Only Half of Yash’s Ravana Tandav Made the Final Cut

Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana: Rise of a Legend has been celebrated for its visual ambition, but cinematographer Pankaj Kumar says one sequence stood above everything else in technical difficulty: the Dashanan stretch featuring Yash as ten versions of Ravana. Speaking to Variety, Kumar opened up about the motion-control shooting that made it possible, and also revealed just how much of the celebrated Tandav never reached theatres.

The trickiest VFX brief

At the centre of the challenge was a simple but demanding idea: Ravana fights his own demons inside his head, which meant ten different Ravanas had to share the same frame and interact with one another. In practical terms, Yash had to perform the same actions again and again while slipping into ten distinct avatars.

• Ten Yash avatars had to be placed and moved within one shot.
• A motion-control camera repeated exact movements for consistency.
• The sequence could not be completed in a single day.

“I think the 10-headed Ravana sequence was the toughest from the VFX point of view,” Kumar said. The planning was significant: the crew had to decide where each Ravana would appear, how the camera would travel, and how every pass would line up before the VFX artists could combine the footage.

A metaphysical Dashanan

Rather than showing literal ten heads in the way audiences usually imagine, Tiwari chose a metaphysical interpretation of Dashanan. Kumar praised that decision as “brilliant,” and gave Yash credit for bringing variety and intensity to each version of the character. The result is a VFX showcase built around performance and inner conflict, not just computer-generated spectacle.

A three-day Tandav, cut in half

The other sequence that left a lasting impression on Kumar was the Ravana Tandav, choreographed by Shiamak Davar. He described the original shoot as hugely energetic, with a fast sweeping camera moving around Yash over three days. But the theatrical version is not the full performance.

“What you see in the film is only half of what we shot,” Kumar said. The film’s 3-hour-15-minute runtime meant several sequences were shortened, and the Tandav was one of the biggest casualties. No extended version has been announced, but the disclosure gives fans a clear sense of how much material exists beyond the final edit.

Why this matters for the audience

For fans, the Ramayana is not just a film but a franchise being built carefully. A U certificate, a three-hour-plus duration and a Diwali 2028 date for the second instalment show how seriously the makers are treating the long game. Kumar’s notes also make the craft visible: the ten-Ravana sequence is not one actor in prosthetics, but ten coordinated performances fused through planning and VFX.

Source: The Times of India