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Cinematography of "Life of Pi"
  • A nice quote:

    “Do you want me to tell the truth? Ai yay yay yay. Okay. I’m trying to work out how to say this most politely, and no offense to – I don’t know him personally – but what a total fucking piece of shit. Let me be blunt. Ah, fuck. I don’t care, I’m sure he’s a wonderful guy and I’m sure he cares so much, but since 97 per cent of the film is not under his control, what the fuck are you talking about cinematography, sorry. I’m sorry. I have to be blunt and I don’t care, you can write it. I think it’s a fucking insult to cinematography."

    http://sea.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/874483/christopher-doyle-interview-part-2-life-of-pi-oscar-is-an

  • 32 Replies sorted by
  • Good one. He should host the next Oscars!

  • As soon as I saw the previews I knew I had no interest in seeing this. I knew it would just make me mad! :)

  • It's a beautiful movie. But the Cinematography Oscar should have gone to the VFX guys. Or Roger Deakins.

  • I like 'Life of Pi', but the Oscar for best cinematography wold be for Roger Deakins. :(

  • @DouglasHorn yeah, I'm still waiting for this Claudio guy to do the right thing and give it back. Of course that would never happen but he's basically a thief now. His giving it over to the R+H team to go along with their other rightfully earned trophy would be one option, or just giving it back to the Academy and making them publicly acknowledge their mistake in awarding it to him would be the more appropriate.

    PS> my little brother did the layout for a good chunk of this film, most notably on meerkat island, seen in the breakdown video above :)

  • @BurnetRhoades Did your brothers company get bought yet? I heard someone was stepping in and saving them. I hope so!

  • @vicharris no real savior yet. Getting bought by an Indian company is, in this industry, the kiss of death. Only a matter of time from that point that they'd be shuttered. There's little precedent for any foreign investment being more than a speed bump on the way to demise.

    This would be the first time a truly significant force in VFX went out of business since the collapse of Robert Abel & Associates / Abel Image Research, which were the ashes that R+H rose out of like a phoenix back in the late 1980s. Other good, talented shops have shut down but PIXAR is the only company with a longer pedigree (by months) in CGI in existence with its core company culture still intact.

    If they don't live through this I wonder how long it will be before the techniques developed there filter out to other shops and another studio is capable of creating totally photo-real land animals. Nobody else has come close to what they have busted their asses to achieve.

  • @BurnetRhoades - Yeah, like that's gonna happen! Did you see the guy's acceptance speech? He totally believed that he deserved to win. Heck man, it's a freakin' Oscar -- The guy is keeping it!

    I think this is one of those watershed moments that won't be immediately recognized but will be very clear through the lens of history. The Cinematography award has long been one of the great 'artistic' second-tier awards. In the future, best VFX--long the red-headed stepchild--will take its place as the prominent award. After all, the Pi VFX team really won two awards that night by doing their job so well that no one could tell where their work stopped and the cinematography began. (If at all!)

    That said, the whole idea of a "best actor" "best cinematography" and all the rest is just hooey. It really is an honor just to be nominated. If it were anything but a big marketing circus, they would stop at that.

  • What do the assets of R+H really amount to? The proprietary software? That's assuming that the company owns it and not the company's principles. The value of the company, on the other hand is in its workforce and their collective experience. There's so much fluidity in that industry that I suspect the artists have all picked up new work already and this is mainly an exercise for the accountants.

  • Uh, no.

    R+H is mostly proprietary software, especially where animation is concerned. The company does own it. Without the software department that built it, in the case of liquidation, it becomes yet another backup in a closet, another lost chest of treasures. The techniques and insights developed that nobody else has cracked, who knows. Based on the most recent work that I've seen not even ILM is close to being able to do animals to the level R+H achieved back on Narnia and Golden Compass, much less Life of PI. Oddly enough, they're nailing humanoid characters first.

    The complexity of what is done at major shops compared to what folks are doing with off-the-shelf software only couldn't be more different. Likewise, all the big facilities are totally different, even though a lot of people pass between them.

    Techniques only recently becoming commonplace at companies like WETA for physically based animation systems driven by muscles, an accurate skeleton, etc. I saw first developed to a functional prototype stage at Digital Domain back in the mid 1990s when everyone else was just mushing rubber statues around with IK systems for the most part. It's too bad the project got shelved due to the company's focus on visual effects and not animation.

