A large LED screen and blaring music greeted me when entered Filmistan Studios at 1pm on October 12 2011. I was here to cinematograph the end credit song for the movie Ra One. This is my second assignment to shoot end credit song, the earlier being for Chandni Chowk To China.

Just the day before the shoot Anubhav called me and asked me if I was free next day to shoot for him. On hearing yes, he said ‘Good, my production will call you’ and hung up. An hour later I get a call from Red Chillies: “Hello sir can you please give me light requirements for tomorrow, we are shooting on Alexa.” I told him it is difficult to give light requirements without knowing what we are shooting. “Oh. Ok.” Click. One hour later I get a call from Firoz, the choreographer: “Sir I need to tell you about the shoot tomorrow.” He then explained to me that there will be few dancers and Sharoukh dancing on a stage with shots of film projected on a LED screen.

I then called the production and told them to get Ravi Disco to put up lights on grids so that I could have a clear platform without lights in the way or in the frame to move the job around as I liked. The song was pulsating and I needed to light it and move the camera to match it’s pace. I had recently shot a very similar sequence where we had a dancer against a LED screen and had learnt the hard way that if the resolution of the LED screen and the projected file is not in sync, the image become video ” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>video on Alexa and it was on air within two days.

Tech notes on still photography:

All pictures were shot using Fuji X100. F2. ISO3200. 1/125 shutter.