A cut above the rest
On location for the shoot of Kaun Banega Crorepati on a dark evening at Juhu Koliwada, one can smell the suspense in the air. Hey wait a minute, this is not the Star Plus megashow in the make. We are talking about the hourly suspense thriller Kagaar on Sahara TV. It is one of the episodes that has been named KBC to be telecast on the August 18 at 9 pm.

Produced by Jeetu Chawla and directed by Sunil Khot, this episode has something unique about it. Normally, a 50-minute serial has about six segments where each segment is shot with a lot of retakes. But in this episode KBC of Kagaar the makers claim of having shot each segment in one take.

The director Sunil Khot seemed completely engrossed in his work. The setup was that of a shady beer bar, which actually was a gym for the Koliwada localites, remodelled for the shoot. The actors and the technicians had the ready-to-go look. “I wanted to give a special treatment to this particular story because I felt it would help in building up the suspense and the story would come across much better. Hence I decided to shoot each segment in one take,” said Sunil amidst a break while the artists were getting ready. The story is about an incident that takes place in a beer bar on a midnight which is about to change the lives of all the characters involved.

“This is a challenging task for all of us,” he admitted. “The actors have been rehearsing since afternoon and the technicians too are putting in their best,” added Sunil as Jeetu went about describing the special equipment like the Jibarm, the special track trolleys and the audio setup that they had arranged for this particular episode.

“We have cast all theatre performers for this story so that things work smoothly and there isn’t much of a problem with the actors,” Sunil added while explaining how the set was designed keeping in mind the movement of each actor.

Kagaar has been on air for quite sometime and each week it deals with a different story. “What I aim at is to give the people a programme which is about common people and not professional criminals. The way an ordinary man gets pushed to the edge of his life is what Kagaar is all about. Here we take a look at the process of a crime rather than just tracing out the person who did it,” says Jeetu. Umesh Padalkar has been the series director.

“I want to thank Jeetu for giving me this opportunity of doing the episode my way. It would have been difficult to get things done had he not provided the support and financial aid,” so saying Sunil proceeded for his shoot. Sunil was previously directing Shanti for DD.

“I had shot a couple of pilots a long time back for a suspense series. I went to the major channels trying to get them approved but at that time there were no hourly suspense serials and hence the idea did not register. Here at Sahara TV they not only approved my serial but they also gave me a lot of freedom to do it the way I wanted. They have never interfered with the director’s or my ideas”, is what Jeetu has to say on being asked how he chose to work with Sahara TV.

Kagar is a team effort. To Jeetu, each and every member of this team is equally important. “My serial is not just my directors or my effort. It is the effort of every person involved in the making. Without even one of them Kagaar will not be the same.”

Lopamudra Bhattacharya

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