Chandralekha
The movie didn't have circus scenes at first. Vasan added them later during production. The script changed for that scene. Hundreds of circus elephants were used to free Veerasimhan from a cave. Kittoo traveled South India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). He saw 50+ circuses. He chose Kamala Circus and Parasuram Lion Circus; Vasan hired Kamala for a month. Circus scenes filmed by K. Ramnoth. Kittoo talked about the cameraperson's job:In those days, we had no zoom lenses and yet Ramnoth did it. One night, while Chandralekha is performing on the flying trapeze, she notices the villain's henchman in the front row. She is on her perch high up and he is seated in a ringside chair. Shock hits her and to convey the shock the camera zooms fast from her to the man. Today, with a fast zoom shot it can be done very easily, but there was no such lens forty years ago. Ramnoth did it using the crane. He planned it well and rehearsed the shot for long. He took the shot 20 times and selected the best "take".Raghavachari left. The drum-dance scene he did stayed. It had 400 dancers. They rehearsed daily for six months. A. K. Sekhar designed it. Jayashankar choreographed it. Kamal Ghosh filmed it with four cameras. Randor Guy thought it cost ₹500,000 (about US$105,000 in 1948). Swarnavel Eswaran Pillai estimated it cost ₹200,000, which was the whole budget for a typical Tamil movie at that time. The scene included the Kathakali and Bharatanatyam classical dances and the Sri Lankan Kandyan dance. A. Vincent, who later became a famous cinematographer and director in Malayalam cinema, helped Ghosh in this film.