    The value of a company like R+H isn't something an outsider could understand. This kind of wrong-ways thinking is a big part of what the industry has to change in the minds of both the people who should know better as well as the general public.

    The industry is in a complete crisis right now and R+H is just the most visible tip of the iceberg. The artists laid off have not all been picked up. Scores of them aren't sure when they'll be getting another job. Some are contemplating leaving the industry.

    ...that was the global "town hall" meeting that took place tonight, on "PI Day" (3.14), voicing concerns over unionization, trade organizations, globalization, corporate welfare, State-sanctioned kick backs and the criminal enterprise that is the Hollywood Studio System. If you'd like to understand.

  • Wow. Thanks for the clarification. I know a bit about VFX houses but it looks like I was off-base on this. I really hope they can pull it together.

  • Yeah, me too. It's been a long time coming but only now do we represent an industry that has any hope of applying pressure to the big studios, who are likely gearing up for a full course of out-sourced work out of spite and taking down the names of everyone who will "never work in this town again."

    Those overseas shops are only as viable as long as we're involved though, and that's something they (the studios) aren't fully aware. They're in for a rude awakening if they think they're going to be able to go to India or China and get the next Avenger's, or Iron Man, or Justice League or even the next Life of PI made. Not without the people participating in that town hall meeting, who are very, very pissed off. The outsource studios have to be supervised. From an experience standpoint as well as to overcome the cultural issues that do come up.

    For instance, how does one reconcile a cast system and the need for work to be done competently and timely if the smartest, most capable guy in the room happens to be of a known lower class, this fact practically tattoo'd on his (or her) forehead at birth? That's the kind of bullshit that awaits those filmmakers foolish enough to think you just send the work overseas, for cheap, and all those smart people being exploited just send back finals.

    VFX isn't rubber dog shit or steak knives or even cars that just are what they are and something to be commoditized. Meh, I'm out of that game though. I just want my brother to have a great second career before he pulls the rip chord on living in Los Angeles too.

  • Let me ask this. Who decides the composition/layout/lighting scheme/details/ect of these vfx shots in Pi?

  • There's a part of me that wants to see the studios try to make these films directly with the outsourcers and watch them swing in the wind. In my own work, I see clients try cheaper vendors from time to time. They almost always end up coming back because they realize the frustration and false economy of giving the job to the lowest bidder.

    It's sad that so many artists get stuck in the middle because they will face a lot of personal paid during the transition. It's also very sad that the studios so significantly undervalue VFX artists when the VFX are one of the only things keeping their tentpole movies viable.

  • @Stylz it was a combination of Ang Lee himself, the VFX supervisor, DFX supervisor, Compositing supervisor, CG supervisor and perhaps an art director or two. Let's see...texting my brother since it's not too late in LA right now...Bill Westenhofer, who accepted the Oscar for R+H,and got the shark, was both R+H and "client-side" VFX.

    Besides Ang, he was the "go to" guy and reviews were with Ang, Ang's editor and Bill. Miranda was never involved at the facility during post production.

    @DouglasHorn yeah, it's extra sad when artists in LA get stuck in the middle and go five weeks or so without pay. That's hard anywhere but out there, where a shitty one bedroom apartment can go for $2K+ a month, depending on how far West it is, it's crippling. R+H is full of families though, more so than your average facility. I've heard some folks have already lost their houses in the turmoil. Everyone kept working though as a point of personal pride and commitment to making the film what it is.

    Some companies exploit this common attribute in your better artists (cough, Hydraulix, cough) but at least I can say R+H did not with absolute certainty. The executive staff there is the classiest and most compassionate in Southern California. The only reason things being as bad as they were came as a surprise to everyone was because they were legally precluded from speaking a word about it, having already started looking for solutions long before anything was made public. It's just too bad this fact is lost on a bunch of SCAD newbies that have decided to take their frustrations out on the facility now...I hope that doesn't gain any traction, personally.

  • I love Christopher Doyle - say it like it is man!

  • I just read through this thread. Just a take as I'm Indian and a lot of comments were made about India. @DouglasHorn - I agree that Engineering and other skills are not commodities that are easily outsourced. Experience is not replaceable @BurnetRhoades - There is a big difference between the way people live in the villages and the cities. In most technical firms - caste and religion are not an issue. This is the same in the States - in the smaller towns and villages, race and color are a big issue. In the cities less so.

