Lights, camera, action!

A group of actors are gathered in a palatial sitting room. There are paintings on the walls, ornate furnishings surrounding them, bursts of gold provided by huge vases positioned on table tops. It’s a wealthy household and the group in the room evidently live in it.

There’s an older couple — the family elders — and two younger couples. One of the younger women has (faux) tears streaking down her face. Together, this group is addressing an empty corner of the room. The older man points an accusing finger towards the erroneous corner. The older woman shakes her head tearfully while she addresses the blank space. One of the younger men goes so far as to stride up to the corner, stare at it fixedly and launch into a long angry rant.

It’s all in a day’s work on a TV drama set.

One of the actors — playing the unfortunate character being lambasted by this motley crew — hasn’t turned up and so, the rest of the cast has to ‘make believe’. Later, the absentee actor’s scenes will get filmed and, then, everything will be strung together seamlessly. Watching it on TV, you wouldn’t even know about the pains that went into filming this on-screen family showdown.

“We ‘cheat’ all the time like this,” actor Osama Tahir once told me. “It’s nothing new. They even did it in the movie Back to the Future when Michael J. Fox wasn’t available to shoot a few scenes. It’s a well-documented fact.”

For the TV drama buff, though, these tiny details that go into the making of the drama can be very, very interesting. The Pakistani TV industry is a raging behemoth, with productions being churned out constantly and the three main TV channels embroiled in a constant race for ratings.

From illusions of grandeur to a last-minute rush for the ideal settings and locations to stretching the imagination and last-minute changes to endings, starry vanities and unfinished scripts, it’s all in a day’s work on a television drama set

Extensive ensemble casts and crews work day in and day out on high-budget productions scheduled to begin airing around a specified time. But what you see on TV is sometimes a far cry from how the drama has actually been shot.

There are obstacles to be countered, tiny details to be looked into and quite a bit of technology that has to be employed. Here’s a brief glimpse of the inner workings of a TV drama — some of the little secrets that get hidden away on TV…

Illusions of grandeur

Seraj-ul-Haq, director of the currently on air hit 7th Sky Productions drama Tere Bin, describes how it was necessary for his set to look very, very grand.

“The drama has a larger-than-life story and it was important that the audience got a sense of opulence when they saw it. For this reason, the drama has been shot by connecting five different homes. The hero goes from his room to the corridor in one home and, by the time he reaches the stairwell, he’s being filmed in a completely different location.”

What appears to be the simplest scene, where the characters are simply moving from one room to the other, required considerable planning. “We spent hours figuring out where to shoot which scene,” says Seraj. “The hero’s room had to be huge, so we converted an entire TV lounge into a bedroom space. We put paintings and a lion’s head on the wall. All these little details help in creating the magic that draws in the audience.”

The rush for locations

On other drama sets, even the single house being utilised as the main shooting location ends up getting changed.

“It’s a major issue that occurs very frequently,” says producer Abdullah Seja, CEO at iDream Entertainment. “A drama shoot tends to go on for as long as five months and, sometimes, the owners of the house decide that they can no longer lease the location.

“They may need the space for themselves or have guests coming over or the house could be committed for some other drama after a specified date. In such a situation, it becomes imperative that we find a house that looks somewhat similar.”

He continues: “I have had to search out a house, repaint or apply wallpaper to some of the walls so that they look like the walls in the other house and go shopping for furniture that is similar to the one in the other home. It happened in the case of Kaisi Teri Khudgharzi,” Abdullah names one of last year’s biggest hits which aired on ARY Digital.

“I had to rush out and search for an alternate location because, for 30 days, we couldn’t use the house that we had been shooting in.”

Tech hacks and a stretch of the imagination

A bit of technology can come to the rescue when a location is no longer available. Director Qasim Ali Mureed recalls how some of the scenes in his hugely successful drama Mere Humsafar, produced by Six Sigma Plus and aired on ARY Digital, were shot in front of a blank screen.

“We had footage of empty rooms in the house where the drama is mainly based. We shot the characters in chroma (a technology for inserting backdrops in videos), imposing their videos on to the videos of the empty rooms.”

