The Making of "Life of Pi" and Program Management

From the Voices on Project Management Blog
by Cameron McGaughy, Lynda Bourne, Kevin Korterud, Conrado Morlan, Peter Tarhanidis, Mario Trentim, Jen Skrabak, David Wakeman, Wanda Curlee, Christian Bisson, Ramiro Rodrigues, Soma Bhattacharya, Emily Luijbregts, Sree Rao, Yasmina Khelifi, Marat Oyvetsky, Lenka Pincot, Jorge Martin Valdes Garciatorres, cyndee miller

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Date

Categories: Program Management

"This film has its own fate, and it chooses me." Director Ang Lee said this not out of arrogance, but out of recognition he had been given a unique opportunity to make "Life of Pi" with people who could help him produce a film from Yann Martel's "unfilmable" novel.

Based on interviews, the production involved the most difficult demands you can place on filmmakers: children, water and animals. Previous directors had failed to see the film through due to artistic or budgetary problems.

Like the best program managers out there, Mr. Lee succeeded by combining two approaches: one creative (by incorporating pre-visualizations), the other pragmatic (by inspiring others in controlling costs).

To tackle the visual special effects, the director and the producers settled on Rhythm & Hues Studios. In the year leading up to actual production, Mr. Lee worked on pre-visualizations -- a storyboarding technique that emulates scenes with music, sound and stunts -- of the most difficult parts of the film and shared them with the studio. This allowed both the director and the studio's artists to plan how to best create the shots.

These pre-visualizations were like a feasibility study in program management. It enabled Mr. Lee to focus the studio on the development of special effects. Via this process, the different types of visual effects professionals -- from physical props people to computer modelers -- could be properly integrated into the film's production plan and schedule. Being able to see who was working on what helped the director bring to life the characters and events in the novel -- and ensure that it was done in a style that remained faithful to the novel's spiritual themes.

The second challenge was the budget. Mr. Lee's original budget was US$70 million -- cheap, considering the production's challenges. Mr. Lee had persuaded the producers to make most of the film in Taiwan, which dramatically reduced costs. But it was still a big-budget film, and as actual costs looked as though they might climb over estimates, production halted. Mr. Lee met with studio executives and showed them finished shots. Although the execs were impressed, they were also honest: Film production could only resume if Mr. Lee kept down the budget. He agreed.

Rhythm & Hue Studios' cooperation helped cut the costs, and Mr. Lee was grateful. He also knew the California, U.S.-based studio was trying to expand internationally -- and that the Taiwanese government was trying to attract investment to the creative industries. So as film production ended, he suggested a mutually beneficial deal between the studio and the government.

The result was the building of a new Rhythm & Hue Studios facility in Taiwan and the creation of in-studio training and internships, a partnership between the studio and a Taiwanese telecom company to provide cloud computing services for local creative industries, and an investment company for film production.

In the end, all stakeholders -- Fox Studios, Rhythm & Hues Studios, the Taiwanese government and Mr. Lee -- recognized the mutual benefits of working together. Key to this was Mr. Lee showing the professionalism we should expect from a program manager, and recognizing and then creatively combining benefits.