Action Spam

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The variety of Point of View angles from HD action cams have turned our every-day activity into a feast of footage, which of course for some people, turns into Yawn Cam. It's no fun having to watch a 25 minute downill MTB run at the blistering speed of 10km/h. You'd rather watch grass grow.

Fortunately, there are enough mullets out there with scant regard for bodily health to keep it interesting. Once, only the wealthy gadget freaks, or elite athletes, could afford the bulky and expensive helmet cams used for commercials, or stunts in movies such as the OO7 series.

Enter the GoPro. Suddenly anyone could capture their outdoor fun. Waterproof and light, and with accessories for different points of view (POV), it took off faster than Greg Minnaar on a World Cup Downhill course - now that's the POV you can deal with. It only lasts a couple of minutes, and you're treated to some dizzying aerials, and high-speed banks through impossible berms.

In the last five years, the POV cam, now also offered by other brands, is everywhere and can be mounted just about anywhere:  helmets, handlebars, cockpits, surfboards, kayaks and skateboards to name a few.

You can snowboard down a mountain holding a pole with a HD camera looking back at you in wide-angled clarity. You can stick one on your chest, on your wrist or even in your teeth. Some amazing footage has resulted: from crazy wingsuit stunts to gaping tube-rides in giant waves; from huge aerial ski jumps to high speed aerobatic flying.

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But a week ago, the POV cam took extreme sport to a whole new level when mountain biker Malcolm Fox was held up by armed youths near Somerset West near Cape Town.

Through the GoPro on his head, you get a wide-angled shot of a robber who runs towards him, pointing a pistol cupped in two hands. Another two accomplices quickly join him, and they relieve Fox of his mountain bike, phone and sunglasses. A game-changing moment comes when the main crook squints directly into the camera at close range. Click. Click. No identikit needed.

The thief had no idea what was perched on Fox's head, and they loped off into the bushes with their loot. Within hours, Fox had his stuff back and the Somerset cops had their men.

The ubiquitous nature of the cam makes rare events a lot more common. Remember the mountain biker who suffered a body-juddering buck butt by a 150 kilogram red hartebees in KwzZulu-Natal?

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Evan van der Spuy, 18 at the time, of Port Shepstone said: "I was in a mountain-bike race in Albert Falls Game Reserve, South Africa, riding at 35km/h down a stretch of singletrack when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a 300-pound red hartebeest charging at me. I think he was as scared as I was, because neither of us could hit the brakes. The thing T-boned me, horns to helmet. I got knocked out cold and woke up with a stiff neck, four chipped teeth, and absolutely no idea what had happened. We posted the video on YouTube the following day, and for the next 72 hours my phone rang nonstop while more than 400 media outlets hounded me for interviews."

That's the power of POV, of spontaneous bursts of hazard, that immutable law of random chaos that holds the universe together. The Youtube video vault fill up day by day with wipeout footage. If it's really crazy, you get big hits, and loads of cash if you know how. The MTB view got 15 million hits. I hope Van De Spuy spent it wisely, if he made any cash out of it at all. One-off events like that aren't exactly the stuff feature films are made of.

Clashes and crashes and collisions on Youtube are digested daily. Extreme sport lives up to the hype when you can prove it in full colour and 1080i High Definition.

The angles of POV become surreal. Remember the viral hit Grinding the Crack, with multiple POV angles of Jeb Corliss wingsuit flying in Europe, missing land by a couple of feet - a breathtaking close shave when you're flying at speeds of almost 200km/h. It remains a smash hit on YouTube. It has been viewed 27 million times. Just one US cent per view would net you R3 million.

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In Cape Town, he was not so lucky. He only got 4 million views. But the footage of his bounce on the slopes of Table Mountain later - also from muliple POV angles - makes for frightening viewing. And, yet, perhaps it raises his profile, and currency. Viewing the footage, one can't believe how he survived after spinning out of control with a smashed leg and seconds to go before ... splat.

Maybe that kind of drama brings more credibility to sponsors?

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A young surfer, Cody Futeran arrived last week from an incredible run of waves along the desolate coastline of Skeleton Bay, the Namibian lefthander that is gaining international notoriety, with hundreds of people making the pilgrimage there last week.

"Don't worry, I'm bringing back the gold," he said, mysteriously.

That gold, I was to discover, was incredible GoPro footage from a drone that tracks along waves from the air. In one breathtaking sequence, a young Namibian local gets tubed for one minute. Yes, one minute. Well, just under. Within hours, just upload it to GoPro and get some of the most insane angles of surfing you have seen.

The drone, hovering dangerously close to the curl (to counter-act the way the GoPro makes things seem further), pans down the breaking wave from the air as he grinds through section after section, sometimes disappearing, while other times perfectly slotted in the shoulder between the lip that mechanically curls over his head.

It's all moving so fast, what else is on the cards? Live Wi Fi footage? Probably.