Brandon Baum, Europe’s Biggest VFX Artist, Reacts to SS Rajamouli's 'RRR'

Brandon Baum, better known as Brandon B, is certainly one of Europe’s biggest VFX artists boasting over 15 million subscribers on YouTube as well as his own VFX company, StudioB. During his recent visit to India for a YouTube event, The Hollywood Reporter India sat down with Baum to break down the iconic pre-interval scene from SS Rajamouli's blockbuster RRR (2022).

Celebrating 20 years of YouTube in India, Baum was blown away by what he was seeing. Quick to spot the VFX work in the opening frames of the pre-interval scene, Baum said, “The fireworks looked incredible, but you can kind of tell that there’s VFX... still, the artistry is stunning.”

When asked about whether VFX is the first thing he notices about any scene, he laughed, revealing that his “eyes are broken” and that he’s always looking for where the CG in the scene is, because he loves appreciating the human effort that goes into the process.

“The pacing is so nice; I love it. Going from those big grand opening shots to looking through a window, it’s stunning," he said, as the tension built up before the big reveal. He burst with excitement as the truck broke through the wall and flipped a vintage car. “Wow, this is crazy. What a shot!” he exclaimed, before questioning the practicality of the shot.

Breaking the scene down frame-by-frame, Baum added, “You can feel that there’s some speed remapping on this. It feels a little faster than life should be. However, I don’t mind it. It really adds to the intensity of the shot.”

But that's not all. Analysing the scene further, he noticed the ‘artificial motion blur’, explaining, “Motion blur is one of those hard things that is computed inside a computer so you can kind of tell [where it’s been used]. As humans we’ve become such good detectors of what blur looks like because we see it every day.”

Baum continues, “One of the things I’m looking at here is the geometry of the van — as it comes through the door it doesn’t seem like the smoke around it is being pushed through. As a truck of that size comes, you’d almost expect the air around it to part ways, which is not happening here..."

Watching the animals jump out of the cages, he appeared to be mesmerised. “These look stunning! “Now I’m going to assume that they are CG just for the practicality”, he joked.

What Baum loves about Indian cinema is the latter's use slow-mo, which is harder to perfect as an artist, because things can't be hidden with motion blur. "But, somehow, even in a slow-mo shot like this they’ve still managed to nail that photo realism which looks incredible and also is so hard to do," he said.

Pausing to analyse the frame, he pointed out the subtle use of the fire distortion. “You’ve got the torch in the foreground, the tiger behind, and having that distortion in the air brings it all together."

Summing up his feelings about the use of VFX in RRR, Baum noted, “Indian cinema is just incredible. The artistry behind that shot is stunning.”

When asked about the level of production in movies versus the current level of production on YouTube videos he said, “I’m really excited for the future of our industry. I don’t think there’s ever been a better time in the world of creativity as it is now. I’m very proud to be a YouTube creator because we’re starting to see a democratisation of creativity. Prior to today, if you wanted to tell your story, you had to pitch it to a Hollywood boardroom and hope that they gave you the funding for your story whereas today, YouTube has opened the floodgates. [They've] gone, ‘Great, we’re going to give you the world’s biggest stage to stand on (because now YouTube is bigger than Netflix, Prime or Disney) and allow you to tell your story and we’ll use our discoverability engine to find the audience it was made for’ and if that isn’t the definition of a democratised creative system where literally the best stories win, I don’t know what is."

You can watch his full reaction here: