DJ SixEight on the viral ‘Starboy' X ‘Praayam nammil' mix : ‘We have not used AI in the video'

The Hindu

17 hours ago

Rominic Stephen, popularly as DJ SixEight, is a man of reintroductions. His DJ career, which began when he was a teenager, was cut short when he was 16. At the age of 22, the artiste hit the rewind button. And, now, Rominic has gone viral with his latest mix, which combines The Weeknd's hit track, 'Starboy' with the Malayalam number, 'Praayam nammil,' from the 1999 rom-com, Niram, giving a twist to the 'misunderstood' Prakash Mathew, a character played by Boban Alumoodan. The video has got over 1.8 million views on YouTube.
The character Prakash, an accomplished singer, was engaged to Sona, essayed by Shalini. But it is her best friend, Aby, played by Kunchacko Boban, who marries her. While Kamal, director of the movie, does not address what happens to Prakash eventually, Rominic does. The character returns to the US with his parents and takes the music industry by storm.
'When I saw Niram as a child, I used to think Prakash was the villain who came in the way of the protagonists,' says Rominic over a call from Kochi. 'Once I grew up, I realised he did not do anything wrong and deserved a better ending and a character arc.'
In the video, Prakash is shown to become an global music sensation, featured on international billboards. Singer Madonna, rappers Drake and Travis Scott, actor Tom Cruise, and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, among others, make an appearance in the video.
Rominic has used clips from The Weeknd's music videos, adding that Prakash and The Weeknd have a similar body structure, which made the work easy. 'We have not used AI in the video at all. We manually replaced the face in each frame by generating Prakash's face, tracking it on The Weeknd's face and blending it. We had to track 6,500 frames. It took us one-and-a-half months for research and three months to do the video.'
Rominic adds, 'Everyone has been reaching out to me, saying it is AI. We have a team that includes college students and working professionals. It is hurtful when we hear people crediting AI for our work,' says Rominic. His team includes Nandhu P, Ashwin (revision edits), Mohammed Shyfal (title), and Sreyas V Sasi, also known as Artholiq (artwork).
Rominic feels that the positive response to the song is his reply to the flak he received for posting an edit of the same song. 'This time also we got negative comments, but then those who enjoyed the song replied to them.'
'I saw the video of a North Indian YouTuber enjoying the song. Then I saw a foreigner playing the drums to the track. There is a drum cover as well. I got clips from Australia, Canada and the USA that showed the song being played at their private parties,' says Rominic, whose interest in deejaying started during his early school days in Saudi Arabia.
'For one of our extra-curricular activities, my teacher showed footage of the opening ceremony of the 2004 Athens Olympics. The camera kept focused on this one person, who was performing upbeat party music at his station.'
It was DJ Tiesto, who made Rominic curious. 'A few years later, I came across another video of the Sensation White Party (an electronic dance music event). There must have been 20,000 people and in the centre was DJ Tiesto controlling that crowd,' recalls Rominic. He also admires artistes such as Afrojack, Zedd, The Weeknd and Eminem.
Once he returned to India, he was trained by DJ Rvi at an academy called the Schools for DJ. After leaving deejaying, he studied VFX and motion graphics in Kochi and worked as a designer before he returned to music.
'It was post the pandemic that I got my first break with a mix of the Malayalam song, 'Pon kasavu' by KS Chithra and 'Stay' by Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber. We played it at a concert and immediately released the video, which went viral,' says Rominic. The video garnered over 12 million views. The Six Eight YouTube channel currently has 201K subscribers.
Rominic is set to bring out three originals and another mix later this year.