Life of Pi (2012) - Own Time Viewing

Life of Pi is an adventure drama film directed by Ang Lee and based on a novel of the same name by Yann Martel and the adapted screenplay by David Magee. The film, the story, moves around a boy named Piscine Molitor aka Pi who survives a shipwreck where his family dies, and is stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker in the Pacific Ocean.

The screenplay: The screenplay was by David Magee and was adapted by the 2001 novel of the same name by Yann Martel.

Cinematography:

Editing:

Costume: 

Visual effects: The lead in visual effects company is Rhythm & Hues Studies (R&H). Artist Abdul Rahman said that, "the special thing about Life of Pi is that it was the first time we did something called remote rendering, where we engaged our cloud infrastructure in Taiwan called CAVE (Cloud Animation and Visual Effects)." The Supervisor of R&H VFX Bill Westenhofer said that Ang Lee "knew we had done the lion in the first Narnia movie. He asked, 'Does a digital character look more or less real in 3D?' We looked at each other and thought that was it pretty good question."

Other visual effects studios that worked on the film included MPC, yU+co, Buf, Crazy Horse Effects, Look Effects, Christov Effects, Lola VFX, Reliance Mediaworks, and Sterep D.

- The effects were quite spectacular. The CGI Tiger, Ocean and the lights were most enthralling, and I believe it was best to include such wondrous and imaginative effects because it goes well with the 'storytelling' that is going on in the film. Though it is never stated and left up to the viewers to believe if it was the real story or not, it was still a story and within stories without other people spectating, anything can happen or something can be made more poetic or morphed a certain way by the mind or arrogance. When you remember something, it changes, whether you notice or not, you never remember something exactly the same each time, something always differs. The added beautification to what could be a horrific and terrible story, really draws people in. Whenever something has more meaning and many layers that are hidden behind words or objects, it flares interest, creativity and drive to find out more in the audience.

Acting performance: 3,000 young men auditioned for the lead and in October 2012 Ang Lee chose to cast Surai Sharma, a student of 17 and an acting newcomer. Once he had the role, Surai Sharma was put through training in ocean survival, yoga and meditation. After two months Gérard Depardieu was cast to play the role of the Chef, Irrfan Khan to play the adult Pi and Adil Hussain to play Pi's father. Tobey Maguire would have played "a reporter" but Ang Lee cut him from the film and reshot them with Rafe Spall in a role that was referred later as the Writer.

- The acting was fantastic. The actor Surai Sharma, who played the lead role of the young Pi, was brilliant, the work, training and thought that went into the character was really seen on screen. I really felt for the character, empathised and worried, and couldn't wait for it to all turn out well.

Sound design: The music was composed by Mychael Danna, who wrote the music to Ang Lee's film The Ice Storm and Ride with the Devil.

- The sound was a great highlight of the film, it was wonderfully edited, merged and attached to the right scenes, creating the perfect atmosphere. As the film is very fantastical, the music mimicked this brilliantly. 

Production design:

This film is, in my opinion, fascinating and fantastic! Not only is the plot, the story, enthralling, but the acting performance and the special effects really added to the atmosphere. 

The story can also be taken two ways and at the end it leaves the audience wondering which one is the actual truth. It also shows that when given a choice between brutality with humans and brutality animals, we take it better if it were with animals because we can just excuse it as nature.