Jackie Chan wielding panda bear plushies on the 89th Academy Awards. Brad Pitt serving duck face on the 92nd. Anya Taylor-Pleasure’s otherworldly hair flip simply final yr. These are a number of the most iconic Glambot movies shot by director Cole Walliser, who has been working E!’s high-speed pink carpet digicam, a staple of awards season, since 2016.
It was a a lot totally different leisure panorama then, earlier than #MeToo and #AskHerMore, the latter of which Walliser says he’s inoculated from by advantage of the slo-mo clips the Glambot generates. “For higher or worse, it doesn’t permit me to ask extra!” he chuckles from his Venice Seashore workplace six weeks out from this yr’s Emmys, which will probably be Walliser’s tenth, although he admits he’s unaware of the nominees. “I attempt to keep tuned out to who’s nominated and who’s coming as a result of I don’t wish to get nervous,” he tells The Envelope.
Walliser, whose résumé consists of music movies for Pink, Katy Perry and Tinashe and commercials for CoverGirl cosmetics, noticed early on with Glambot that movie star tradition was poised to interrupt out past pink carpet telecasts and tabloid magazines: “If I look ahead 5 years, what’s the local weather going to be?” he recollects pondering. “It was very clear that it was going to be extra on socials. So I assumed, ‘If I begin now I might be [ahead] of the curve.’”
Neither is he involved concerning the rising presence of influencers within the awards area, whether or not within the type of now-regular marketing campaign stops like “Sizzling Ones” and “Hen Store Date” to the pink carpet itself. In spite of everything, Glambot is the final word short-form content material, coming in at one second apiece, and helped pave the way in which for such successors.
“A part of what individuals gravitate to with the Glambot is the candid [nature of it],” Walliser says. “There’s a barrier that’s damaged down that folks appear to get pleasure from.”
It took him a couple of years to reach on the synergy between slow-motion clips and behind-the-scenes content material that provides the Glambot a second life on social media in the course of the six months outdoors of the awards season churn.
“It occurred organically,” Walliser says, when he requested his assistant to be ready to take a photograph of him and Chan, whom Walliser grew up watching in Vancouver, if the chance arose. In the end, “it didn’t really feel proper, so I didn’t ask for an image.” However unknown to Walliser, his assistant had been surreptitiously filming footage of Walliser directing Chan. He requested her to do it a couple of extra occasions with different massive celebrities. “Seeing the way it works in actual time was type of fascinating, so I minimize it collectively and put it [online].
“It wasn’t till the 2020 awards season that I actually dialed into what the behind-the-scenes content material could be,” he continues. “Then the pandemic hit, so I used to be at residence modifying my footage and placing it on socials, and that’s when it exploded.”
Now the rise of TikTok and influencers has modified celebrities’ relationship with social media and the leisure ecosystem at giant. The Glambot stays, however it jostles for pink carpet actual property alongside streamers and certainly celebs themselves, revealing their seems to be on Instagram or filming “Get Prepared With Me” movies for style glossies like “Vogue” and “Elle.”
Does Walliser suppose the Glambot will go the way in which of “E! Information”?
“Till celebrities are doing their at-home Glambots pretty much as good as I’m on the pink carpet, there’s nonetheless job safety!” he says with fun. Nonetheless, the collaboration perform on Instagram has been a godsend. “There was a swap when [celebrities] began going, ‘How do I get this? I wish to publish it.’”
Walliser’s employer’s flagship popular culture program was canceled final month after 32 years on the air, which he calls an “leisure tragedy.” However whether or not exemplified by media corporations’ pivot to video, then again to print, then again to video once more, or broadcasting conglomerates’ mergers and spin-offs, Walliser believes the present, or at the very least the service it performs, might make a comeback.
“I believe sooner or later we’re going to revalue these info curators that we belief and love as a result of there’s an excessive amount of content material to do it on our personal,” he says.
Within the meantime, Walliser exudes serenity as he warms up for the Emmys earlier than the hectic triple whammy of the Golden Globes, the Grammys and the Academy Awards within the new yr: “I don’t have a life till after the Oscars.”
Till then, he’ll be hoping to seize the bold-faced names who’ve up to now eluded the Glambot, together with Rihanna, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bradley Cooper and Beyoncé. There’s all the time an opportunity — Bey’s Christmas Day NFL halftime efficiency is nominated for 4 Emmys.
Though Walliser doesn’t know that.
