We recently connected with Nihal Ruparel and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Nihal thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry.

Short-form video content. These 4 words are exactly where the industry is pivoting towards, As we move forward people want to consume more in a less amount of time. All of us in the filmmaking world have been inspired by some sort of movie, show, or video, and increasingly these days I’ve spoken to very young and successful filmmakers who have also been inspired by YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, or Tiktok videos, which got me thinking that vertical and short videos can also convey a very strong story and hold weight as long as the one who is sharing it knows how to. Just last week as I was scrolling through Instagram, I came across a post recommending Music artists stop investing in Music Videos and instead invest in short-form content such as reels and TikTok videos to promote their music. That in a way made me think would rob us creatives of our nature to tell stories in the way we see them because we would have to succumb to making short videos that are vertical, but as always there are definitely many ways to tell an impactful story and we must grow and learn to be able to explore the full extent of our capabilities.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was always curious about capturing life even at 12 years old when I set out with my iPad filming all sorts of content, from unboxing videos to tutorials on making the best-looking arc reactor, I thought I’d make it big on YouTube one day. By 17, I’d taught myself the ins and outs of the industry. I’d gotten the right equipment, I’d learned all the software, I had a pretty decent social media following for a 17 year old in 2017 and I was being recognized for my ‘style’. I’d established myself as a freelancer and I think I was doing well. I am not quite sure what prompted me to write to one of the top social media agencies in India. They responded. This opportunity opened multiple doors for me and most importantly allowed me to travel for work. I was being paid to travel. I’ve always wanted to be able to say that. I visited countries like Turkey, Maldives, and Singapore for client projects never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d get to do this. I’ve learned that in this industry, you can never stop learning. I knew I had to upskill. So I decided to take a short course in direction and cinematography at UCLA in Los Angeles. While I was there one of the investors from the company I worked at decided to take me under his wing and give me a shot working with some of the creatives there. This showed me a way to a completely different world. Cut to two years and a bunch of projects later, I decided to start my own media company Atmosphre Studios with two of my other partners which is backed by the same investor that believed in me all that time ago.

Atmosphre Studios is a multimedia production company committed to helping individuals and brands cut through the noise in today’s busy market. With a full range of services, including music videos, photoshoots, brand commercials, and event videos, We have had the opportunity to work with some of the best artists and brands around the globe such as Chris Brown, Sean Kingston, Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Alo yoga and more.

It’s been an interesting ride and I’m excited to see what the next chapter has in store for us.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Back in June of this year, we came to a time where we didn’t have any projects coming in and had over-invested some money in projects that didn’t bring us the return we were expecting, it came to a point where we didn’t have enough to make rent for the next month and all three of us were at a point where we didn’t know what to do and we seriously considered our next steps in that time on whether we should keep going or get jobs to survive, but we knew that wouldn’t allow us to focus on our work so we ended up cutting back all our expenses and sticking to the basics. We changed the way we approached projects and started cold-emailing everyone, this went on for a while. Right when none of those efforts worked one of our friends reached out saying she loved our work and asked us if we would be interested in shooting a big campaign with a popular hotel chain. We closed our eyes and just said yes. Didn’t matter what it was as long as it allowed us to showcase some of our skills to the world. That project changed everything for us. We put all our creativity, time, and efforts into that project to make sure they kept coming back to us, And it worked! We’re still growing and making sure we make the right decisions financially and creatively.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

A little back story, I was working with a few creatives and artists for a while and they helped support me in the US but I knew I wanted to do more and be able to work on various different projects instead of working on the same projects again and again, While I wanted to do more I didn’t know how I would survive if I stopped working with them. I told them I envisioned being able to run my own company and grow it to work on my dream projects. I set out to build the base for my company while also working with them when my investor introduced me to two other individuals who wanted to do the same with their lives, We had a few meetings, and understood what each of us brought to the table and haven’t stopped since.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.atmosphre.la
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/nihalruparel
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nihal-ruparel-74741b98/