Did You Know? Many Of These Top Award Function Performances Don’t Have Live Audiences As Shown On TV, Reveals Stage Effects Expert

We are under the lockdown in order to combat the COVID 19 crisis. Well, the country is binging on re-runs of television shows and people also have taken a lot to the content on the OTT platforms which is why their business is booming!

The readers are also reading about occurrences that happened in the past. The re-runs of Ramayana and Mahabharata are being lapped up by the audiences. Having said that, the most-watched programs on television are the award functions and the reality TV shows. Whenever any award function or a reality show is telecast on TV the TRPs soar and it is a fact.

But there’s always a catch! People don’t quite know how these award functions are shot or sheer reality behind reality shows. Which is why we exclusively got in touch with one of the country’s leading SFX and pyrotechnician Adil Bachuk to know what exactly goes on behind the cameras.

Bachuk who is the director of Tara Stage FX and has organised some major SFX work for all the Bollywood award functions like Filmfare, Stardust, Zee Cine Awards; not to forget on many reality shows like Bigg Boss 13, The Kapil Sharma Show, Dance Deewane, revealed many intricate details the people do not know about these functions.

These real-time programs which have a deferred telecast on TV are not always as prim and proper as they project it. “Things are not at all what comes across on television. There is so much chaos and so much running around. What happens is, the reality is done away with on the editing table to portray flawlessness in front of all and sundry.” He revealed.

Things don’t flow as smoothly as we see the final product on TV. “So many mismanagements happen on the day of the event, that I have lost count of them. The chaos with the on-cue team, the performer’s anxiety, the production team and the camera team all collectively decide which performance is going to happen first. It also depends on the arrival of a particular artist at the venue. The biggest problem we face is because of this. For instance, if it has been decided prior to the beginning of the function that a particular artiste will be performing, we set up the stage in accordance with his/her performance, once the stage is set, suddenly we are told, instead of him or her (whoever was supposed to perform originally) there is someone else who will be performing because of an issue, that’s when we have to leave everything and rearrange the stage to felicitate the performance of the other actor! Then, we have to make sure we get whatever is required in the performance of the other artist. The coordination is really bad!