MUMBAI: It's all for making a world record! And neither Sony, nor the production house Firework Productions is making any bones about it.
In an attempt create a new world record, C.I.D team shot continuously for duration of 111 minutes (one hour and 51 minutes). While this feat landed them in the Limca book of world record as 'TV show- longest continual shot', they are now staking a claim at Guinness records as well.
The special record breaking episode will be telecast on Sunday, 7 November 2004, without a break, from 8 pm to 10 pm C.I.D, which usually airs on Fridays at 10 pm comprises successful long running Friday line up for Sony.
Speaking about the record, SET executive vice president, programming and response, Tarun Katial offers, "We were more than happy to partner with the C.I.D team in their endeavour of creating a gripping, record breaking single-shot episode, thus giving the audiences of the show, a once in a lifetime opportunity to look forward to and treasure for a long time."
When quizzed on the how the channel plans to cash on this 'record breaking' venture, Katial magnanimously offered that not every thing they did was for 'commercial purpose'.
In addition to the actual telecast, the team has also canned a 'making of C.I.D' video, which they will be telecasting on Sony on a later date. The production house is also investing about Rs. 3.5 million in transferring it on film format and sending it to film festivals world over.
A brainchild of the director-producer B P Singh, the episode was shot on a digital video on 8 October 2004 at Lonavala in presence of five dignitaries from the world of media including screen writer Lekh Tondon.
"I had been toying with this idea for about seven to eight months now, but although the failure was assured and the chances to actually making it work were sparse, I had an unfailing support from my team and no constraint budget offered from SET," gloats Singh.
While making a world record, as the actors chime in, 'would make any Indian proud', but for the fickle TV viewer it wouldn't be anything more than just a news snippet. So the producers Singh and Uppoor zeroed on an action packed thriller and got in a few big names like K K Menon, Raj Zutshi, Avinash Wadhwan, Krutika Desai and Mukesh Rawal.
The original C.I.D cast had to rely on theater -opera techniques to memorise a total of 90 pages of dialogues. But the real heroes had to be the cameraman Nitin Rao, who held the 28 kg camera continuously for 2 hours and ran up and down for three floors of the under-contruction hotel, and the producer Singh who despite the recent by-pass matched Roa step-for-step.
As for the actual episode, SET will be airing five minutes of precursor 'making video' followed by the actual airing of the episode. A stop clock will be running on the screen on the screen as a bug.
Although the channel as of now is contented with the record making episode, the producers have put on their thinking caps and are thinking about their 'mad cap' venture - probably a three hour continuous shot.
