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The Voices Behind ‘Naatu Naatu’
Kaala Bhairava and Rahul Sipligunj are the singers who brought composer M.M. Keeravaani’s Golden Globe-winning and Oscar nominated song “Naatu Naatu” from S.S. Rajamouli’s “RRR” to life.
Featuring lyrics by Chandrabose, the energetic song, shot against the backdrop of the Mariinskyi Palace in Kyiv, Ukraine, shows stars Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr. in a dance-off.
Bhairava is the son of Keeravaani and has watched the composer work since childhood. He made his film singing debut in 2011 with “Rajanna” and has sung several hit songs since. He made his film composing debut with 2019’s “Mathu Vadalara.”
“It was quite simple. Rahul and I were instructed to render the song with an uninhibited attitude and maintain the kind of energy the song and the situation demanded. Also, getting an in-depth insight into the song situation also helped,” Bhairava says about the preparation for “Naatu Naatu.”
Sipligunj made his debut as a film singer with “Dheera” (2009) and since then has sung many hits, including several for Keeravaani. For “Naatu Naatu,” the composer told him that his voice would be used on the rough track and might not make it to the final version.
“This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me and I said to myself ‘no matter what, I will give my best, as such opportunities don’t come knocking on our doors very often,’” Sipligunj says.
Sipligunj’s voice was not only retained for the original Telugu-language song but the composer also asked him to sing the Tamil-, Kannada- and Hindi-language versions. The singer, who didn’t know a single word of Kannada or Tamil, credits the film’s line producer M.M. Srivalli and Bhairava, who supported him through the recording sessions.
— Naman Ramachandran
The Man Behind the ‘Bones and All’ Prosthetics
As the lead prosthetic designer on 2022’s “Bones and All,” Jason Hamer’s twisted artistry can be spotted in many of the film’s most bloodcurdling, pivotal moments. Hamer’s influence on the feature dates as far back as pre-production, when he collaborated with director Luca Guadagnino to research the logistics of eating another human being.
“[The goal] was taking that knowledge and trying to re-create it with the kind of materials that we had,” says Hamer, owner and creative director of Hamer FX, of the design process. “Because you have silicones and stuff, but they don’t perform in the same way that nature does — that human flesh does. So you really have to manipulate it to do what you want it to do.”
The first thing Hamer’s visual-effects team tackled was the film’s brutal opening sequence, in which Maren (Taylor Russell) compulsively bites off the finger of one of her classmates at a sleepover. But silicone alone wouldn’t be enough to pull off the gorey gag, as Hamer quickly came to discover, so he strengthened the mangled finger prosthetic with pantyhose to achieve a “sinewy peel” effect. The prosthetic was then carefully applied to the performer right before the close-up reveal of her finger, which Hamer said took up to 90 minutes.
But Hamer’s ultimate feat was constructing the full-body corpse of Mrs. Harmon, an innocent elderly woman devoured by a cannibal named Sully (Mark Rylance). To reproduce the character’s intestines, Hamer says he injected silicone into sausage casing and soaked it in bleach.
“We were constantly pulling from food or nature,” Hamer says. “Bananas make great brains … you smash it up and mix it with some blood, and it just really kind of gives you a nice, organic, chunky yet vibrant feel that you can’t replicate with silicone.”
— Katie Reul
Cave Diving in ‘Thirteen Lives’
Working in all kinds of conditions is par for the camera operator course. For Jason Ellson, working in an underwater cave was something new on “Thirteen Lives.”
A veteran camera operator, Ellson (“Hidden Figures,” “Mulan” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) began his career shooting news and documentaries in Australia and Southeast Asia before moving to the States.
“I had a little experience shooting underwater during my documentary days; however, I would far from call myself an expert in that area,” he says. “Hence, we employed a professional underwater DP, Simon Christidis.”
The film, which tells the true story of the rescue of a young soccer team and coach in Thailand, who had become trapped deep within a network of flooded caves during monsoon season, required detailed planning and attention to safety, for the cast, crew and the delicate equipment.
“For me, the biggest piece of the puzzle was waterproofing the equipment and how we would operate the ‘bagged’ cameras and capture the drama,” he says. “The filmmaking process is extremely fluid at the best of times, you add underwater, rain and confined spaces — well, the difficulty level went way up.”
Ellson adds that director Ron Howard was extremely adaptable.
“Ron basically let the film dictate the visual language, which we discovered as we went along,” he says. “I think the raw style of filmmaking, almost observational documentary with lots of hand-held [camera shots], helped to achieve this.”
Surprisingly, Ellson discovered that, with all of the cutting-edge equipment at their disposal, a camera operator’s best friend shooting in an underwater cave is the right pair of shoes.
