Cinematography and life through my lens
i am not one of those stoppers or
someone with a really good academics
i have always been just above average
but whatever i do whatever i work on i
have been able to do it with focus
and achieve some success in that
specific field
i like traveling i like filmmaking i
like staying fit
and i always work towards getting the
best output of myself
because i believe in the concept of
doing more
i am not very different from anyone who
is watching this
but i think i have made some right
decisions in life
which has got me here today speaking in
front of all of you
for the last five years i have been able
to pursue my passion
along with doing a full-time job this is
my first time on this platform and i
would like to thank all the organizers
for having me here
i’m a storyteller and i like sharing
stories
so today i’m going to share my story
with all of you
and in that process if i’m able to
awaken that warrior instinct in few of
you to pursue your dreams to follow your
passion
or to do more in life i will call it a
success
with that let me quickly introduce
myself
i am nishit sharma i am a travel
filmmaker i work full time in digital
marketing for one of the leading
marketing
agencies in spain i have an online store
where
i sell my digital products and i also
work
as a filmmaker like a freelance
filmmaker for a few of the
filmmaking projects i have a youtube
channel with over 220 000 subscribers
i have worked with many big brands like
samsung amazon prime
mtv uh i have been featured on many big
platforms like
cnn cnbc incredible india and i’ve also
worked with many tourism boards
now whatever i am doing currently are
the things that i have not learnt in
school
or in college these are the things that
i’ve learned by myself
over a period of time by doing a lot of
experiments by doing a lot of
research and it has been a long journey
and in this whole process i have figured
out that there are
certain lessons that i’ve learned in
this whole journey
and i’m going to share those lessons
with all of you today
always make time for what you love
i grew up in a middle class family with
my parents having similar sort of
expectations
which any other indian parents would
have from their kids
which is seeing their kid as a
successful engineer or a doctor
basically getting a degree from a good
college getting a good job getting a
good salary and then eventually settling
in
so in order to pursue the dreams of my
parents
i moved to quota in ninth grade moving
to gotha was a
very new experience for me because this
was the first time
i was going to live away from my parents
on my own
um now preparing for je is a very hectic
task
because it is one of the most difficult
competitive exams in india because
there are so many people who appear for
that exam and there are very few
who get through so even though it was a
hectic task but i used to make sure that
i take out some time for myself
doing things that i love i had an activa
back then
so i often used to go on drives in and
around quota
exploring the nearby places and this was
also the time when i was making a
lot of new friends new friends from
different parts of country
because uh kota is one place which is
like a hub where
people from across country come to
prepare for
different competitive exams so i made
friends with people from assam
i made friends with people from kashmir
people from
karnataka and whenever i used to meet
them i used to ask them about their
place
and that’s how i got exposure to a lot
of new places
a lot of new cultures which got me
curious in the concept of traveling
i somehow managed to get a decent rank
in jee
and i got admitted in the department of
biotechnology in iit kawhati moving to
guwahati was a very big step in my life
and things started changing for me as i
took this decision
i was never serious about studies and my
grades speak that out loud
i never really flunk in any subject but
i graduated
with a gpo of 6.2 which is not that
great but
yeah this is what i graduated with but i
was always very much interested
in the cultural festival of my college
and i took that very seriously
i used to love marketing the festival i
used to love
talking to the sponsors getting more
sponsorship for the
fest i used to love talking to different
marketing professionals in
the big corporate companies i used to
love preparing
those pitch decks those presentations
and then presenting it in front of
people so that is something i really
used to enjoy
and i was always keen on learning more
in that direction
now working for my cultural festival
also gave me an opportunity to travel
often
uh like i used to travel to different
places near guwahati
uh marketing the festival or uh you know
letting more
colleges know about the festival so that
gave me a lot of
opportunities to travel nearby northeast
is one of my favorite places to visit in
india
and guwahati is like a gateway for
visiting to all those beautiful places
in northeast india
so i i made sure that i use all the long
weekends that i get in the college
and i used to take long trips with my
friends
like i visited sikkim i visited nagaland
i visited
pradesh i visited to a lot of places
nearby
in fact i remember like uh i was i used
to visit
shillong uh once every month because it
was just 150
kilometers drive from my college so i
would often like
take bike from my seniors or my patch
mate
