娱乐英语新闻:Ang Lee featured on "DGA Quarterly" cover

"Life of Pi" tells the story of a boy stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a tiger. Despite recognizing technical difficulties in putting the film together, Lee saw potential for making a new kind of film. But this would involve previsualisation, one of Lee's least favorite aspects of filmmaking.

Before filmmakers shoot expensive scenes, they have to meticulously plan them out. Lee believed there was no other way to make this film. "It's exciting. It's moviemaking. There are no rules," he said.

Lee also talked about how he discovered his passion for directing, "I grew up in an agricultural culture, which tries to emphasize peace and balance with society and nature, and so attempts to diffuse as much conflict as it can. But in Western culture, particularly theatrical culture, it's all about conflict, asserting personal free will and how that can create a conflict within the family, or in the larger society. And I found I was talented at communicating those kinds of situations. Eventually, after all my exposure to film, seeing five to seven movies every weekend, I wanted to do films. I did my graduate work at NYU, three years in the film program. It's a very pragmatic program; you just go out and make movies."

After a few years, Lee developed his own principles towards the art of filmmaking, "This is the important thing: people watch a movie, and a movie's average length is something like an hour and forty minutes to two hours. And I believe that people really focus on the film as an image for maybe about ten, fifteen minutes. The drama is what is really important in the kinds of films I make. It's got to be about human beings. Nothing holds your attention longer than human faces, something the audience can identify with. Storytelling, drama and human faces - all those comprise the center of what I want to do. I spent movie after movie trying to break away from it, to be more visual, because I like differences. But you can only do so much. It all has to relate to the characters."