Life of Pi

Life of Pi (2012), which is directed by Ang Lee, is a American live-action computer-animated adventure drama film based on Yann Martel's 2001 novel of the same name.

Mise-en-scene:

• Conformed to realism
• Location
• Zoo: the place Pi has lived
• Ship: had a wreck
• Lifeboat: Pi and the tiger has lived on it and it was floating on the ocean
• A secret and mysterious island
• Hospital in Maxico
• Costume
• Simple
• Woman were wearing Indian clothes
• Pi’s clothes were dirty, messy and broken, later he was even half-naked: to show that his situation became worse gradually
• Pi was saved eventually and he wore white clothes: clean, new life
• Time
• Pi’s past and present day
• When the accident happened: storm, at night

Cinematography:

• Focus
• Rack focus
• From LAN to tiger
• From Vishnu to those who were throwing something on them
• From Pi’s face to his shaky hand holding a meat to Richard: show his reckless and nervous
• From Anandi to Pi: show their connection
• Selective focus
• Only focus on Pi but not his father and brother: show the main character
• Focus on Pi and his brother but not his father as they were mumbling that his father can’t hear
• Camera angle
• Low angle
• When father was telling Pi how dangerous the tiger was: to exaggerate the danger and scare of the tiger
• Showed Pi’s power and determination when Pi was extremely hungry and there were a huge amount of fish on the lifeboat
• When Pi was dying and looked up to the sky: to show that he was talking to his family who were in the heaven
• High angle
• The tiger became a little bit scared of Pi because of his threat and determination
• Eye-level
• When there were many fish flying towards Pi, it has used his eye to present what was happening in front of him
• Lighting

• source
• Always available especially when Pi and the tiger were on the lifeboat: came from nature: more realistic
• Mixing sources? At night, but there were many jellyfish which provided the light in the ocean
• Available? The light came out from the sky when Pi met up the storm again
• Colour saturation
• Saturated: at the beginning: showed the wild animals in zoo
• Desaturated: in the past: greyish, washed out, like ‘Slumdog Millionaire’: poor and simple places, like slum
• Camera distance
• MCU
• When father was blaming Pi: to emphasize the father’s anger on Pi
• When Pi was saved and calling his family: his loneliness on the lifeboat
• Pi was crying when it was back to the present at last: focus on presenting the true feeling about his life
• CU
• The face of the tiger: to focus on its facial expression in details
• When Pi was looking up to the sky: to show his worse situation on the lifeboat
• XLS
• When Pi was inside the warehouse of animals: to show his loneliness
• When Pi was jumping into the ocean and nothing was there except the fish: he was the only human there
• After the storm, his boat was floating on the ocean with nothing around him
• When there was a whale passed by: openness, freedom, comparison between the enormous whale and Pi with the lifeboat
• Nothing else except the lifeboat on the ocean and became peaceful again after second storm
• XCU
• The tiger’s eyes when Pi opened the cloth to see the tiger: emphasized its hostility through its eyes
• From LS to CU
• At last Pi told people another story: to help focusing and build up the emotion gradually
• Camera movement
• Aerial shot
• There was a storm when Pi’s family was on the ship: to show what was happening on the ocean and the seriousness of the storm
• There was nothing left except the boat, Pi and the tiger after those animals being eaten by the tiger
• Handheld
• When Pi was running on the deck: to show how shaky the ship was
• Always used when Pi and the tiger were on the lifeboat to be more realistic
• Tilt
• Pi was running on the deck: to show the ship was extremely shaky and inclined

Editing:

• Continuity editing
• Establishing shot
• house surrounded by trees and wild animals
• the church and the surrounding when Pi was 12
• Shot/ Reverse/ Shot
• When dad was blaming Pi angrily
• Eyeline match: use a lot but just some special moment
• Always used as Pi looking at the tiger
• When Pi was saved and looking at the place that the tiger went away: means that Pi wanted to see the tiger
• Re-establishing shot
• Always showed the ocean again to remind the audience that Pi and the tiger were still on the lifeboat drifting on the ocean
• Shot transition
• Fade in/out
• at the beginning: animals to animals
• always used as eliminating the time or the progress
• brought back to the past and present
• fade to black
• when Pi was the only one in his family to be saved and then: fade to black, the storm was over
• wipe
• when Pi was describing his life with the tiger and the lifeboat, the scene was wiping another aside to start to present what he has experienced

Use of sound:

• Non-diegetic sound
• Soft tone at the beginning: create a wild, natural and comfortable atmosphere
• The background music was like an orchestra when Pi met up the storm again: a bit passionate to lift audience’s emotion
• Pi was as a narration to tell his story in the past
• When Pi was fighting with those left animals, there was always no non-diegetic sound: more realistic, can focus more on what they were doing
• Dialogue privileged over other sounds: escapist, illusion of real space and time

Others:

• Allow space for memorable dialogue: ‘Above all, don’t lose hope.’
• Theme
• Life
• Region
• Treasuring
• Stories and narrative structure
• Types: adventure
• Linear, backstory: flashback, dialogue
• Closure
• Not exactly following the Todorov’s theory as it had many difficulties and Pi solved them
• Who appears in them
• ‘hero’: Pi (and the tiger): a young boy ( and an animal)
• Villain: Pi’s family
• Use of stars
• Not a particular star that has been used in another film before
• But the type, Indian, is always used in such kind of film
• i.e. bad situation: have no money, living in a poor place
• e.g. ‘Slumdog Millionaire’
• Technology

• Production perfection
• Meet audiences expectations and experiences of changing technologies e.g. special effects: animals, lighting
• Digital technology
• filmed in studio