Sports - Text 1
The action camera, as exemplified by GoPro, is inseparable from the field of sports. Even though the term “action camera” used to refer to the camera that follows the action in sporting events, since the advent of the GoPro it has come to designate the kind of miniature robust cameras typically worn by athletes, either on their head or elsewhere on the body. The technical features of this kind of device (miniaturization, ergonomics, focal length, recording speed, etc.) make it an ideal candidate for this particular kind of use involving athlete-filmers who must concentrate on their sport or stunts more so than on handling a camera. While Vincent Laforet has said about the GoPro that it has changed the way amateurs use cameras – or, more precisely, how they do not use them[1] – we must look toward the body of the athlete-filmer in order to define the action camera.
Skate
Although the GoPro is most often associated with extreme sports, including skateboarding, cinema has taken up the sport well before the relatively new “action cam” category. The films America’s Newest Sport (Bruce Brown, 1962), The Devil’s Toy (Claude Jutra, 1966), Hot Wheels (Richard Gayer, 1977) and Skateboard Kings (Horace Ové, 1978) are a few examples of this encounter between cinema and skateboarding. Even before the emergence of video in the 1980s and 90s – the decades most associated with the world of skateboarding – these films represent the first steps of what this parcours calls the “action camera.”