and yeah i would just drive down to
shillong
and it was really fun now whenever i
used to go on this trip
i used to come back with a lot of
stories
i remember i didn’t had a good quality
camera back then but i used to take a
lot of pictures from my phone
and i used to use these pictures to
share my stories with my friends like i
would use those pictures as a reference
while i’m sharing the stories from the
trip now taking these trips
made me more confident about the fact
that i
really enjoy traveling and this is
something that i want to do
in my life but at that time i could just
dream of doing it full time or
just traveling and doing it as a job so
all of this was happening and then came
the time of placement
so there is one thing about iit all the
companies who come for recruitment
they definitely give a look at your gpa
but they also look at whatever you have
done in college in those four years or
five years
of your time i was very much involved in
marketing so i managed to secure a job
in digital marketing
for one of the agencies in pune and
i moved to pune and this is where my
career began
i was working for a company which was
still in their initial stages and it was
more of like a startup
so there was a lot of work which was
supposed to be done
and so i used to work really hard when i
just joined the company
and at the same time there was a lot of
learning as well
so i used to have a very busy schedule
at that time
but even in that busy schedule i made
sure
that i whenever i take leave i take
leave close to the long weekends so that
i can extend my long weekend and i can
take longer trips with my friends
so i used to travel at that time as well
i visited all the places
near pune i went for many hikes like
there are many good treks near pune
i went to many forts near pune
and it was all so much fun so i was
traveling a lot but at the same time i
was also working hard at my job
and soon my work got recognized and i
got placed in one of her clients back
then which is flipkart
so i moved to bangalore and bangalore
was a
totally new chapter for me now this
brings to my next
lesson in life which is get inspired
now bangalore was a totally new place
for me it was all a different vibe
there was a different culture i found
people over here very laid back
very supportive i saw a lot of
entrepreneurs over here running their
own business
even in my circle because i had a lot of
friends from iit guwahati who were
working in bangalore so i met them i saw
a lot of them
doing a full-time job and along with
them running their own business
or trying to shape it up in a certain
manner i saw a lot of people doing
freelance
job as freelancers like they would not
go and do test jobs but they would do
a remote job like they can work from
anywhere
so i really liked that whole concept and
i was still getting into the zone of
you know like starting up my own
business
uh i was working with flipkart and
flipkart is a very big organization
so obviously the workload i had in
flipkart was
very less than what i used to have in my
previous company
so i used to watch a lot of youtube
videos at that time
specifically from this guy called as
casey neistat
he’s also like a travel filmmaker and i
really used to
connect with the way he used to share
his story
in form of those five to ten minutes
long small videos on youtube
and every time after watching that video
i would
always end up saying that yes this is
something i want to do in life
that got me so much inspired and this is
something i really wanted to do
so i started doing my own research i
started doing more research around
youtube around cinematography how to
make a video
because these were the things that i had
never done in my life
in fact i didn’t even had a good camera
at all in my life i was just using my
phone
camera which was the main camera for me
so it is very important to take
inspiration in life because that is
something which motivates you
to eventually take actions in order to
achieve your goals
now this brings me to the next lesson
which is
start with whatever you have available
with you i remember
it was like about eight to ten months i
was working in flipkart
i was uh earning enough but not that
much
and this was the first time i gifted
myself something which was not necessary
and that was gopro hero4 black
this was my first camera it is a very
small camera and if i compare it with
the camera that i’ve been
using currently so i would say that it
is a very low quality camera
but i was really excited to get one for
myself
and i remember the day i got my gopro
the very same weekend i
traveled to uh pondicherry and uh
filmed a video over there with literally
no sense in mind
in terms of what am i going to film what
am i going to do
i just had a camera with me and i knew
that
i had an inspiration from casey neistat
and i just wanted to make something
similar because i think that’s how you
usually start in any of the field which
you are not aware of
now this brings me to the next lesson
which is
uh invest time in learning new skills
when i had just started off
i used to struggle a lot with the
different camera settings because i had
no idea about filmmaking i had no idea
about cameras
so i would often struggle with setting
the right exposure
or framing the shot perfectly or
basically the basics of filmmaking which
is something i was
lacking at so i did a lot of research on
youtube i used to watch a lot of you
