Photograph: Peter Sorel.
Low-tech creative F/X: crew members pummel Suraj Sharma with rubber flying fish.
The other mammals in the film have more tenuous connections to specific real counterparts. OJ the orangutan is physically modeled on a female in the Taipei Zoo. The lame zebra in the boat has no specific real-life reference. Both the zebra and the orangutan are CG creations. The animators also worked on a few other larger CG mammals and CG birds—mixed in with real ones, shot in the Taipei Zoo—for the opening title montage.
Moving away from land required a different approach. “Fish are tricky,” according to de Boer. “There’s something about the buoyancy, and maybe it’s the lack of motion—there is something that always makes it very easy to give away that these things were CGI or not realistic.” Seeing the fish from above the water, refraction comes to the rescue with distortion and the proximity of above-water objects like the raft for context. But getting the dorados, tuna, and other fish to look right underwater was more difficult. The dorado are mostly hand-animated, while the flying fish in the film are mostly controlled by a software package called Massive, which moves large quantities of figures within basic parameters, along with some hand-animated and even a few of the rubber ones that Sharma got pelted with by crew members during the shoot left in where appropriate.
storm of god, storm of ang
The Pacific Ocean is, of course, the other big star of Life of Pi, and in post-production the director’s power expands from dominion over the animals to something truly godlike. The tank in Taichung, for all its impressive power, could only go so far in reproducing larger waves, and for the two key storm sequences—the sinking of the Tsimtsum and the Storm of
God—the water shot in the tank was entirely replaced. It had to be: both events are hurricane-force storms—category twelve on the Beaufort scale, with thirty- to forty-foot waves. A Storm of God moment as shot in the tank versus what would eventually make it to the screen gives some idea of the difference in scale that was generated by the special effects work of Moving Picture Company (MPC). As for what it took to create such a virtual storm, the scale of the undertaking can be conveyed with a few brief statistics:
♦ A single shot of the Tsimtsum sinking sequence might contain as many as 269 million spray droplets.
♦ The ocean surface was resolved to details as small as two centimeters.
♦ A single second of complete ocean simulation could take up to seventy-two hours of computer-processing time.
♦ 786 texture maps—each one representing a particular surface (i.e., window pane, rusted steel panel, rope, etc.)—were used to render the Tsimtsum itself.
♦ And, most remarkable of all, Life of Pi was so big in terms of data that, MPC’s 2011 jobs aside, Life of Pi’s largest scene, the Tsimtsum sinking sequence, was the same size, if not larger, than all their previous jobs combined.
Why did these two sequences in Life of Pi require so much time and effort? As in pre-production, the answer is water. As in life, so in virtual reality: water, the most basic element to our existence, is fiendishly complicated and timeconsuming to simulate and render. And the configuration of Life of Pi was made particularly difficult by the fact that so much of the movie takes place on the ocean and outside, with a nearly constant ocean backdrop and very low to the water: “The base of our shots is basically always moving,” says MPC’s visual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron.
The job also required a different methodology for MPC: usually, the company runs massive ocean simulations before designing the effects, using extremely powerful and specialized software from a company called Scanline to generate the waves in the most realistic way possible within a given set of parameters (that is, wind speed, ocean depth, weather, and so on). The animation and design of the shots normally follow.
But with Life of Pi, the entire Tsimtsum sinking sequence was already laid out in detail in previs; in other words, the Storm of God was basically the Storm of Ang, who carefully choreographed the chaos for maximum dramatic and aesthetic impact. But even while maintaining directorial control over the elements, Lee also wanted the highest possible degree of realism, from the biggest rogue wave to the tiniest fleck of foam: though orchestrated, the storm had to be as authentic as possible. And so MPC reversed the order in which they usually worked, doing the wave animations first, and running the simulations afterward, somehow endeavoring to insure that the ideal of the director’s vision and the reality of the mathematical simulation meshed convincingly in the end.
