With a remarkable contribution in the world of Television series, Palki Malhotra has seen phenomenal success with shows like ‘Dill Mill Gayye‘, ‘Dil Dostii Dance’ under her name. The creative producer, writer, producer and dance director is now creating waves with her latest show, ‘Campus Beats’ starring Shantanu Maheshwari, Shruti Sinha, Sahaj Singh Chahal, and Tanvi Gadkari. In a candid chat with MissMalini, Palki talks about the her latest show, the evolvement in the OTT space and more.
‘Campus Beats’ is your second dance show after ‘Dil Dostii Dance’, why and how do you feel this genre connects with the youth?
‘Campus Beats’ is just not the dance show, both the shows have a campus, the rivalry, the connection, the growing up, the coming of age, and living, exploring, and understanding our own life and others. The years when you are actually finding yourself and the external world around you are what you remember the most and you cherish the most. If somebody asks you about your growth, you will always go back to your school days because at that point in time, passion is a key you give so much importance to. So growing up is the most relatable aspect of anybody’s life. And, that is why ‘Dil Dosti Dance’ has worked and I feel ‘Campus Beats’ will also resonate with the audience because it’s not just the genre but also about exploring ourselves. It’s about understanding the world and what you are capable of in the world around you. And then of course there’s a tadka of dance. Youth shows like these will forever connect with the youth. It’s just that you need to understand the show and you need to make it with that purity.
Tell us about the idea behind the concept of ‘Campus Beats’?
The idea behind ‘Campus Beats’ was that I wanted to make a youth show for the longest time. In 2013, ‘Dil Dosti Dance’ and I parted ways and from then I always had the idea of creating another youth show. But it just took a very long time, the industry was going through a lot of changes, youth channels shut down, and OTT began to bloom. But, the one thing that remained constant was the hunger for youth shows. And when I noticed, that there were not many youth shows offered to the youth of India. The youth started to tilt towards K-Dramas. For me, K-Dramas was something that I thought was exactly what we used to do during our ‘Star One’ or ‘Channel V’ days because ‘Dill Mil Gayye’ or ‘D3’ were pretty much similar to K-Dramas. So that’s when I was aggressively pitching to get back the youth shows, writing them again, and pitching it with the tadka of a thriller. So I thought, why not do a Campus series that can have a thriller aspect with a teen drama. I really thought it was required and the youth of India was really looking for it, which is a pretty clean, fun, relatable, light-hearted drama and that is the reason we came up with ‘Campus Beats’.
In the near future, what is the kind of content you are looking at creating in the OTT space?
OTT is a very interesting space, you get to do a lot of things. But having said that, there is a particular pattern that OTT sees like for example, if it’s crime, if there is a show which is popular in crime, then there will be a lot of people making a lot of crime shows. So I personally do not want to follow that pattern. I would want to do something very different and offer something very different on board. I like to break patterns. I am that kind of a person. The other thing is that I personally feel that OTT in India, whatever content we are offering is not very tilted towards youth. So I feel, it is required that India needs to make good youth content, homegrown content, not just you know replicate something or remake something. I feel that the youth of India is tilting towards the western side or not just Western I mean, tilting towards international shows, fiction shows, but it is so cool if we can create our own and we can get that madness for our homegrown products. We used to make great shows. We had fantastic shows where the whole youth of India was crazier I mean, they were crazy about so many shows earlier during the good old days of ‘Star One’ and ‘Channel V’ and ‘MTV’ for that matter.
As a content creator and producer, would you say the OTT space is a boon for you?
OTT has been a boon to almost everybody in the industry, so what it offers is a bridge between TV and films or I would say it offers a middle ground to people. There were a lot of people who were getting frustrated with it, with the kind of work that was happening on TV. They were also getting frustrated because they were probably not getting work in films. So what OTT has done for everybody is offered a mid path. It’s a fantastic way of bringing a different kind of vision on board.What has also happened is that suddenly you know India has come together to watch other content.
With the digital boom, the shows OTT have been releasing in plenty, how important is it for you to ensure that your show stands out and stays with the audience?
For any creator it is important for their show to stand out, right? It is extremely important. All I can say is that the moment you stop following a pattern you will stand out. So one of the reasons why we are a ‘Campus Beats’, a teen drama amidst so much mystery and thriller that has been launched or is being launched right now, I feel that ‘Campus Beats’ is going to stand out big time. I try my level best to always be different with the kind of stuff that I’m bringing about. I mean it needs to be different from the herd mentality that is going on right now. Even the marketing needs to be different. I mean that’s extremely important to any show. So if you’re talking about, pumping up, pumping numbers, the numbers will also come with the kind of marketing you’re doing. You also need to put a lot of soul into creating content, but also creating a very different kind of marketing for yourself.
What’s in store for Palki?
For me, it is something where I need to make a difference. I do not believe in making shows, I believe in creating legacies. So I try my level best with whatever show that I bring about, to create a legacy of its own that people talk about even after a decade. And I’m very proud of my previous shows like ‘Dil Dostii Dance’ and ‘Dill Mill Gayye’ where people still till date talk about it and there’s still demand for Season 2. So I believe that no matter what I do, it is going to be me writing, directing or producing anything that I do because I want to create a legacy.