“Crocs were my savior, they worked like a sneaker in the water,” Ellson says. “They had grip, drained and the enclosed toe protected your toes from the rocks.”
— Paul Plunkett
Archives Play a Big Role in ‘Babylon’
When looking to re-create the early days of Hollywood for “Babylon,” Oscar-nominated production designer Florencia Martin knew the first place to go for research. Whether it’s the silent film era, the mid-20th century, as she did for “Blonde,” or the San Fernando Valley of 1973 for “Licorice Pizza,” Martin has a go-to resource for Los Angeles.
“I love the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power website,” says Martin. “Incredible archives. It’s really cool because it’s organized by the different boroughs, so you get early images of Beverly Hills and Pasadena and downtown, so you can really see the evolution.”
Along with actual studio archives at Paramount, another resource Martin uses is History for Hire, a prop rental company in North Hollywood that specializes in historical period props, plus something she was especially interested in for “Babylon.”
“They have an incredible collection of film equipment from the period,” she says. “So when we do re-creations like the silent film studios in the 1920s, all of that film equipment is sourced from the catalog.”
In the early days of filmmaking, some studios had no roofs in order to take advantage of the sunlight, so Martin was delighted to depict the equipment as well-worn, even when relatively new.
“You could really see how ragtag things were and that was important,” she says. Director Damien Chazelle “really wanted to stay away from a pristine presentation of the era. There’s a misconception that the equipment could be perfect because it’s brand new when actually it was being shared and pieced together and they were just trying to figure it out.”
Having worked her way up through the art department trenches, Martin has an appreciation for the multitudes of set designers, graphic designers,
illustrators, art directors and crews that brought “Babylon” to life.
“Obviously you have to have a great team,” she says. “But then I definitely also like to get my
hands dirty!”
— Paul Plunkett
‘Western Front’ Mobilized for Sound and Makeup
For “All Quiet on the Western Front’s” Oscar-nominated sound designer/supervising sound editor Frank Kruse, the sheer scale of the production created challenges from the outset, with his small team navigating the huge crew filming the action while he was far away in lockdown due
to COVID.
“There’s a saying, you have two people working for sound and 89 people are working for picture,” says Kruse. “The amount of collaboration between the departments was really outstanding.”
He credits production sound mixer Viktor Prasil for noticing that the soldiers’ period-correct boots would have played havoc with sound, with their thick leather soles studded with metal spikes. Working with the costume department, rubber spikes were swapped in, and the cooperation also extended into installing microphones into helmets to record the immersive effect of literally running through a war zone.
Director Edward Berger is a huge fan of recording “wild tracks” on set, allowing Kruse’s team to have dedicated recordings — just sound without camera, from the rumblings of period-specific vehicles to dozens of extras running screaming across the battlefield, all for a scrap of sound whose origins might otherwise slip through the cracks.
“All that unique stuff is hard to do in post in a realistic way,” says Kruse. “So that was really was gold for us in the end.”
While audiences can understand the massive effort to re-create the visuals, Kruse appreciates all the efforts his crew took to put viewers at the heart of the action.
“Alexander Buck and Benjamin Hörbe, our supervising dialogue & ADR editors, they just salvaged so much stuff from the production sound, they did such a great job,” he says. “Assembling great selections that were true to the story and just lifted everything up and made more it three-dimensional.”
For designers on period films, sometimes a crucial helping hand comes from strangers unconnected to the production. Such was the case when Oscar-nominated makeup and hair designer Heike Merker began her research for “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
“I found the documentary ‘They Shall Not Grow Old,’” she says, referring to the Peter Jackson-produced and directed documentary comprising restored WWI footage. “The images of this documentary gave me a wonderful entrance to our movie, I could get a lot of research material out of this.”
Once Merker had the basics of the look and feel of the people of the era in place, she spent time with the script and with the film’s costume designer, Lisy Christl, to chart the characters’ journeys.
“She was basically rock solid for me from beginning to end,” says Merker, describing how the main characters begin as youthful and clean but degrade as the war takes its toll on them. “You could basically draw into the faces that they looked tired, that they looked thinner, they don’t have energy, they don’t have hope anymore.”
Because the film was shot during the pandemic lockdown, initially Merker was told the actors would need to mask up between takes.
“I said ‘No, it’s not possible, we don’t have the people to run over the battlefield and touch everyone up. So then we negotiated, basically, OK, we have to find something else, a shield to put in front of faces, but the background [actors] had to wear masks between takes, which was not the best.”
And on days when there would be dozens of soldiers to be made up, Merker had to quickly expand her team, bringing on additional artists to get literal armies made up in very little time and under harsh conditions.
“What you see in front of camera, we’re there in the same situation behind the camera,” she says. “It was that muddy, it’s not that we had a better place to be.”
— Paul Plunkett
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