Castelli – who as associate producer accompanied Lee and scriptwriter David Magee on the scouting trip to India, where the beginning scenes of the movie were shot – worked as a journalist before becoming a storyboard editor and hooking up with Lee. (In the book’s preface, he noted that his initial Lee project, on the 1970s-era The Ice Storm, consisted in doing research to help establish the right period tone, which was partially achieved by using the contents of his childhood bedroom in the sets.) His development work for Life of Pi encompassed many subjects, from Hindu lore to survival at sea to zoo architecture, and he found himself becoming unusually attached to the film: a phenomenon experienced by all the crewmembers, he noted. Working on the book enabled him to continue that involvement, which he likened to “a journey, a transformative experience.”
All in all, “It was a pretty risky venture,” Castelli said. The new wave tank built at the production facilities, located at an abandoned airport in Taiwan, was designed to create ocean swells without the annoying “bathtub effect” of existing wave tanks, he noted. Likewise, the animation team’s design of a digital tiger based on real-life examples was a first – a departure from the fantasy animals on which the team had worked in the past. The prime model was a tiger named King; footage of King and three other tigers is interspersed with the animated iterations of the tiger, whose expressions were tweaked solely to serve the interests of the story. Animal trainer Thierry Le Portier not only located and trained the tigers, but also worked in the postproduction phase to ensure that the digital tigers were consistent.
Veracity was key to the narrative, Castelli noted – a departure from the usual big-budget movie, in which “there’s pressure to give satisfaction to the audience. People deep in their hearts want [Pi and Richard Parker, the tiger] to be friends, but they’re not. It’s about the creature that is Other, putting Pi in touch with something higher, which may nor may not stand in for God. That’s what gives the movie its emotional charge.”
Another fascinating aspect of the behind-the-scenes story is Lee’s hiring of Steven Callahan, who survived two-and-a-half months adrift on a rubber raft in the Atlantic after he was shipwrecked and wrote a book about it. Callahan fashioned all the various implements used on the raft from actual materials found on a lifeboat, including the fishhook crafted from an aluminum can and the ingenious sun-canopy-cum-raincatcher. (In his book, Castelli notes that some of these implements were “roughed up” for the film, because they looked too neat and perfect.) As with the tiger, “Real similitude was important. Steve helped a lot with ensuring the waves and weather were authentic.”
Besides telling the stories of the many talented people involved in the film – they include artist Alex Rockwell, known for his paintings of post-apocalyptic cities – Castelli writes at length about the training of lead actor Suraj Sharma and provides glimpses into Lee’s creative inspiration. For example, the mythical island in the middle of the Pacific where Pi lands is based not only on a four-acre-sized banyan tree that the crew discovered in Taiwan and on Rockwell’s illustrations, but also on Lee’s photographs of the underside of shrubs that he observed at tea plantations in India.
At the Fiberflame event, Castelli plans to share some material that didn’t make it into the book – namely Rockwell’s sketches for the underwater tiger vision sequence. “My one regret is that these had to be put aside because of the tight production deadline,” he said. “I’ll also provide a good visual walkthrough of a few aspects, from development to postproduction.”
The event is hosted by Pondicherry of Woodstock in collaboration with The Golden Notebook, and all proceeds will benefit the Woodstock Film Festival.
Jean-Christophe Castelli on The Making of Life of Pi, Saturday, February 9, 5:30-7 p.m., $15, Fiberflame Studio, 1776 Route 212, Saugerties; (845) 679-4265, ulsterpub.staging.wpenginefilmfestival.com.
