Life of Pi's VFX Oscar and its Bangalore connection

BANGALORE, INDIA: Life of Pi's Indian connection is well known by now to all. But it is not just about Puducherry (nee Pondicherry aka Pondy) and extends well beyond the south Indian coastal territory, towards northwest. Till Bangalore, to be precise.

Now that the critically-acclaimed and commercially successful visual spectacle of a movie has won four Academy Awards - for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and, not the least, Best Visual Effects - let's see what the connection is.

Among the impressive four out of its 11 nominations, the visual effects (VFX) part had some of its sequences created by a team of around 100 from the Bangalore studio of MPC (The Moving Picture Company), one of the additional visual effects agencies that worked with the lead VFX company, Rhythm & Hues.

At the Academy Awards 2013 ceremony, MPC VFX Supervisor Guillaume Rocheron was honored for the studio's contribution to the film by celebrated film-maker, Ang Lee. Rocheron accepted the award on behalf of MPC's global team, along with overall VFX supervisor, Bill Westenhofer, Rhythm & Hues' animation director, Erik-Jan de Boer, and special effects technician, Donald R. Elliott. In the past, MPC has been nominated five times for the Oscars, but this is its first win.

On the prestigious award, Akhauri P. Sinha, managing director of MPC India, told CIOL, "We are extremely delighted and happy about the recognition. About 100 of our designers from Bangalore worked on certain sequences in the film."

"Guillaume Rocheron, who was MPC's VFX Supervisor on Life of Pi and led the team across London, Vancouver and Bangalore, was on stage with his co-nominees to receive the coveted statuette. For Guillaume and the team, it was a fitting culmination of two years of planning and work."

MPC has worked on about 110 shots in native stereo, with the major sequences being the storm that sank and the sinking of the Tsimtsum - the ship in which Pi and his family travel with their horde of animals - and the denouement Storm of God sequence.

MPC's areas of work, according to Sinha, included creating two massive storm sequences: the sinking of Pi's cargo ship, The Tsimtsum, and the Storm of God, the dramatic climax to Pi's journey aboard his marooned lifeboat. The studio's other prominent work included animating over 20 panicked animals aboard the sinking ship, creating a lizard, hornbill and cassowaries for the opening titles and the first shots of Pi leaving India on board The Tsimtsum.

The Bangalore team of MPC has about 250 people, who have worked on other noted flicks like Prometheus, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Parts 1 & 2, X-Men: First Class, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Sherlock Holmes 2, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Robin Hood, Sucker Punch, Sunshine, Watchmen and Skyfall, among others.

The studio is currently involved in the VFX work of upcoming Hollywood movies, including Man of Steel, Brad Pitt-starrer World War Z and The Seventh Son.