For those watching content on mobile phones, The Viral Fever (TVF) would be a more-than-familiar name by now. Behind all the feel good moments that the band of TVF filmmakers often create on-screen, there's a factory of creative and independent minds churning out-of-box and relatable ideas in collaboration with each other.
Nidhi Bisht -- popular actress in the digital space, courtesy TVF's Chai Sutta Chronicles, Bisht, Please! and Hostel Daze -- recently saw the release and success of her Bollywood film Dream Girl, which had an ensemble of Ayushmann Khurrana, Abhishek Banerjee, Nushrat Bharucha, Annu Kapoor and others.
Her next, KTina, is with Disha Patani and is produced by TV Mogul Ekta Kapoor. But, Nidhi, as she speaks to News18, says that she was not an actress but a lawyer by education and dedicates her success in filmmaking to TVF and the stories that they dared to tell, beyond the format of cinema.
In 2012, TVF ushered in a new format of video in India by making sketches. The concept then blossomed into TV series, which is now as common as breathing. Earlier, speaking to News18, Vaibhav Bundhoo, filmmaker and music composer for TVF, had stated how the similarity of opinions within the team of makers in terms of need for fresh and akin-to-my-own-experience-content let the channel gain the acclaim it boasts of, and now Nidhi sheds light on it further by describing how TVF's Girliyapa came into existence.
The women-telling-women's stories idea has always been at the centre of conversation at Girliyapa, says Nidhi and further explains how it became a huge hit whilst giving opportunities to other women to come forward and tell their stories.
Read: The Music Room with Vaibhav Bundhoo is Another Experiment Done Right at TVF
Excerpts from the interview with Nidhi:
How do you think TVF has changed the way filmmakers look at casting?
"I strongly feel that each individual has their own voice and when you give them that space, its bound to turn out good. At TVF, while searching for actors we never went after individuals' looks. The only criteria was performance. I proudly say that most dusky women have been cast at TVF. We are not conventionally good-looking people and we have gathered appreciation from audiences based purely on our performance. It's based on our skills and not our looks."
Tell us about your latest show Cubicles, streaming on TVF Play...
"The core team members at TVF have had an experience completely dissimilar to what we are doing now. Most of them are from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and I am a lawyer by education. The makers realised that we have never celebrated the guy doing the 9-5 job routine, or his/her experience of working in a cubicle. We thought, it was about time that we make them our heroes. We have captured different aspects of being a 9-5 guy or girl -- like first salary, dealing with the HR department, long weekends etc."
Which platform do you watch the most, apart from TVF?
"Being a content creator myself, I don't think the focus is on where the show will go. I will be willing to make it (series) for anybody as long as they let me do what I want to do. Having said that, I recently saw The Family Man on Amazon Prime and I think that it is one of the best shows to come out of India that is not made by TVF. Rest everything TVF is already making. I also like Made in Heaven (streaming on Amazon Prime Video, again)."
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