Dissecting the Action Cam - Text 5
As can be seen, then, the essential technical features of today’s action camera clearly are not new. What is more, we can see that these same features (i.e. wide focal lengths and portability) do not define the action camera exclusively. The wide-angle lenses used by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Orson Welles in Touch of Evil and by Terry Gilliam in Brazil do not necessarily make them action cameras. Similarly, the light-weight and ease of use of the cameras manufactured by Bolex and Aaton do not prevent the use of these cameras on a tripod or the recording of action taking place in front of the camera (see on this topic the parcours Direct Cinema: The Experimental Era, section "Portability") rather than action performed by the filmer themself.
The same is true of the GoPro. This camera, the one most often associated with the expression “action camera,” can also be attached to any kind of support in order to film from a point of view detached from the action. This kind of use of the device would strip it of any connection to the action camera category. This must mean that as a descriptor, “action camera” should not limited to technical considerations. On the contrary, cameras quite different from one another on a technical level can very easily be seen as action cameras, as long as they are used to capture the movements of the body who carried it into the action. In other words, the important thing is the referential shift which takes place when the image leads us to consider the action of the body wearing the camera – before interesting us in what is being shown in the image.
