How much time does it take to create a single action sequence in a film? For director Nitesh Tiwari, the answer is six-and-a-half years.
The filmmaker has revealed that the much-talked-about battle between Ravana and Jatayu in Ramayana: Part 1 took more than half a decade to complete, offering a glimpse into the extraordinary amount of work that went into bringing the Indian epic to the big screen.
Starring Ranbir Kapoor as Rama, Sai Pallavi as Sita and Yash as Ravana, the film is among Indian cinema’s most ambitious productions, with extensive visual effects used to recreate the world of the ancient epic.
But as Tiwari explains, bringing even a single sequence to life involved years of planning, experimentation and repeated changes.
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Six-and-a-half years for one fight
Speaking during the film’s promotional rounds, the director revealed just how long the Ravana-Jatayu confrontation had been in development.
“You know how much time it took us to finish the Ravana-Jatayu fight? From the time I briefed the previous artists to the time we have finished the work on it, it’s 6 and a half years,” said Tiwari.
“I can go on and on about it for an hour, just to tell you how much effort went into making it from scratch… and thousands of people have worked on it,” he added.
The sequence depicts Jatayu, the mythical bird voiced by veteran actor Anupam Kher, who attempts to rescue Sita after she is abducted by Ravana. Despite putting up a fight, Jatayu is eventually overpowered, making the confrontation one of the most significant emotional turning points in the epic.
However, the six-and-a-half-year timeline refers to the entire process of developing and completing the sequence, rather than the time spent filming it or creating Jatayu’s digital character alone.
Why Pushpak Viman became the biggest challenge
Interestingly, one of the most complicated aspects of the sequence wasn’t the fight itself, but the design of Ravana’s mythical flying vehicle, Pushpak Viman.
According to Tiwari, the team spent nearly two years working on its structure, experimenting with approximately 40 to 50 designs before arriving at the final version.
The challenge was that the fight had initially been planned around an entirely different design. When the filmmakers eventually settled on the version they wanted, the structure of the aircraft had changed so significantly that several parts of the action sequence needed to be reconsidered.
Tiwari recalled how even a seemingly small design change could affect Jatayu’s movements during the battle. “Now, Jatayu can’t come from here? So, now what do we do because here a dome-like structure is created,” he explained.
This meant the team had to repeatedly revisit the choreography to ensure that the action worked with the aircraft’s final structure.
The filmmaker also wanted Pushpak Viman to look believable within the world of the film, rather than appearing as an elaborate fantasy creation without any underlying logic.
“You look at Pushpak Vimaan, it looks like, ‘Okay, this can fly,'” he said, adding that the team had developed its own understanding of how the vehicle would function.
Ranbir Kapoor on the human effort behind VFX
During the conversation, Kapoor also addressed the tendency to dismiss elaborate visual effects as the work of artificial intelligence, highlighting the number of artists involved in creating such sequences.
“There are thousands of people sitting behind it day in and day out and they are all tirelessly working for hours, just to get one frame right,” the actor said.
His comments come at a time when the growing use of AI in filmmaking has sparked conversations about the future of visual effects and the role of human creativity in large-scale productions.
For Tiwari, however, the Ravana-Jatayu battle, which is also easily one of the most impactful set pieces in the film, serves as an example of just how much work can go into a few minutes of cinema.
The film is the first installment of a two-part adaptation of the epic, with Ramayana: Part 2 scheduled for release during Diwali 2028.
With the first film now playing in UAE cinemas, Tiwari’s revelation offers audiences a closer look at the years of creative and technical work behind some of its most elaborate sequences.
And if a single confrontation took six-and-a-half years to complete, it offers some perspective on the scale of the undertaking involved in recreating one of India’s most enduring stories for the big screen.
Source: Khaleej Times