Collaborating with a fellow artist whom you have revered since time immemorial is a feeling that can’t be put into words. For cinematographer Manoj Kumar Khatoi, the opportunity came knocking at the door when he worked on the streaming series ‘The Fame Game’ starring the Bollywood diva Madhuri Dixit Nene.
The Netflix series, which starred Madhuri in the lead role, along with an ensemble cast of Manav Kaul, Sanjay Kapoor, Lakshvir Saran, and Muskkaan Jaferi, told the story of a Bollywood actress named Anamika Anand who suddenly goes missing one day leading to the unraveling of many dark secrets.
Manoj described his experience of working with Madhuri whom he has admired since his childhood as surreal. He said, “It was a surreal moment to watch Madhuri Ma’am perform in my frames. You know how they say ‘poetry in motion’ for things that are artistically fulfilling and are out of this word, it was the same working with her. She comes to the sets with so much preparation, and is completely focused, constantly thinking how she could make things better in terms of performance”.
He further mentioned, “To capture her grace, beauty, and performance in my lens is an experience that will stay with me forever. I finally understood why the legendary painter M. F. Husain considered Madhuri ma’am his muse”.
The series The Fame Game constantly oscillated between the past and present events and Manoj cracked the idea behind differentiating the past from the present during the course of the story. Describing the technicality and the scheme of things, the cinematographer said, “We worked our way around and came up with a trick to show the past events in toned down colour temperatures while keeping grading of the present events normal, this helped the viewer to subconsciously keep track of both the occurrences and to smooth through the course of the series”.
