LAKOTAGAMBILL90 December 2019
// BY JOE LINDSEY //17
B
EFORE YOUTUBE, IF YOU
wanted to replace a
balky starter motor in
your Hyundai Elantra,
you had to find a copy
of a Haynes manual and
puzzle out the repair
yourself from instructions and
exploded diagrams. If you needed
to run an electrical circuit in your
home, you turned to Renovation.
Now we consult the omnipresent
video sharing platform, where
homemade bits of footage show
us how to tackle almost any proj-
ect. Those videos were shot with
or made possible by a little cam-
era called the GoPro.
Before its creation, there was
no easy way to shoot, edit, andThe Tiny
Action
Cam That
Made Us
All DIYers
share videos. To do that, you’d
need a major production studio.
YouTuber Scotty Kilmer
remembers the change clearly.
The celebrity mechanic went from
hosting the Crank It Up car repair
show on CBS, with $150,000 cam-
eras, pro lighting, and “all that
horseshit,” to starting his own
YouTube channel in 2007. He’s
since racked up 2.7 million sub-
scribers. To do it, all he needed
was a laptop with some editing
software and a small selection
of affordable consumer digital
cameras. Among them: a GoPro,
with its remarkable (for the time)
wide-angle lens, which was espe-
cially useful for getting shots
inside tight spaces.