Jaby Koay, popular for his online reactions to films and trailers tells ANANYA BORGOHAIN about how his journey in cyberspace started and where it has taken him today
Jaby Koay is a known name in India today, especially in the urban cyber space and among the young generation. This California-based YouTuber has been immensely popular for his reactions to numerous videos available online as well as for the movie discussions on his channel. His fans from all over the world send him lists of names requesting him to react to their favourite films, teasers, trailers, vlogs, and so on. His insightful comments are well noted, his guests on the channel are well received and loved by the audience, and his fondness for Priyanka Chopra is validated by the global icon herself. In fact, Shah Rukh Khan acknowledged a guest on his channel for theFan trailer reaction and he was also warmly treated by Ajay Devgn during the Shivaay promotions. In an interview, Koay reveals more about himself.
What were you doing before thisIJ
The biggest influence on my passion, pursuit and dreams was my Dad. Ever since I was 11, I have been telling stories in some form. I started out writing amateur screenplays on my Dad’s old typewriter and secretly borrowed his camera many times to make ‘backyard’ short films. Gradually, the format I was shooting on shifted from VHS, to 8mm tape, to mini DV, which was the first digital format available to consumers and prosumers. About 10 years ago, I signed up for a YouTube channel and began sharing my short films and scenes I directed and/or produced and acting reels. I’ve had a lot of different jobs over the years — teaching martial arts, working at food takeout, waiting tables at restaurants, background work on TV shows, post-production work, PA work, freelance editing, videography, teaching fight scene classes, headshot photography, a variety of roles in the commercial casting world, and of course, acting. It took many years before I was ever paid as an actor, but that has definitely been a substantial source of income over the past six years. You might still be able to spot me in an Emirates commercial with Jennifer Aniston!
How did you venture into movie trailer reactions and movie discussionsIJ
My younger brother, Greg, was strictly doing film reviews on YouTube during my hiatus from the platform. At some point, he noticed a YouTuber by the name of Gattor Martin uploading clips of himself watching film trailers. This was before trailer reactions had become what they have now. As a joke, my brother decided to do it himself, but noticed people really enjoyed what he had to offer. Greg, like me, is hugely into films and offers a lot of insightful conversation on the topic. He decided to continue doing trailer reaction/discussion videos alongside his movie reviews and now has a remarkable 450,000 subscribers. My focus was just getting my short films seen. I decided to do movie reviews in a sketch-comedy format to set myself apart. Both my short films and sketch-comedy format movie reviews did alright, but didn’t earn enough to sustain a living. It was a lot harder to get noticed than when I had first started on YouTube. The market had become quite saturated during my time off.
Shortly after re-entering the YouTube world, the first Star Wars Episode 7 teaser dropped and I felt compelled to do my own trailer reaction for it, being a big Star Wars fan. As a result, many people flocked to my channel, requesting I continue to do it. My brother’s channel and my own had very different tones, so there wasn’t the concern of stealing each other’s audience. I also began doing other projects on my channel, namely Good Thing Bad Thing, a discussion and debate show where the goal was to bring up a topic and argue why we felt it was a good thing or a bad thing.
I could never get the pitch right for ‘selling’ Good Thing Bad Thing, but anyone who has seen it really enjoys it. In December 2015, when I decided to strictly focus on trailer reactions for a while, with occasional movie reviews, I searched YouTube for trailers I thought maybe my Western audience wasn’t too exposed to. That’s when I found two Bollywood film trailers and thought to myself, no one’s doing Indian film trailer reactions and decided to give it a go. Ironically, instead of creating a new discussion with my western audience, I was noticed by a number of YouTube watchers in India. Everything snowballed from there.
What has been your biggest achievement in the digital space since you started reacting to trailers/filmsIJ
Being able to sustain a living, touch lives, entertain people and converse with hundreds of thousands of people are the biggest achievements in my opinion. On a recent video, Winners & Gifts, I read a letter from a subscriber who mentioned how my channel keeps her spirits up since her father’s passing. Given that I also lost my Dad about three and a half years ago, not only was this touching but very relatable on a fundamentally human level. loss on that level is extremely hard in a way that you cannot prepare for. losing my Dad put me in such a dark place, and the only thing that gave me solace was focusing on being creative. Knowing that what I’m doing is able to bring comfort for even one person currently managing that level of loss is amazing to me.
In the same video, I also read another person’s letter who mentions that my channel was the impetus for him to move forward with his passion. Week to week, if two days go by without uploading videos, a number of people will write in by e-mail, comments or tweets asking if everything is okay, as my videos have become a part of their daily routine.
While I am the first to say trailer reaction discussion videos are deceptively complicated, detailed and time-consuming when you put into it all that effort, at the end of the day, ultimately culminates in a delivery of my opinion. And the fact that this has somehow made me part of many people’s lives is fascinating; it makes me appreciate what I have right now.
As a foreigner reacting to Indian videos, how did your perception of Indian culture changeIJ
I would say being an ‘ignorant’ American, mostly concerned with American issues growing up and only encountering maybe a handful of Indians, I didn’t know much about Indian culture at all. There weren’t many opportunities to chat and learn about Indian culture. I was somewhat aware of Indian television because I used to date someone who is half Afghani and her family watched Indian television. But the simple answer is: I learned there is a rich deep culture with a lot of nuances to appreciate. Not that I assumed there was no culture at all, but as far as it concerned my existence previously, nothing outside of my local world mattered. Now issues beyond my local world matter to me just as much as what goes on in my backyard.
Which Indian trailer/movie have you found the most fascinatingIJ
Jagga Jasoos looks whimsical, unique, colourful, adventurous and different. It almost feels like Run lola Run, Harry Potter, Amelie and The Town somehow smashed together into a single film.
Do you think urban India is cosmopolitan and hence relatable to Western culture as wellIJ Could we treat the Internet as a tool for cultural integration — not just familiarising one culture with another, but also incorporating them with one anotherIJ
When watching films, web series and viral videos from India or videos of any country that isn’t my own, I don’t really think in terms of how Western something is or isn’t. When watching TVF’s drama series, I just watched it like I would something from America. I acknowledge there are certainly going to be references and jokes I may not understand as a result of different cultures, but I didn’t consider the body of water that divides our lands, the lines in the map between countries, or the labels that identify us. I just saw people going through things people go through and appreciating it as such.
That being said, I can’t say for certain the internet is a tool for cultural integration, but I can say that it has definitely worked on me and I hope I can be a part of the movement in which it will work for others.
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