With time Balaji Telefilms has become the most envied and talked-about soap churning factory.
Even though there are many pretenders to the throne, no one has been remotely as successful in dethroning the king (queen, actually, and we all know whom we are talking about) till now!
Here’s a ‘Do It Yourself’ guide to make things a little easier for aspiring serial makers. The first step is to identify the ingredients in a typical Balaji soap, decode them and then clone them.
1. The K-Title
This is the first and the foremost requirement of making a successful Balaji soap. Never mind if your title runs into several hundred letters, many repeated as in a stammer, or sounds weird, but it has to start with K.
It’s also important to register the title before anyone else (Ekta Kapoor, Karan Johar, Rakesh Roshan etc.) steals your lucky K-title.
2. Docile Bahu
Once the title is finalised, pick up a bechaari looking, suppressed and homely middleclass girl from the market.
Never mind if she is dumb and can’t act, because she doesn’t need to.
All she needs to do is, shed gallons of tears/gylcerine in every second scene. After all, she has to play a good docile woman who takes all the possible injustices in the world lying low. She will never be into revenge because she believes in the concept of forgive and forget.
3. Spineless Son
Once you have a heroine in place, you also need to get a male counterpart who would be ready to suspect her all the time and will believe everyone in the world but his heroine.
Even though he would be involved in making your female lead’s life miserable and causing her unhappiness by an untimely death or an extramarital affair, he would only be the second fiddle to your good old ideal heroine.
Being a good -looking, fair and handsome man is not a criterion. In fact, if he is middle-aged with salt-pepper hair a la Ram Kapoor and Ronit Roy, with a track record of flop films, it would add to his qualification.
4. The Vicious Vamp
If there is a hero and a heroine, a vamp is a must. Otherwise how would the scheming, plotting and planning (the staple diet of soaps) be complete?
One, who is ready to put cakes of loud makeup on her face, coloured lenses, artificial eyelashes, stylised bindis, dark kohl and eyeliner, outrageous hairdos, dark red lipstick etc, would be the perfect choice.
She, too, doesn’t need to act, but a unique style of dialogue delivery and a mind sharper than Einstein (otherwise, how would she come up with foolproof plans) is a must. For that reason, writers are a great help who would give her the best of the bitchy dialogues.
5. Weirdo Villain
Next in the list of essential ingredients for a daily soap is a very strange looking and weird male villain who would play the right hand to your always-scheming vamp.
Sporting the strangest haircut and worst wardrobe which makes him look more like a cartoon character than a human being, he would always be free (as if they have no other work) to carry out any of the evil plans of the vamps.
6. (Re)Creative Writers
Once your key players are in place, you also need someone to give them activities. That’s where your script writer comes into action.
He would be the one who would have the best mind to think of almost impossible (mostly unrealistic) twists and turns in your story. He would also back up as god, killing the characters and bringing them back from the grave/pyre whenever stuck with the story.
A writer mustn’t be a very learned person; just a layman with the most imaginative mind, would do fine.
7. Remarriages, love triangles and illegitimate children
These are the most important aspects of serial making without which the show would never be complete. Normal love triangles will have three to four persons pursuing a single lead actor.
Surprisingly, polygamy can be safely practised, which gives the required massala (never mind the law of the land). Remarriages can happen in the family, too, like a woman divorcing her husband and later remarrying his younger brother and staying in the same house, etc.
Or strangely, your heroine can keep getting married and separating from her number of love interests umpteen number of times. And if there are remarriages, can illegitimate children be far behind? Such children can remain scattered across the globe for years.
But, at a crucial juncture, they may make a comeback into their protagonist parents’ life and make them miserable. Sometimes these children’s sole purpose in life is to destroy the parents who never took care of them and they leave no stone unturned to accomplish this mission of theirs.
8. Returning from the dead
This is one formula which seems to hit a chord every time. Sometimes the person presumed dead undergoes plastic surgery (when there is requirement of changing the actor due to date issues or fights, tantrums etc) and comes back in a totally different persona. The favourite plastic surgery formula rocks!
9. Formula Director
Having completed your planning, next you need is someone to execute the so-called drama for you.
Director or the captain of the ship so to say, is not at all your captain. He is just a technician who knows how to yell, ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’ and knows how to take the same shot 3-4 times from different angles for effect.
He doesn’t even need to explain to the actors how to act because actors have their own set of expressions (one or two) which they keep rotating as per the requirement.
10. Noisy Music Director
Once your serial is written, shot and edited, you need to sex it up. And your music director would be doing this for you.
Television music director doesn’t need to be someone who has a great knowledge of music. He just needs to know where to put those ear-deafening bangs whenever some actor says some punchy lines (which is every alternate line).
That also helps to elongate the episode into a string of dramatic close-ups (plenty of makeup and glycerine tears rolling down foundation-creamed cheeks or eyes ejecting fire) with those bangs of digitalised thunder.
Your Balaji Soap Opera is ready! But it needs that 11th element to touch it: Lady Luck (read: Lady Ekta)
N.B.: Issued in interest of future television personalities.
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