Part 23
The noise was less as we moved into the site and when we arrived at the hotel building it was just a memory. We were escorted into the building where hotel staff was eagerly waiting to serve us.
We all had separate rooms except for Guptar and Birgitta and I saw Guptar in conversation with Lajpal. We were allowed some time to freshen up before we were to have dinner and meet the rest of the crew that were to make the video with us, as well as the interviewer and her crew. When I came down to the dining room in a fresh dress it looked as if every Indian and his mate were in the big dining room. Anudeep was waiting for me and, as he took my arm to lead me to my seat I asked “Who are all these people?” He laughed and said “Geet, you are inside Bollywood. Nothing here is done by half. When we make the video we will have fifty dancers on set and there are about another fifty behind the camera and that is without talking about the dressers and beauticians.”
We were sat at a big table with the band and our, now two, agents. I must say the food was excellent and some of it was very western. Anudeep had his wife on one side and me on the other and we chatted as we ate. He told me that he loved the adoration which was similar to his earlier days when he was younger and more virile. His wife told him he had always been an older man as far as she was concerned but she would not disparage his virility. We found out that tomorrow we had two goals; the first was getting the interview over and done with and the second was to get our audio for the video on record. We would go into a studio to record the song and then, over the next few days, we would shoot the video part of it lip-syncing.
After the meal the band was taken into a side room where we were photographed and measured for our video costumes. I wondered what they had in mind for that. It had been a long day and we all said we needed our sleep so we left the other hundred or so people enjoying themselves. I found it hard to get to sleep and just lay there for a while wondering just what we had walked into. This morning I was a moderately well-known singer with a good band and tonight I find we are all superstars. That was one hell of a quantum shift.
At breakfast Guptar told us that he had arranged with Lajpal for himself and Birgitta to be taken to another hotel in the city by car so that he could catch up with family and do his planned business. He was not prepared to be shut away for the whole time. Aganee had decided to stay as she thought it was all fun and she was getting a whole lot out of it. Janet was on a very steep learning curve and Tavleen and I took her aside and told her to go with the flow and, whatever she decided, we would agree to. After breakfast we were all taken to another coach and driven about a half a mile to a building marked as ‘Intimate Studio Two’
Inside we met up with our dressers and beauticians who completely altered our appearances to reflect our superstar status. Then it was being sat in a group of settees on a set with the interviewer sat on an armchair. With at least twelve cameras set up, one for each face and two showing general views from different directions, it looked as if we were hemmed in but I could see that each camera had a blank screen behind us. The interviewer explained that she would ask each question in Hindi and English and to answer in English when she had finished the question. Not only did it make us all look polite but allowed her to put out two different versions with the second one having our answers subtitled in Hindi.
She started by asking each of us to talk about ourselves and what we played. I, of course, had to fudge a little but, on the whole, it seemed OK. She asked Anudeep how the hit album came to be made and the process of misunderstanding and luck brought it about without mentioning Salmans’ part in it. She then wanted to know about the duets I had sung and, when she wanted to know more about our music, I referred her to Tavleen. All in all it took about four hours and she thanked us all and, surprisingly, asked us all for autographs and a group picture with her and her chief cameraman. Oh fame!
We went back to the hotel for lunch, which was a bit quieter as we were told that the dancers were in the main studio with the choreographers and had lunch delivered. After freshening up we all went to ‘Audio Suite Three’ and were ushered into a big studio. We were all still in our morning costumes as we would be photographed during the takes The song picked was one of the duets off the second album and Anudeep said that it would hit the screens a few weeks before the album. That said we got the kit that was supplied, tuned it and made any changes we wanted to suit our playing and then tried it out with Anudeep and I facing the others.
The first few takes were not bad but lacked feeling. Anudeep was singing as if he was standing on a balcony addressing a crowd. I suggested that he tone it down and moved my microphone so I stood close to him. I told him to sing to me as if I was his wife or his mistress if he had one or more. That made him smile and the next take was much more intimate. It was supposed to be a love song, after all. The Dhawanees had it nailed by this time and we did a final take which I knew would be the one. Lajpal came over the speakers and asked us if we could lay down a new Dhawanee track while we were here. The guy must be burning his hand on that iron!
We had a quick discussion and decided on a semi-traditional love song that we had recorded just a week or so before so we got ready and nailed it on the second take. That was our work for the day done and we were allowed to go back to the hotel where the dressers helped us revert to the more normal people we were in the morning. The crowd was back for dinner and I gathered that they were all buzzing with what they had got through today. The rest of us would find out what it would look like tomorrow. I sat next to Aganee and asked her what she thought of it all and she told me it was all like the days in the music room but on another planet.
The next day we were woken very early with breakfast in bed. After our ablutions we were visited by the dressers and make-up artists. When I left my room I was an Indian Princess with well over-the-top make-up. They had taken pictures of me so that the following days we had continuity. The other girls were as well dressed as me and Balnoor was magnificent in a Rajah outfit complete with cummerbund and plumed turban. Anudeep was in a similar outfit in a much more regal colour and looked every inch the Bollywood star.
We were taken to ‘Sound Stage One’ and walked in to see a set that looked like something out of a magic carpet and sandals show. The amount of flowing gauze drapes would have supplied curtains to half our block back home and the instruments were already on a stage with two thrones. The director took us all aside and explained the story-line. He would have a panning shot of waving curtains as the lead-in music played and the first facial shot would be a close-up of Anudeep with his first lines. Then there will be a panning shot of the rest of the band playing to his right. The next facial will be me in close-up and the camera would then pan to show the band playing to my left. Our first lines would be with the two of us on our thrones.
Did that seem complicated? Well that was nothing compared to the rest of the song. If I say that fifty dancers didn’t seem like enough you can get the idea. We slowly worked through the song, filming it in twenty or thirty second bits. It was hard at first to keep the cadence when we picked it up again but we were allowed to actually play along to the sound coming through the speakers and sing as loudly as we liked because none of this was recorded for sound.
We had a lot of starts and stops and breaks for a drink as it was damned hot under the lights but we all worked hard to make it happen. I hoped that the director had not missed any bits because I didn’t know what we had done from one scene to the next. The dancers had the harder job as they had to pick up from the exact position that they had stopped at. I think they may have done this sort of thing before as they were totally professional the whole day.
We were asked if we wanted to stop for the day at about three but we all said that we wanted to finish and the director looked amazed. Anudeep was getting tired but that had the effect of making him look sexier as we sung. At six the director announced that we had it in the can and thanked us all for keeping with it. Anudeep said quietly that he had never seen a song as long as this one in the can in a day; he had thought it would take three. We went back to the hotel and the dressers freed us of our constraints so we could go and have a shower. Back in the bedroom I was dressed in a gorgeous long ball gown and my hair was put up. They put what looked like diamond ear-rings on me and gold rings on my fingers and finished with a magnificent necklace that glittered in the lights.
With a bit of extra make-up to match the jewellery I was allowed to join the others in the dining room. Actually, Anudeep, in his totally magnificent tails, met me and we entered the dining room with my arm on his. As we walked in there was applause from the assembled crews and dancers as well as our own party. I was almost slack-jawed but managed to keep smiling. “Did we just win the Nobel Prize or something?” I asked him and he quietly said “No, my dear Geet. We have achieved something far more lucrative. We have completed a video clip that will bring untold joy to millions - and millions to a select and joyous few.”
Marianne G 2021
