Skateboarding and Its Attachment to Video Cameras - Text 1
Still today the Sony DCR-VX1000 video camera appears in a large number of magazine articles and blog posts, and the reason is that no other camera had generated as much interest in the skateboarding community before its arrival in the 1990s. Some people laud its practicality, others its aesthetic appeal. For the moment, however, the important thing to remember is that the vast majority of skateboarding videos made in the early 2000s were created with this camera and that it is still used today in various videos. Another type of camera was popular in this history of skateboarding. In examining production over the past decade, we see that Panasonic models HVX-200 (2006) and HPX-170 (2008) occupy a very large place within this community. Since the 2010s and to this day, these cameras have been used to produce the vast majority of official skateboarding videos. In this respect it is interesting to ask the question: why does this subculture remain attached to very specific cameras and, as a result, not follow the dynamic of progress that has been injected by the videomaking industry?
By means of an analysis of discourses which take this industry into consideration, in the present text I will attempt to offer responses to this question. On the one hand, there is the community, which wishes to preserve a symbolic attachment to a particular past in skateboarding. On the other hand, it can be seen that the industry’s players encourage – or even impose – the use of certain kinds of camera for their own productions. Given that the answers appear to lie for the most part in the connection the community feels to the device, it would appear judicious to take up this topic from the angle of analysing the community’s discourses. This is why certain distinctions concerning the devices themselves will be formulated here in order to better grasp the issues raised in these discourses.
Context
Before delving into this question, we must establish the context. From its beginnings in the 1970s, the skateboard industry copied the traditional promotional model of the time by placing competition at the heart of its discourse. Although this method functioned for a few years, in the 1980s the industry had to change its approach to ensure its longevity. Starting from that moment, it has primarily valorised a “vert skating” approach to the sport, meaning to skate vertically (in swimming pools, on crescent-shaped ramps, etc.). The growth and popularisation of a horizontal approach in the mid-1980s, commonly called “street skating”, brought new life to the industry by sidelining the more rigid and official element of competition. Magazines of the day, such as Thrasher Magazine, set about promoting on a massive scale this new look for the sport, which they described as more “authentic”.
Concurrently and sometimes in conjunction with this, skateboard companies also set out to produce visual content created on the street.[1] The arrival of VHS cameras helped democratise the creation of audiovisual content, and the skateboard industry saw an opportunity. It was expensive and complex to make a sound film using film, but this was less the case with this new technology. From that point on people in the skateboard community could create a montage of their “exploits” in their living room, accompanied by music of their choice, without recourse to film production companies. With this pre-digital production technology, one only needed access to specialised tape recorders for transferring content.[2] Glen Wood emphasises that the creation of videos enabled ‘street’ skateboarders in this community to constantly confirm their skill and assert their place in it according to the hierarchical logic of progress. “This tradition continues today”, Gregory Snyder, quoted in Glen’s work, remarks about this dynamic.[3] According to Snyder, when an industry makes progress an expression and an ideal, it also sets out to standardise everything in its institutionalisation process.[4] From this angle of analysis, it becomes interesting to inquire into the industry’s penchants when the time came to choose the camera which would represent its community.
