Meet Hari Kutty, the young graduate from Tamil Nadu and an Instagram sensation, who gave a new meaning to the home video
Hari Kutty
There can hardly be any doubt that today's teenagers in urban India have access to some of the coolest gadgets. And, all the time in the world to fiddle with them. Yet, it takes a 21-year-old from a small town in Tamil Nadu to show us just how to do it.
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Up until two weeks ago, Hari Kutty, who lives in Periyakulam, Theni district, had a decent 5K following for his Instagram account, @harikutty001. However, two viral videos later, his following has shot up to 97K. One of the videos uses nine iPhones — yes, nine — to do the trick, and has more than five lakh views. Another has 6.5 lakh views. Comments run into thousands, some of them eager to learn about the songs he has used, and others stating, "You are a god". It's trippy. You have to see it to believe it".
Kutty is a visual communication graduate from a well-known university in Chennai, called SRM University. For his viral content, he used Musical.ly, the hugely popular social networking app for short music videos. Only, Kutty has taken it a step further, to create complex edits, all shot on the phone, and all shot at home. "I had to plan these videos quite a bit. But, I also used whatever was lying around at home. I would take a quick look around, and include things, right from a water bottle to an egg. If my mother was making an omelette, I would include that in the video," says Kutty.
Among the Musical.ly community, "transitions", essentially edit cuts, are a big deal. There are online tutorials to show you how to achieve some complex transitions, but rarely do they achieve the kind of innovation and precision that Kutty has. However, Kutty refuses to identify himself as a "transitioner" or a "muser", as Musical.ly users are called. "I am primarily trained as a video editor and Musical.ly happens to be one of the platforms I use to achieve these effects. There are also other softwares that I use," says Kutty, who plans to work on feature films after he qualifies as a digital intermediate colourist.
Kutty says that he prefers to work all alone, shooting at home mostly, so that he wouldn't be disturbed. He laughs and quips that his granny remains a challenge. "She usually has the TV on, and that, too, on high volume. It wouldn't let me hear the song and its beats properly to match my actions with the transitions. At times I disconnect the TV cable," he confesses, a little sheepishly.
Making the videos has meant that Kutty spent long hours at his workstation editing. There was also the task of getting nine iPhones for a video. "You can do transitions best on an iPhone as Android can have bugs," he says. Lucky for him, he was gifted an iPhone, and the rest — well, he just had to persuade friends and family to loan them. However, on one condition — that he doesn't put them on airplane mode, lest they miss calls and messages. Ever tried shooting and recording on your phone buzzing all the time? With Kutty's videos, it never shows.
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