No carpet — no matter the colour — is complete without the GlamBOT, and the 95th Academy Awards from Hollywood is no exception.
This year, the Oscars red carpet in Hollywood on Sunday was a champagne colour, but social media feeds were still flooded with slow-motion videos of the biggest stars of the moment, striking a pose in the span of a second.
“It’s really crazy how the conversation has shifted,” Cole Walliser, the man behind the GlamBot, told CBC News from the champagne carpet. “It is really exciting to have talent come up and be excited and know what it is.”
The Vancouver-born filmmaker grew up making skateboarding videos in Richmond, B.C. He has been operating the GlamBoT, which takes slow-motion videos of celebrities at red carpet events, for E! Entertainment since 2016.
Now, his viral work is considered a staple at glam events.
WATCH | Cole Walliser explains how he gets celebrities in slow-motion glam shots using the GlamBot:
Cole Walliser of Richmond, B.C., discusses his approach to award shows, including the 95th Academy Awards, with CBC’s Eli Glasner.
“For the first couple of years, I had to really explain what it [GlamBot] was and people were very confused. Now they know what it is. They come with moves, they come prepared.”
The secret behind the GlamBoT
Walliser said his secret capturing the perfect carpet moment is simply trying his best.
Describing the videos themselves, he said: “We shoot 1,000 frames in that one second. When we play it back at like 24/30 [frames per second], it’s really, really slow. The clip’s like two or three minutes long.
“It’s really interesting because typically the advice is to do a big movement because anything in motion, like the bigger the movement, the cooler it is in slow motion,” he said.
“But there’s been a lot of talent or celebrities that do really subtle movements, and it just turns out incredible,” he adding, recalling moments with stars like Billie Eilish, who along with her brother Finneas won the best-song Oscar last year for the James Bond film tune No Time to Die.
“I wish I knew the exact thing, but I just try my best every time and hopefully it turns out.”
As he prepared for a night of capturing Hollywood moguls like Angela Bassett and Michelle Yeoh on Sunday, he said 10 things were constantly in his head.
“I’m literally back to back to back. I almost can’t really think about what’s happening next because typically I’ll be in the middle, talking to someone and giving them direction.” he said, recalling a former Oscars night, directing Jennifer Lopez on a moment’s notice.
“I was finishing [with] someone. And I turned around and J-Lo was like on the mark, like ready. And nobody gave me the heads-up. And I was like, OK? And so I just sort of did my best to work it out.”
As he stepped out onto this year’s Oscars carpet, revamped for the first time since 1961 in all its champagne glory, he was excited to do just that.
As a filmmaker himself, he felt it was cool to see the carpet switched up.
“Everybody’s always growing, always evolving. And I think if you do the exact same thing all the time, it becomes a little stagnant,” he said. “So kudos to the [Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] in kinda spicing it up a bit, and we’ll see how it goes.”