Tim Squyres is a film editor, and director Ang Lee’s partner in crime for the last two decades, having edited all but one of his films. Among others, Squyres edited Hulk, Sense and Sensibility, Lust, Caution, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best film editing. He most recently edited Life of Pi, an adaptation of the best-selling book that follows the tale of an Indian boy struggling to survive inside a lifeboat drifting at sea. He shares the lifeboat, naturally, with a vicious Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. What follows is an action-packed meditation on religion, friendship, and the human will to survive. While Squyres didn’t adapt Life of Pi for the big screen, he was tasked with overseeing the look of every shot in the film — and he even ended up spending some time in the lifeboat himself. Squyres took some time to talk with The Verge about what it takes to create CG tigers, the pains of editing in 3D, and how digital actors might replace human actors sooner than we think.