tutorials i used to talk to people who
would know a little bit about this whole
field
i was doing all the research on my own
because
this is something i love doing this is
something i wanted to do for
for the rest of my life so i was very
keen on learning
if you are getting into a new field it
is very important
to do your research it is very important
to invest time
in learning those skills it is very
important to learn the basics
because that’s when you move up the
ladder now this brings me to the next
learning in my life
which is self aware self awareness
is the key to self mastery
it won’t really stop you from making
mistakes but it will help you
learn from them and become better at it
i remember when i had just started off
i used to take a lot of feedback from my
friends
from my colleagues from my office people
i used to all of that because
i think that is one thing which really
helps you grow in a specific field and
with every video i started criticizing
my video quite a lot
and eventually i became better with time
because i would
spot a couple of mistakes in one of my
videos
and i would try to fix them in the next
one and i think that’s how i
grew and that’s how i learned this whole
skill of
filmmaking and video production so it is
very important to be self-aware
it is very important to take
constructive feedback
and it is very important to act on
things that you
feel it is required to become better at
your
skill this brings me to the next
learning which is
persistence is the key things are not
going to be smooth and easy
there are going to be challenges there
are going to be many ups and downs in
your journey
and you will have to work hard and stay
persistent
in order to achieve your goals i crashed
my very first drone
within 10 days of getting that and i had
a
trip planned to sikkim just 20 days
uh after the day when i crashed my drone
at that time it was very difficult to
get yourself a drone
because it was totally illegal in india
so not many people would sell it in
india
so you had to get from us and i was
obviously not making that much of money
at that time as i had just started
and sikkim was one series i was really
looking forward to because
this was the first time i was going to
film a story based series
so i really wanted a drone and i was
running low on cash
so i literally maxed out my credit card
and i started finding people
who were coming from us or from other
place
outside india where they can buy drone
for me and i eventually found somebody
from my college who was coming from u.s
to india and then he got a drone for me
so within
i think like two within a week time i
managed to get a new drone for me
and then i visited sikkim i filmed the
web series i uploaded on my channel
and that is now one of the most
watched web series on sikkim live on
youtube
and this was one of the series which
gave a boost to my youtube channel
like this was a series from where my
youtube channel actually started
and uh this web series also landed me my
first
sponsor like if i had only like 3000
subscribers at that time
but i was very specific about the
quality of videos that i’m producing
so there is this company who sponsored
my whole trip to ladakh
and at that time i was like okay i i
don’t know if that is also
something which happens but i was really
happy uh that i got
my first sponsor uh sponsoring the whole
trip for me
when i had just only 3 000 subscribers
so i had to make that tough call to get
that drone
uh by maxing on my credit card but that
eventually it fetched me good results
this brings me to my last learning which
is be patient
and stay consistent now in any field it
is very easy to get
influence from what others are doing
specifically when you see that
there is something which is easy to do
and you see it working for somebody else
you get very much influence and you
would want to do something
similar get inspired but don’t get
influenced
because this is not a race
this is a marathon you have to be
consistent
it’s like a job it’s not like you will
finish up all the day
within a week for the whole month you
will have to show up at work
every day in the month so i would say
more than getting influence it is very
important to stay consistent
and stay patient specifically if i talk
about in the field of
content creation so there is an audience
for
all sort of content you just have to
make sure that you keep doing what you
love
because if you don’t do what you love
you will never be able to do it for long
and like i said it’s a marathon you have
to be consistent if you want to do it
for a long
time you have to enjoy the process you
have to
love what you are doing so always stay
focused
always try to think of
the reason why you started and always
try to stick with
what you are doing and believe in
yourself so
things are going to work out for you uh
you just need to be patient
and stay consistent with whatever you
are doing in life
with that i would like to end this and i
would open it for q a i hope uh this
would give
motivation to few of you to pursue your
dreams
and i would say always believe in
yourself always
keep doing what you think you can do
don’t let yourself down with
all the things that you hear near you
that you can’t do this you can’t do that
you can do anything you can do
everything it’s just that
you need to stay focused you need to
stay consistent
and you need to believe in yourself