Life of Pi composer Mychael Danna is nominated for both original score and original song at this year's Academy Awards and the Canadian composer is considered by many the favourite to take both trophies home.

Born in Winnipeg, raised in Burlington, Ont., and now based in Toronto, Danna has already picked up a Golden Globe for for his Life of Pi score.

The 3D film, based on Yann Martel's critically acclaimed novel, follows a young Indian boy who is cast adrift after a horrifying shipwreck and finds himself on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger he calls Richard Parker.

Longtime project

Danna read the novel more than 10 years ago and found it deeply personal and moving, he told Jian Ghomeshi on CBC’s Q cultural affairs show.

Danna credit the success of Life of Pi, as well as the taste he's had of awards season recognition, to director Ang Lee, whom he says captured the beauty and essence of the Martel's novel.

“The overwhelming feeling right now — the reason Ang Lee and I are walking around with smiles on our faces — is people are loving our film, a film that many said couldn’t be done,” Danna said.

He began discussing Life of Pi with Lee about five years before the film went into production. They reflected on many ideas about life or death choices, survival and the nature of God — themes that run throughout the film.

With the film's visually stunning 3D visuals, Danna's challenge in writing the score was to keep it simple enough, he said.

“You have to make it easy to sit there and enjoy it. There is so much challenging information and philosophy and visuals that the music had to have those ideas woven in a subtle way. But the overall impact of the music had to be seamless and reflect the emotion of the story,” he noted.

Danna took more than a year to compose the score that has now earned him so much acclaim. He talked to Q about his long relationship with music, always wanting to be a composer and how a chance meeting with Atom Egoyan during his university days led him to composing movie music.