The Night Manager Production Designer Saini S Johray

From creating sets of The Night Manager and The Family Man to holding the entire world of these franchise shows, a well-known production designer, Saini S Johray has done it all. In an exclusive interview with The Free Press Journal, Saini talks about his journey, the process of designing locations, and its role in filmmaking.

We heard that Saini was roped in by makers at the last minute. When asked about his recent release, The Night Manager, he shares, “The producers got in touch with me for the show. They informed me that the shoot would be in Sri Lanka in the next 10 days. By the time I read the script and materialised everything, I had only a week on my hands. Initially, I was sceptical since it’s a foreign land but I took it as a challenge. I wanted to see how I would manage at the last minute.”

“Production designing isn’t a single-handed process, it is a team effort. While I was doing the recce in Sri Lanka, my couple of assistants were busy decoding the script in Mumbai. They even started sourcing the props and managed to transport them to Sri Lanka. I understood the location and explained to the director how I was going to design. I deputed two of my assistants in Colombo to source props in case of urgency. We had to manufacture a lot of things due to economical reasons,” he adds.

A lot of stuff has been designed to make Anil Kapoor’s mansion look rich in the show. “The statues in Rungta’s house that look like marble are actually carved of thermocol. We got a team who specialise in thermocol designing. We also had to do a lot of woodwork, so I hired carpentry professionals. We could have pulled it off in a short period only because of the team planning,” he reveals.

Saini, who has a handful of shows on OTT, feels that the medium bridges the gap between films and television. “I strongly believe that OTT has filled the gap between films and television. In fact, 80% of the work on OTT is equivalent to films in terms of production value, storytelling, budgets, etc.,” he says.

Besides The Family Man and The Night Manager, he has earlier worked on shows like Inside Edge 3 and Anil Kapoor’s 24 season 2. His upcoming projects entail Gulkanda Tales by Raj & DK, Aditya Dhar’s next directorial The Immortals of Ashwatthama and

Kanishk Verma’s Gaanth, and more in the pipeline.