussain — Pi’s Father, Santosh Patel
Regarding the changing aspect ratio you discussed in the podcast:
Watching the film in 3D I noticed that they changed the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 2.35:1 during the flying fish scene to ‘allow’ one of the fish to fly outside the picture area. They also changed the aspect ratio later in the movie to something close to 4:3 to create a shot that looked like the book cover.
thanks – I did not notice the book cover one … good to know
For a non-VFX person with yet an honest interest in the field, it’s always a pleasure to listen to you guys chat about a film, especially from a non-overintelellectualizing POV. You just learn just a ton of interesting things. The only thing I’d hoped to hear you guys talk about just because you have a profound knowledge regarding this, is the unusual use of 270° shutter angle by Miranda/Lee. I was even kinda expecting this to come up since at least Mike doesn’t seem to be quite fond of higher than 180° shutter angles, as he mentioned in the VFX show on “2012”.