VFX still: The Moving Picture Company.
VFX still: The Moving Picture Company.
Even cranked to maximum, the wave tank (top) had to be entirely replaced by CG waves (bottom) for the category twelve Storm of God.
A carefully composed, art-directed, but within specific parameters, highly realistic storm? “It’s one of the hardest things to do in our industry, you know,” says Rocheron. “But I think it’s really one of the first films that we’re actually pushing it that far. Because it’s really having the photorealistic water, but being able to art-direct it completely so the waves, the events—everything—is driven by the story, not by the computer.”
Photograph: Jake Netter.
On the set for the shooting of TS 270. The lifeboat is on the largest gimbal, used for the Tsimtsum set.
TS 270: anatomy of a shot
Perhaps the most choreographed shot in the entire film, the thirteen-second TS 270 (Tsimtsum, shot 270) happens as follows: a giant (fifty-foot) rogue wave lifts the lifeboat, with Pi clinging to the tarp, and slams against the top of the Tsimtsum—breaking the rudder and washing away some sailors on deck—then releases the lifeboat, which slides away from the sinking ship at enormous speed.
Because this shot consisted of a chain of specific incidents, it was designed before the production and supervised with the help of MPC.
In Taichung, the lifeboat sat on the giant gimbal with an additional rotating plate on top. The camera was mounted on a very large motion-control rig known as a bulldog crane. The shot is computer-generated imagery up to a point—that is, everything, including Pi and the lifeboat—and then switches to live action when the camera gets very close. Rocheron explains: “We designed the shot in the computer, and then identified from where in that shot we could actually have Pi on the lifeboat, on the gimbal, and the camera programmed with the mover as a motion control running in sync so that it would make the lifeboat and the camera move exactly the same as in the computer-generated imagery.” The shot was redesigned from the previs version to reflect the most realistic possible wave timings and sizes. The transition from digital lifeboat and digital Pi to live action takes place when the lifeboat hits the crane on top of the Tsimtsum. But, for the start of the shot, computer-generated imagery was necessary because there was no way to get a crane that was tall enough to shoot the boat going up and down a wave of that size.
It’s raining ones and zeros: whipping up a storm, layer by layer:
VFX still: The Moving Picture Company.
Shot layout.
VFX still: The Moving Picture Company.
Water surface simulation.
VFX still: The Moving Picture Company.
Spray simulation.
VFX still: The Moving Picture Company.
Tsimtsum render.
VFX still: The Moving Picture Company.
Water surface and boats render.
VFX still: The Moving Picture Company.
Interactive spray.
VFX still: The Moving Picture Company.
Final composite.
Pi digital double: The Moving Picture Company.
Suraj Sharma stands on a turntable, to be photographed from different angles for skin, hair, and clothing textures.
Pi digital double: The Moving Picture Company.
The resulting computer-generated animation.
In order to get an exact match between the live shot and the CG version, a computer represen
tation of the bulldog rig was used to design the camera moves and calculate the amount of track needed, among other things. This simulation was then exported into the real bulldog rig, which repeated the move exactly during the production.
So much for production: How was TS 270 put together in post-production? The work on any given shot that MPC did for Life of Pi could be broken down into a number of basic stages, a simplified version of which is presented here. The stills are shown from shot TS 270, but the stages and layers apply to most of the shots that MPC handled for the film.
As in the collaboration with Rhythm & Hues, the first layer was animation, in which the timings were blocked out and all the key elements (in this case, the boat, the rogue wave, the collision, and the sailors getting washed away) were coordinated to work together and within the context of the other shots in the sequence.
The shot’s second layer was water simulation. Once the overall parameters were set for the shot, computers ran a massive fluid simulation to make the water surface behave like water, with properties of flowing, cresting, splashing, and so forth, within the particular context of deep open ocean in the grip of a category twelve storm.