This was a tech hack that Qasim became adept at while shooting Neeli Zinda Hai, the supernatural thriller drama that he had directed before Mere Humsafar.

“In Neeli, there were scenes when Urwa Hocane, who was playing a ghost, had to be invisible. There were scenes where a single prop, like a ball, had to be suspended mid-air. We would shoot all these scenes in chroma.”

Other improvisations during the long shooting schedule of Mere Humsafar — the drama stretched on for a whopping 40 episodes — employed the use of imagination rather than technology.

Body doubles were used for actors who couldn’t be present for a scene. “We had a crew of junior actors, selected because they resembled the body types of members of the main cast, and we would film just their backs or a hand or simply a shoulder with a dupatta slung over it.

“Some scenes were shot over days. Like the scene where Farhan Saeed and Hania Aamir get married, was shot in three consecutive nights. Actors get tired as it starts getting late and we need to let them off so that they can come on time for shooting the next day,” says Qasim.

Finding ‘soul’

The audience may register an all-star cast and extravagant locations, but many may not realise the long hours invested by some producers into the creation of a drama’s title track.

At 7th Sky Entertainment, finding the right OST is a long arduous task for producers Abdullah Kadwani and Asad Qureshi.

“Once the drama shoot goes on the floor and we start getting the raw footage, we assess the different characters and their interactions with each other,” describes Asad Qureshi. “Based on the visuals, we get several title tracks composed by different musicians. We then play the songs with the video footage and decide which one works best.”

Once the main track has been selected, smaller musical ‘pieces’ are created for the different situations in the drama. “We usually utilise a live orchestra. It would be very easy to create computerised sounds of different instruments, but there is a soul to music created by human hands. It becomes memorable and powerful.

 “Music breaks the monotony in a drama,” he continues. “The audience subconsciously begins to connect different situations — romance, anger, agitation — with certain musical tracks.”

There were several versions that were considered for the OST of Khuda aur Mohabbat 3. The title track eventually selected for the drama was directed by Naveed Nashad, sung by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Nish Asher and won the Lux Style Award for Best OST this year.

Six different songs were considered for the title track of the currently on-air Tere Bin. The final version trended on YouTube for several weeks once the drama began airing.

The last-minute ending

The right ending can make a drama story become memorable. Director Nadeem Baig knows this very well — some of his most popular dramas have had tragic ends, where the hero’s love becomes eternal when he dies, usually after delivering an emotional monologue.

In the case of Pyarey Afzal, the Six Sigma Entertainment production which aired on ARY Digital back in 2014 and continues to be one of the most memorable dramas directed by Nadeem, the ending was pondered upon in detail and, then, changed at the last minute.

“The hero had to die because he was a hit-man. He had killed a lot of people and it was important that he paid for his sins,” recalls Nadeem. “I remember Hamza Ali Abbasi, the drama’s main lead, was eager that we should shoot the climax differently. I thought that it was important too.

“On the day that we were shooting the climax, the set was completely ready when I decided to call the drama’s writer Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar and ask him to write the end differently. He wanted to know why and so I narrated the scene to him.

“The great thing about Khalil sahib is that if you manage to convince him, he will agree to what you are saying. He told me to wait and I sat in my office with Saba Hameed, who was also acting in the drama. Khalil sahab sent in the new scene. Originally, Hamza’s character was supposed to die in front of Ayeza. Now, he dies while she is on the phone with him, telling him for the first time that she loves him.”

It was a heartbreaking ending. “Yes,” Nadeem agrees with me, “my mother has never forgiven me for it.”

He adds: “There are many other times when a scene is rewritten at the very last minute.”

Referring to Kuchh Ankahi, his drama that is currently on air on ARY Digital, Nadeem says, “There are scenes where I tell Mohammad Ahmed, who has written the script and is also acting in the drama, that he needs to make changes. This can be so much better, I have told him, and he has retired to a room and come up with a new improved script within half an hour.”

