I hope that the success of ‘Life of Pi’ pushes Hollywood toembrace more international projects,” stated an enigmatic David Womack, duringa masterclass. Womack’s take on international projects in recent times is thatit’s not a big risk anymore. “With the technology and the internet today, a lotof things have become easier. The world has changed naturally over the years.”Womack was referring to the advantage filmmakers now have, to get their movies‘green lit’ by Hollywood studios. Earlier, studios wouldn’t want to take achance on unknown faces, adaptations and would rarely venture outinternationally (or at least into Asia) unless there was something bankableabout the project. But, according to Womack, the term ‘bankable’ is nowrelative, just as it’s now easier to work with local teams in different partsof the world. “We were lucky to get a really good Indian unit for “Life of Pi’.Since we were using 3D cameras and other special equipment, we needed a teamthat was sophisticated enough to manage it,” Womack claims.
David Womack is a ‘big effects’ director, the kind thatworks on films that require special effects and over the top productionaspects. One of the biggest movies he worked on, again with Ang Lee, was ‘Hulk’in 2003. With Pi, Womack faced a lot of challenges, such as getting the specialeffects team to work on hours of footage taken with real Bengal tigers on asimilar boat, so that certain actions would be mimicked perfectly. “Ang is bigon the details. In the movie there’s a scene where Pi trains the tiger and Angwanted it to be spot on. So we actually shot footage with real tigers to learntheir mannerisms,” explains Womack, adding, “Big effects are still built on afoundation of facts. The effects are there to heighten to emotional or dramaticpoints. But, yes, you need a foundation that’s real. You can’t just be makingstuff up. Sometimes, certain scenes are bigger than life, but that’s meant tobe rare.” Working in 3D is another matter, but, Womack does feel that often, 3Dis “being used as a gimmick, instead of using it to help with thestory-telling. Proper usage of the medium is necessary.”
A lot of the film is shot in the middle of the ocean, anocean that David had to replicate on land in Taiwan. Then came the issue ofreplicating ocean swells, which happen when you’re on the high seas. Wavesthere only occur during storms. “So we flew in these guys who worked with wavemachines and got them to reverse engineer the process to create the swells.That was the easy part,” says Womack with a grin. The tank had to be dug on thebeach, facing east and it was there that Ang Lee’s attention to detail camethrough well. “The tank was huge, a few hundred feet by a few hundred feet. Andthen the engineers needed it to be a certain depth so that the water would moveproperly. So we started work on diggingthe deep holes, until Ang came down and pointed out that we were one degreeoff.”