    Also, @BurnetRhoades - your comment about an Indian company being the kiss of death. You do realize that culturally American firms are quickers to fire employees than any other group right? Its possible that there may be layoffs - but the hire and fire culture within the States has not yet been adopted within India.

  • @zcream I'm not speaking generally I'm speaking to the years that it took R+H to overcome the caste and other cultural issues that were very real setbacks when they were setting up the studio. It didn't matter how trained, how smart or how capable the Indian artist was, culture was what held the Indian studio back. In the beginning it was such an issue that producers in the American facility had constant questions as to why the company was even doing what they were doing. American supervisors had to step in to back up seniority within the Indian facility that played against cultural bias. Work had to be redone multiple times. But they stuck with it.

    More than any other studio that I'm aware they put the effort in to train Indian artists and overcome the cultural issues that other studios simply ignore and that's how R+H was able to eventually get end-to-end shots and sequences completed at their Indian facility where firms like Sony Pictures Imageworks, whose Indian facility is being shuttered, was just used mostly for skilled bulk labor to reduce the cost of tracking and roto and painting tasks. Non-creative tasks that require skill but are scalable. The creative work, the work most influenced by culture or dependent on clear communication, that doesn't scale.

    Caste isn't an issue here, we've never had that particular mess. Religion makes a rare issue but it's handled fairly respectfully in my experience. And race and gender aren't issues in American firms at all that I've experienced. Your ability is generally the currency that puts everything else in line.

    The "kiss of death" reference is based on a pattern of eventual dissolution of any American VFX studio bought by an Indian firm. The "Why?" I don't know, I only know to start the clock. It has nothing to do with "hire and fire" it has to do with counting down to the company being no more.

    And, actually, you can't just be fired from a firm in the US, at least not in California. To straight up "fire" someone "for cause" takes a lot of documentation and absolutely cannot happen based on a whim or a company opens themselves up to liability. It is very, very hard to "fire" someone. Layoffs are how most people lose their jobs. I'm speaking specifically about my industry and the film industry. But, in general, getting "fired" is very difficult and that difficulty scales with the size of the company.

    I can tell you though, the Indian worker in these firms are apparently much less likely than their American counterpart to give notice. It's apparently such an issue in the Indian VFX/Animation industry that one of the largest firms had (I don't know if this policy stands) resorted to requiring all new employees to pay the company a deposit that was refundable at the end of their contract. They had to do this because it was too hard to maintain confidence in their ability to complete work because from day to day they didn't know who was going to actually show up.

    The flip side to that is that the Indian industry is an environment filled with abuses and a current culture where it's more or less just expected. I don't think that R+H had much of a problem with that because they, by and large, treated their artists much better than the local industry standard, which was in keeping with their company culture in the States. R+H was historically the best company in LA to work for from an employee comfort and benefits standpoint, especially in the earliest years of the industry.

  • @DouglasHorn since the thread has been revived, I recently got word that some of the proprietary software might be making its way to the 3rd party after all. Given the relative success of Nuke and other technologies that have successfully made their way into the 3rd party domain they may be packaging up their animation package and their revolutionary player/video-archival tool.

    R+H in the US still exists but it's shell of its former self. They have had a very tough time getting new work. Similarly, Digital Domain, after its own bankruptcy had to essentially "buy" work so that the new owners could say they were still working.

  • I never said caste was an issue in the States, I said color and race was. And it was more in the smaller towns and villages than in the cities. The company is located in mumbai - the caste system is less of an issue in mumbai than it is in the rest of India. Its quite sad if its true - wonder what happens in the rest of India. And - I mixed up "fire" with "layoffs".

  • What's also sad is how the average Indian artist is treated over there. They're being exploited by their own and exploited by foreign interests throughout the industry.

    Under the supervision of R+H management the Mumbai facility was one of the best working environments over there from the reports I've read. Now they've been rolled into Prana who hopefully is treating them as well.

  • I agree. But exploitation of labour is a problem is every 3rd world country. Its hardly something specific to India.

  • Nobody is saying otherwise. My concern is admittedly selfish. How it effects my industry and the people I've worked with for a career is my only concern in this thread and how the race-to-the-bottom has virtually destroyed the US industry for digital film effects that I was there to see explode into what used to be an amazing career opportunity.

  • The end of Rhythm & Hues, VFX house for Life of Pi.