TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

In other words, by virtue of an accumulation effect of content valorising the VX, the skateboarding community has asserted the symbolic position this camera has in the collective imagination. Whereas previously the camera had been presented as a guarantee of the authenticity and quality of the content it filmed, new discourses and purposes, such as tributes, are reminiscent, rather, of its role today in the history of this community.

The Skateboard Community’s Rigidity

In his doctoral dissertation, Glen Wood discerned a dynamic which is essential to understanding the skateboarding subculture. The industry, in conjunction with the community of ‘skaters’, promotes a hierarchical ranking of the sport’s enthusiasts. At the bottom are those who participate in the sport for pleasure; next come those who have access to free equipment from sponsors (these are called ‘flows’); then there are those who are described as amateurs (‘ams’), or semi-professionals who are poorly paid by the sponsors; and finally at the top are the professionals (‘pros’), for whom the sport is their primary profession. Glen thinks that this hierarchy is as much the result of agreement among the members of his community as it is reinforced by the industry, which urges them to conform to it.^[7] The threat of losing such funding, coupled with the veneration of subcultural traditions, compels aspiring practitioners and media-makers to comply with established norms in order to attain or maintain their status in the upper echelons of the dominant order.^[8] This is true as much for the kind of equipment used as it is for the choice of clothing and the manoeuvres carried out.

The cameras chosen by the community have certainly not eluded this hierarchical dynamic. For example, the filmer Shari White recounts how she was obliged in recent years to buy a Panasonic in order to be part of the team of filmers in a company’s new production, despite the fact that she already owned up-to-date equipment. In this case an aesthetic concern appears to be coupled with a desire for standardisation on the part of the producers. In a reportage called “How Skating Went HD”, the filmer Davonte Jolly maintains that his colleague William Strobek played an important role in the long-term adoption of Panasonic cameras when he arrived with his film Cherry in 2014.^[9] Strobeck explains, in an interview with the podcast “Nine Club” in 2018, that he was trying to redefine himself and that he found his own aesthetic at that moment.^[10] Today, several people imitate his videographic approach by using the servo zoom found on Panasonic cameras. The YouTuber Ben Jones even jokes about this in a video entitled “How to Stop Filming Like Bill Strobeck”, as if one had to oppose this tendency. All one sees in the video is the popular Panasonic HPX-170 camera, its servo zoom button and someone saying “zoom out for fuck sake”.^[11]

While the VX1000 was often used as a stamp of authenticity in advertising, this method was brought up to date in the way the Panasonic is promoted, with the difference that it is the filmers and skateboarders and no longer the companies who put the camera centre stage. On social media and on websites, they are often pictured with such a camera in an appealing manner. Some photographs have a more improvised style, while others display editorial control reminiscent of fashion photographs. Like a piece of clothing, the object confirms one’s belonging to a particular class of the community. In the case of Panasonic cameras, it would appear that the target audience is skateboarding professionals.