Ang Lee was a humbling experience: Perier

KOCHI: As Life of Pi director Ang Lee received the Oscar for the best director on late Sunday evening in Los Angeles, he gave a pleasant surprise to the audience, greeting them with a 'Namaste' at the televised event.
This was enough to sent many back here, like Bagalavan Perier of Puducherry, into raptures. For Perier, one among the 300 lucky Indians who assisted Lee's team, the 45 days he spend with the production team was sheer fantasy, much like the movie, and Ang Lee, a humbling experience.
Perier was a student of journalism at Pondicherry University when Lee's team started screen tests for a local crew in early 2011. "The Life of Pi team came to Pondicherry University to conduct a screening test. I met them for a chance to work with production. The first assistant director of the Indian crew, Nithya Mehra, conducted an interview and I was selected as a translator. After a week, I began working as a production assistant. While the pre-production work went on for a month, the shooting was completed in 15 days," Perier said over the phone from Puduchery, where he works now as an audio assistant at Puduvai Vani, the community FM station of the university.
And working with Oscar-winner Ang Lee for Perier, who hails from a state that worships anything to do with filmdom, was as much a lesson in professionalism as it was in being human. "He was a very calm person. Even if he had to go for retakes, he never lost his temper. He would even stand in queue with us for food," he said.
But the most memorable experience for him came on the last day of the shoot. "It was at Puducherry Thirukameshwara Temple. There was a sequence in which we had to take many close-up shots. A camera was fixed on a pontoon in the temple pond. Since not many could stand on the pontoon, Ang Lee, the cameraman of the movie, Claudio Miranda, and I stood on it setting the frame. After the take, Ang Lee turned to me and asked if the shot was okay. I was shocked that he asked for my opinion and benignly nodded my head!"
The other aspect that was striking was Lee's emphasis on perfection. "He paid attention to minute details. It was very evident in the way he explained things to even background artists who were mostly Tamils," he said.
The Hollywood crew perfectly complimented the director's vision. "The way the Life of Pi team worked was entirely different from what I have seen and experienced before. They gave importance to pre-production. So the temple festival sequence, which had about 5,000 locals in it, was shot in 48 hours. The way they planned and coordinated the entire sequence was a lesson in professionalism."
With four Oscars, Perier is happy that their effort has won the jury over.