I recently went to the movie theater and saw the “Life of
Pi.” This movie is about a boy named Pi, who starts a journey with his family
to the other side of the world. His father owns a large variety of wild animals
and brings them along on their trip to Canada. During their long sea voyage,
they encounter a storm that disables the ship and sinks it. Pi is fortunate
enough to get aboard a small wooden lifeboat before the ship sinks. Pi’s family
and everyone else go down with the ship. Pi has to become resourceful enough to
survive on the open ocean for a long time with a wild tiger that shares the
same boat.
The “Life of Pi” is made up of a large quantity of CG,
including the ocean and the animals. Without these effects, the movie would be
made up of a boy on a boat in front of a blue screen. Rhythm & Hues is the
visual effects company that is responsible for creating the tiger in this
movie. Unfortunately, Rhythm & Hues has recently filed for Chapter 11
bankruptcy. There are more and more visual effects companies who are competing
for work in feature films. This is causing the price of these services to go
down and make it very difficult for these companies to maintain a decent profit
margin.
The director of the “Life of Pi,” Ang Lee, commented on
Rhythm & Hues’ bankruptcy. Lee said, “I would like it to be cheaper and not
a tough business fro VFX vendors. It’s easy for me to say, but it’s very tough.
It’s very hard for them to make money. The research and development is so
expensive; that is a big burden for every house. They all have good times and
hard times, and in the tough times, some may not survive.” It is sad to see a
company like Rhythm & Hues, that can produce such beautiful and stunning
work, struggle like this and have to file bankruptcy.
No comments:
Post a Comment