How does a 21-year-old Visual Communication graduate from Periyakulam in Theni district get featured on Indonesian and Turkish news channels, and interviewed by two FM channels from Dubai? That is the power of the Internet — all Hari Kutty did was create a 50 second video that subsequently went viral for all the right reasons.
Using nine mobile phones, the youngster, who now lives in Chennai (a student of SRM University), has created what he calls a “transition-based” piece of video art. “It took me three days to get everything done, from borrowing the phones, to filming, to the lengthy editing process where the magic was made. There were a few calls that came in while shooting and threatened to ruin the entire video, but I managed to get lucky,” he says, sounding audibly relieved.
Although Hari initially shared the Musical.ly-based video in April, popular content sharing site 9gag picked it up a week ago. Since then, it has garnered over 8.6 million views and 4.25 lakh likes on their Instagram page. His personal Instagram following (@harikutty001) has grown to 9.27 lakh, with 4.81 lakh views for the video.
The comments sections are filled with overwhelmingly positive feedback, with some calling him the “Musical.ly final boss” and stating “that was the most intense minute of my life”. It was a refreshing change from the humorous angle usually given by the western world’s Internet citizens to content from the sub-continent, like PewDiePie’s ‘You India You Lose’ video series, for instance.
This might be Hari’s first viral video, but he has been experimenting with techniques (and sharing it on his Instagram) since January this year. He tried a similar transition video on five phone using Android, but was not satisfied with the result. He has also done a reverse lip sync video featuring the ‘Vaseegara’ song sequence from Minnale. “That was one of my favourite projects because of its difficulty — I had to lip sync the lyrics in reverse — and I am very proud of how it turned out,” he says.
As for the future, he is applying for Digital Intermediate courses in the city. “I hope to continue creating content that challenges me, simply to explore just how creative one can get,” he concludes.