Do you have a grandpa who likes to show everybody his war pictures (any war will do)? Or perhaps a crazy aunt that likes to snap shots of her cat dressed like an English dandy? Have you ever seen a slide projector, or even a Windows slideshow of somebody’s vacation pics? They’re all boring as shit, aren’t they? Want to know why? All of that shit is only interesting to the person who was behind the camera. It was what they were seeing, and they captured that as a frozen memory. It’s special to them, because they lived it; to everyone else it’s fucking BORING!
Fast forward to 2010 and you’ve just strapped on your fancy new helmet cam. You rip it down a pow-covered slope, or take a truly epic lap in your home park. You think to yourself, “Damn I’m cool, I’m going to go home and put this on Youtube.” Guess who cares? You and nobody else. That shit is boring and nobody wants to see it. I don’t care if you’re a kid in the Midwest or a pow bro shooting with Nimbus; the front of your skis and a shaky ass view of snow flying by is coma-inducing dull.
POV for the water ramps.
The GoPro is obviously really cool; it’s an affordable HD camera with a fisheye. I love that you don’t have to have ultra-rich parents to be able to make a decent edit anymore. But either attach that shit to a pole and have your friend film you, or just keep the footage for your own enjoyment. I’m sure you’re thinking about how your idea is different. People are going to love the angle you’ve set up by attaching it to your knee or some other ridiculous thing, but we won’t. It will be boring. Please believe me.
Trends come and trends go, let’s hope the POV self-filming B.S. will be a silly trend that we look back on and laugh about.
Or maybe we're in for 100 more self-indulgent products.
Well, I only ever heard my Grandfather mention WWII once. And even that was hard for him. I would have loved to see pictures if he had any.
I can agree that POV shots can be boring. Though POV chase cams are fun to watch. And, cliff drops and motorcycle vids are really good viewing.
I do have a Go Pro, but I noticed that I never took it to my local hill when I was by myself. But I did haul it around on ski trips with friends.
yeah I think the one thing you have to give the gopro credit for is that it is really useful for filming big mountain, and is useful in shooting park only b/c kids can get an HD camera with a fish-eye to shoot follow-cams for only a couple hundred. but POV has its place in shooting lines and if it’s used sparingly enough i think it adds a good perspective for certain lines and can be done well. but yeah its tough when it’s used so self-indulgently… and with that I’ll hope no one looks at my facebook video page.
We’re all realizing there’s a cat in a floral print bowtie in this article right?
I agree. Watching a POV K-fed on a flat bar is about as fun as viewing a BBC melodrama in a white room for 24 hours straight.
The only good POV I’ve ever seen was Tom Wallisch’s runs through the park at Mt. Snow for the first winter Dew Tour. And even that was kindof hard to watch.
i think the real question is why we haven’t hooked me up with a scuba mask with an HD camera for my vacation to Sandals
Interesting this article came AFTER Anthony Boronowski posted a tweet stating he disliked helmet cams.
fucking thank you. finally. and don’t worry, we all know you’re creeping Tony’s twitter. no big.
Sorry Encyclopedia Brown. This idea goes to barberdude who emailed me this article back in January: http://bit.ly/4pAF17
But stay tuned for “elaborate on Ant B’s tweets” week in April.