I have been facing flak that says that this post on Metblogs has “nothing to do with Bangalore”….so I am moving this entry to my personal blog.

t has been ages since I recorded a program for TV. and I was curious to know how it is done nowadays. So when I went for my music recording, I decided to take my camera along and document things.... I found that the technicians work very hard indeed. Recording for the programs started at 8 am, and when I went, everything was running about 3 hours late, thanks to some power problems, and some lack of planning. The technicians took their lunch break only at 3.20 pm! And after having a quick bite, they went back to work and when I left after my recording, at nearly 9 pm, they had yet another program to record before they could call it a day! Let's begin this photo essay with a snap of the "Asianet"suitcase...Suitcases had a large part to play in the recording, as you will see: Here are a couple of views of the technicians at work: Here's the sound recordist; as you can see, there's another suitcase in the picture above... and the next photo shows the contents of the suitcase... What a neat way of storing equipment, all ready to pack up and carry away! I really like this "suitcase" concept! Here's a pile of headphones: Here is the monitoring equipment: And here are the video cameras: And here are some lights; they used to be called Klieg lights, I don't know what the term is now: and these stand-up ones: The whole place was a maze of wires: This is "Kanaka Sabha", the name of the hall: The stage was beautifully decorated with trompe d'loeil paintings; here's one, how beautiful the light-and-shade effect is! Here's the artiste who was playing the veena when I went there in the afternoon... The technician's hand can be seen operating the video camera. Finally, it was my turn. The make-up man, Mr K P Balasubramaniam, was not happy at my lack of makeup and put on some for me: And then, finally, we had the recording. I asked the video cameraman to take this shot just over the video equipment, to give a feel of the recording as well as the stage: Do notice the beautiful three-dimensional effect of the painting of the stage backdrop...I really appreciated the artwork! The recording was at Sanathana Kalakshetra, in Jayanagar, next to the Jayagar Telephone Exchange. I want to go back there to photograph the two lovely paintings, one of the churning of the ocean by the Asuras and Devas, and the other one of Vishnu, as Mohini, hoodwinking the Asuras and distributing the nectar only to the Devas, so that the gods would get immortality while the demons would not! One of the very strange things about this recording, however, is something I have to..er...put on record. Amazingly, the main artiste (myself) was NOT paid for the recording, but my accompaniments were. I was told that this is due to "paucity of funds". Never before have I performed on a stage where the main artiste was unpaid and the accompanists were. I personally think this is very insulting to the artiste! Well, I didn't go there for the money, and so I sang...nor did I want to do my accompanists out of their money....but I do feel very strongly about this way of doing things.

Well…that was the TV recording tour…Hope you enjoyed it!