This New Air-POV Angle Is Throwing Us For A Loop

Filming oneself is a trillion dollar industry these days. 

Just think about Instagram, Tik Tok, and OnlyFans. Hell, we’ll even throw Zoom in there for good measure. 

Nick Woodman must have seen this coming when he invented the GoPro back in 2002. Or, he just wanted to film himself inside of a barrel without a 20-lb. water-housing. Both are equally legitimate reasons to start a 600-million-dollar company. 

As tech develops and marketers need more ammo to sling their snake oil, we’ve seen constant upgrades from the folks at GoPro. I believe we’re currently on the Hero8 but cannot be totally certain. Apple is about to drop the iPhone 12, so I suppose GoPro has some catching up to do. 

One of the features in the new GoPro Max is the 360 cam, which somehow films in all directions without being blocked by the user’s arm or head or whatever is holding the camera. Real sci-fi shit. You probably saw it used in our project with Shane Dorian, Anthony Walsh, Mikala Jones, and Ry Craike last year. The feature does some pretty mind-melting things in the barrel. 

But recently, surf vlogger and GoPro enthusiast Brett Barley used the 360 mode for a different type of surfing: jumps. On a small, wedgy day on the Outer Banks, Brett hucked himself off a number of backside ramps and spun until his neck grew sore. The resulting imagery is rather…intriguing. No, scratch that. It’s actually pretty cool. Until everyone inevitably starts doing this, at which point it will be lame.

C’est la influencing.