The third layer was the simulation of ocean texture: spray, bubbles, and foam. This process was roughly analogous to the tech animation for Richard Parker, which added muscle, skin, and fur. When the ocean surface was ready (that is, the movements and shapes of the waves were established), then the computers simulated spray—which forms when the water reaches peaks or moves too fast. The spray goes back into the water surface, releasing bubbles, which in turn rise to the surface of the water as foam. These three elements form a cycle, which are part of the same simulation that “makes a realistic final ocean,” says Rocheron.
Meanwhile, a CG lifeboat with a CG Pi, and a CG Tsimtsum, with richly detailed textures to match those of the original sets, were created for this part of the shot as well—elements that would be thrown into the seething, frothy mix.
In the next stage, the elements were assembled and lit together. What makes the Tsimtsum storm particularly frightening and chaotic is that it happens in the dead of night, so the only source of illumination is from the sinking ship itself. The final elements are then added, binding the whole storm shot together: rain and the wind are introduced into the scene, generating the last layer, mist, which obscures the vision and defines the turbulent, chaotic atmosphere.
Photograph: Mary Ellen Mark.
Sharma with body double Ricky Peters.
artificial pi
In the months that he was on set, carrying the entire weight of the film, it seemed as if there was nothing Suraj Sharma couldn’t do. But even he couldn’t be everywhere at once, and for those few moments in the film where that was the case—shot TS 270 in the Tsimtsum sequence, a shot in Storm of God, and a couple of other instances where several shots had to be stitched together into a continuous action—a digital double was created. Unlike King, Sharma could easily be persuaded to go into a scanning machine and hold still for a few minutes, so the process of building the artificial Pi was fairly straightforward—the more so since the character would be used mostly in long shots, and did not require as fine a repertory of expressions as the CG Richard Parker.
To build Pi’s digi-double, several techniques were used to record Sharma’s features so that a puppet could be constructed and manipulated by the animator. Sharma traveled to Australia for a cyber-scan, a kind of laser imaging that captured his exact shape and a range of basic expressions. Sharma and the other actors involved in the Tsimtsum sequence who might need digital alter-egos had their photos taken while standing on turntables—literally nothing more than lazy Susans, slowly spun by hand to capture every side of the body. These were used as reference for skin and clothing textures. Bill Westenhofer arranged for what he calls “a poor man’s motion capture”—a simple arrangement of three cameras to record some basic moves.
Another area in which computer-generated imagery came in handy was the enhancement of Pi’s gauntness. For Pi’s proclamation, “we’re dying, Richard Parker” to resonate with any gravity, both he and Richard Parker had to look thinned down. In the case of the tiger, Rhythm & Hues had the look all mapped out, with six different incarnations of the tiger’s physique, beginning with an adolescent animal for the feeding cage scene, a tiger in the prime of life at the start of the journey, and then a tiger in four stages of decline, leading up to the skin and bones look of the landing in Mexico.
Photograph: Kho Shin Wong.
Sharma reenacting his beach landing for facial capture.
Suraj Sharma had to lose a fair amount of weight to play Pi. But there’s a point in the story—after the Storm of God—beyond which special effects would have to take over from diet and exercise.
For the “we’re dying” scene, the production turned to the effects house Lola, whose artists digitally massaged Suraj Sharma’s photographic image until the desired look was achieved.
For the beach landing scene, the production found a suitable live double, a wiry South African named Ricky Peters, who happened to be working as a schoolteacher in Taichung. Peters was mainly in the shot where Pi has just pulled his boat onto shore and is lying collapsed on the sand. To substitute Suraj Sharma’s face for Peters’s face, a technique called face replacement was used. Lit and made up the exact same way as he would have been in the shot, Sharma re-enacted that moment in the film in a New York City studio, with Lee’s direction and footage of Peters’s performance as reference. The moving texture of Sharma’s face was then tracked and projected onto a frozen digital head.
