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