SS Rajamouli shares anecdotes on shooting RRR's Naatu Naatu

With the Academy Awards less than a week away, RRR director SS Rajamouli breaks down the visual aesthetics of Naatu Naatu in a 16-minute long video for the Vanity Fair youtube channel. This video is part of a series where acclaimed filmmakers break down a single scene from their film. This video series has earlier featured directors like Denis Villeneuve and Bong-Joon Ho. 

Naatu Naatu, which won its makers a Golden Globe award has been nominated for the Oscars in the Best Original Song category. Rajamouli is also seen praising the role of key technicians behind the production of the Naatu Naatu dance video. 

Starting the conversation with a mention of the Presidential Palace in Kyiv, Ukraine, where Naatu Naatu was shot, Rajamouli says, “This was actually supposed to happen in India, but because of the monsoon happening in the country back then, we scouted for locations overseas and we found this place. Expressing his surprise at the film’s line producer locking down the Presidential palace as a shoot location, Rajamouli continues, “The Parliament of Ukraine is adjacent to the Presidential palace, you can actually see it in a few frames. I was so shocked that we were shooting at such an important location. The Parliament building is actually metallic in color, we had the colour changed to lime plaster in post-production." 

Going on to thank the team in Ukraine, who provided ample support to the team of RRR, Rajamouli continues, “The musicians you see in the song video are actual musicians, the extras in the background are not actual extras, they are professional dancers. We went ahead and got actual musicians, even though they were not playing any music because only they can hold their instruments, be it a violin or a clarinet properly.” 

Talking about the role costumes played in Naatu Naatu, Rajamouli says, “My wife Rama designed the costumes, and she had them designed as costumes for a scene, and not a song. When Prem Rakshith, our choreographer saw the suits with the suspenders, he devised a dance step that had Tarak and Charan dance while playing with it. We had elongated suspenders designed specially for the dance steps they do in the interludes, after they were done dancing that step, they went back to dancing with normal suspenders.” 

Rajamouli also went on to thank KK Senthil Kumar, his cinematographer and Sabu Cyril, his art director and spoke about their contributions in the song video at length.