Something like face replacement would be truly uncanny, bordering on creepy, if it weren’t so seamlessly done, and done for the greater purpose of the story—which at this point in the film lies in the relationship between what Pi is looking at—Richard Parker, poised at the edge of the jungle—and what the tiger does next.
Photograph: Peter Sorel.
Pi raises his head from the sand, looking for Richard Parker.
And at that moment, Ang Lee does a very simple thing with the camera, creating a shift in the depth and color of the image to convey what happens, the feeling of what happens, and the higher narrative sense of it all. Never mind what it is, just watch for it—or better yet, don’t watch for it, and in fact, ignore everything that you’ve read in this chapter.
In the end, after you’ve counted every droplet of water, split the tiger’s most finely rendered whiskers, and marveled at what has been accomplished by teams of the best effects artists around—in the end you can forget all of it, because if they’ve done their job well, it will be invisible. Life of Pi will be just a boy in a boat: a story well told and believable up to a point, and beyond that point, moving enough that you will take the leap of faith and follow it all the way to its final moment. And then back to the beginning.
COMING ASHORE: DIRECTING PI’S ARRIVAL IN MEXICO
Pi finally came ashore on a pristine stretch of southern Taiwanese sand (the Happy Panda campground in Kenting, which stood in for the Mexican coast). In real-world, shooting-schedule time, which didn’t always follow the story’s chronology, our hero would end up back in his lifeboat for a brief spell, and Sharma’s most challenging acting moments still lay ahead. Nonetheless, there was a sense of arrival that day, a glimpse of honest-to-God sunlight at the end of the blue-screen tunnel, which made the crew nearly giddy with pleasure. Photographer Mary Ellen Mark came back for a few days and captured some of the mood and Ang Lee’s fluid gestures as he enacted the sequence of Pi’s arrival for the crew.
Photographs: Mary Ellen Mark.
acknowledgments
In relation to its subject, this book is like a paper boat bobbing in the wake of a giant freighter. Still, it floats and follows the film; and for this, thanks are due to many people.
First to Fox, for facilitation, transportation, and a lot of illustration.
To the Davids who were onboard at the beginning: David Magee, genial
traveling companion in India, collaborator in development, and purveyor of insight for the book; David Womark, who made many calls and told great tales; and above all, David Lee—as always, the hardest-working man in show business (except for those few months when Suraj Sharma was in the tank), and as always, the kindest—who made it really happen.
To Kho Shin Wong and Tiffanie Hsu, who helped me navigate around production and made the whole Taichung Airport experience seem a little less weird.
To everyone on set and off who gave valuable phone or face time, information, and visual material, including: Adil Hussain, Andrew Moffett, Arjun Bhasin, Avy Kaufman, Brian Cox, Brian Gardner, Charlie Croughwell, Claudio Miranda, David Gropman, David Ticotin, Drew Kunin, Eddie Maloney, Elias Alouf, Elizabeth Gabler, Fae Hammond, Gil Netter, Haan Lee, Joy Ellison, Katie Lee, Kevin Buxbaum, Kirsten Chalmers, Manning Tillman, Mary Cybulski, Michael Malone, Nitya Mehra, Rick Hicks, Robert Schiavi, Robin Miller, Robin Pritchard, Shailaja Sharma, Sled Reynolds, Steve Callahan, Suraj Sharma, Tabrez Noorani, Tabu, Thierry Le Portier, Victoria Rossellini, William Connor, and of course, Yann Martel.
For post-production, thanks to Bill Westenhofer (Rhythm & Hues), Erik-Jan de Boer (Rhythm & Hues), Guillaume Rocheron (MPC), Mychael Danna, Patrick Kearney (Rhythm & Hues), Tim Squyres, and, especially, Susan MacLeod, who patiently explained, showed me stuff, explained and explained again. Thanks also to everyone at the New York post-production office for leaving me a place at the lunch table.
The Making of Life of Pi Page 13