Two time Oscar winning director, Ang Lee is back with another adventurous 3-D movie based on the best-selling novel by Yann Martel which tells the story of a young Indian boy stranded in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Ang Lee speaks about his new movie and the challenges he faced during the casting of the movie in a telephone interview in a report published by Access Atlanta.com.
Ang Lee is an adventurous man which motivates him to make amazing movies like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hulk." He said in the interview that he liked to visit new places and learn new things around. "I like an adventure, and "Life of Pi" seemed to include all of those elements and ingredients that I like," he added.
Speaking about the biggest challenge in making a movie of a book which inspired him a lot:
"The book was very thought-provoking and parts of it were mind-boggling to me in the way it examined illusion and how it often pulled the rug out from under you. The book expects the reader to think about issues of faith, things that don't require any proof, so the challenge was keeping the audience within the illusion, even though we're taking them in and out of the main story."
On Comparing "Life Of Pi" with "Hulk," and some really tough scenes to pull off effectively:
Lee still believes "'Hulk' was harder," he said. "We could film actual tigers and other animals in motion to give the special-effects team something to go by when they were designing the animation, but there was no physical reference point to really know how a 2,000 pound person might move believably." But few scenes of "Life of Pi" needed some real hard work. Especially, "the ocean scenes were probably the hardest to pull off, because water and the movement of water is tough to simulate with CGI. I think we definitely raised the bar in terms of those scenes," he further added.
On casting Suraj Sharma for the role of Pi in the movie:
Lee was fond of Suraj Sharma's face and he imagined the movie when Lee saw him. "He wasn't a professional actor when I met him. We did three rounds of auditions and saw almost 3,000 kids initially before narrowing it down to 12 and finally offering him the role," he said.
Lee is very proud of the movie as it looks great and hopes people who worked in it gets the recognition. "Hopefully, the film will do what the book did, causing people to discuss those issues," he said.
