"Life After Pi " - A true review of the VFX industry all over the world

If you are seeing this, it means either you are from the VFX industry or about to begin your career in this industry. Also there is another reason, you are fully aware of the process which is giving the VFX industry a very good reason to rethink about their policies.

When I started this website almost One year ago after Rhythm & Hues had filed their bankruptcy , I was determined I will never post anything which can be negative wave towards this industry , and I tried to continue to do the same , then you can ask why about this documentary? Well this documentary will give you a brief of lesson from which you can learn what can be the 'barrier' when you try to think similar like R&H production. And I personally feel when something you should learn strongly about the industry it should be in Stereopixol.

Everyone from this industry including the very fresher artist to the aspiring/established businessman should watch the "life after Pi", but to whom I recommend this strongly are the main stream film makers. This Documentary actually reveal the very inside dilemma of a true artists mind with the process of the business, or rather we called business policies. VFX is now a days has become the most important and integral part of a film making, but unfortunately the productions and even the mainstream film makers are yet to recognize them as it. VFX has two different side, one is the artistic side and another is the technological aspect. both are very important and time consuming. This something like when you try to build a fantasy set for a film where you need to be creative in terms of colors and details and also be very careful about the cost of the material you used. The moment you ask an artist to deliver a shot about say a blast or mix of a Computer Graphics character with a real time footage, its need a lot of attention and artistic look into it, Now where always comes to the budget in to its own play. Sometime you set the budget to a "fix bid" which forces an artist to limit his/her imagination aspect, and sometime forces an artist to bare the extra cost from his/her own pocket. Which happened something similar to R&H.

CG Tiger

Dummy used for Tiger in shoot

At shooting

Final look of the film 

Can you get the difference?

So far ..... the process is might be acceptable, but the funny part is when the film got a "Blockbuster" tag, and the Movie productions got a huge amount of success in terms of money there are no reward for the VFX productions or they don't even get the extra cost which they had payed from their own pocket for the sake of the "Quality" and which they could have ignore.

But alas an artists mind............ How can you stop it from giving you the quality lesser than they can. Here he fall into the trap of business trick and compromised. Consolidation and responsibility are both important, and perhaps as the movie is "Business" after all, everyone should mind about the cost, but again you can ask yourself , is there any cost enough for a sheer "Quality"? which is giving you around $500 million in gross?

The mainstream film makers have always shut their eyes from this part of the film making till date, so as the producers. If this continues , there is a near future where we land our films 100 years back.

Please don't watch the documentary as a pathos in mind but try to learn and imply into your path towards this industry.