Starry vanities

A star-studded ensemble cast can come with its own set of requirements — especially when you have one of the country’s biggest pop stars acting in your drama. Director Saife Hassan realised this when he worked with Atif Aslam in last year’s MD Productions drama, Sang-i-Mah, which aired on the Hum TV Network.

“Sang-i-Mah was shot in Dadar, near Shinkiari and Balakot. It’s up in the mountains and a fairly remote area,” recalls Saife. “Atif Aslam was supposed to arrive on set in three, four days, and we suddenly got a query as to whether his vanity van was ready.

“Up there in the mountains, there was no concept of a vanity van. We quickly made enquiries in Lahore and there was no van that was free. Karachi was too far off to be a possibility.”

He continues: “We then decided that, instead of arranging a van, we would find a nearby location where Atif and his team could retire in between shoots. This turned out to be difficult. The nearby homes were occupied by [conservative locals] and there was no concept of allowing unknown men into their homes to rest.

“Finally, we found a shed where a man used to tie up his cattle. It was near the location where Atif’s character would rest and spend time at the graveyard. Within four days, we cleaned up the shed. We eliminated the smell of cattle and we made it so comfortable that Atif and his team would sit there all day and they never realised that animals would be tied up in this very room!”

Saife has more anecdotes for Sang-i-Mah fans — and Atif Aslam fans.

“Atif was very generous. When his acting spell ended, he handed out money to all the crew that had been working in the drama. There were three or four boys and they got 50,000 rupees each. The rest of the crew got envelopes containing 100 dollars.

“I was sitting with Naumaan Ijaz at that time and I asked him what I should do if Atif gave me an envelope. Naumaan advised me that it would be wrong to refuse the envelope at that point, and that I should take it. ‘He’ll probably give you a little more than 100 dollars,’ he said to me.

“It turned out that I got a cheque for 200,000 rupees,” Saife laughs. “For quite some time, I didn’t cash the cheque but then I got a call from Atif’s manager asking why I hadn’t cashed the cheque. I eventually cashed it. Do lakh say khaa pee leeya [I spent it all on food],” laughs Saife.

The case of the unfinished script

Here’s an insider detail that TV audiences may be aware of: a lot of times a drama begins shooting while the script still isn’t complete.

The actors and director begin working with the initial few episodes and, during this time, the remainder gets written. Sometimes, the drama writer can take his or her time and, in worst case scenarios, drama shoots have had to stall because the rest of the script isn’t ready.

And, as the script goes through multiple twists and turns, the cast and crew can begin to have issues with where the story is heading.

“I did not know that my character would turn out the way she did,” Ayesha Omar said recently, following her acting stint in Six Sigma Production’s Habs, which was viewed on ARY Digital. Ayesha plays the antagonist who does quite a bit of lying and wheeling and dealing to keep the lead pair apart.

“I did not receive the whole script when I signed on. I couldn’t have known that my character would end up doing all that she did.”

According to actress Maya Ali, it’s important that an actor insists that the script — or most of it — is made available before signing on to a project. “What you portray on screen is your responsibility,” she had said. “There have been times when my peers have signed on to a project based on a basic narration of the plot while I have backed out because I haven’t gotten the script.”

Even with a complete script at hand, a drama production has to wind its way through a long obstacle course before finally making its TV premiere. Sometimes, actors change midway through episodes — most recently, actor Manzoor Qureshi replaced Qavi Khan, who had to leave the country for an emergency medical treatment, in Meri Shehzadi, directed by Qasim Ali Mureed and airing on the Hum TV Network. More often than not, a drama that becomes a hit is stretched on by a few extra episodes, with the OST getting inserted in order to prolong scenes and irritating slow-motion shots being added in. There are spats between co-actors who refuse to share screen-space with each other, much to the consternation of the director and there are actors who disappear into their dressing rooms for ages, with the rest of the cast and crew waiting.

Blood, sweat and tears, last-minute changes and off-screen hollering matches eventually come together in a 30-odd episodes long TV drama. What you see on TV may be interesting — but what you don’t get to see is sometimes just as riveting (if not more).

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 19th, 2023