How the Glambot became a staple of awards season

Cole Walliser, the director of E!'s slo-mo camera for capturing celeb looks, explains why it's still a star itself

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JACKIE CHAN WIELDING panda bear plushies at the 89th Academy Awards. Brad Pitt serving duck face at the 92nd. Anya Taylor-Joy's otherworldly hair flip just last year. These are some of the most iconic Glambot videos shot by director Cole Walliser, who has been operating E!'s high-speed red carpet camera, a staple of awards season, since 2016.

It was a much different entertainment landscape then, before #MeToo and #AskHerMore, the latter of which Walliser says he's inoculated from by virtue of the slo-mo clips the Glambot generates. "For better or worse, it doesn't allow me to ask more!" he chuckles from his Venice Beach office six weeks out from this year's Emmys, which will be Walliser's 10th, though he admits he's ignorant of the nominees. "I try to stay tuned out to who's nominated and who's coming because I don't want to get nervous," he tells The Envelope.

Walliser, whose résumé includes music videos for Pink, Katy Perry and Tinashe and commercials for CoverGirl cosmetics, saw early on with Glambot that celebrity culture was poised to break out beyond red carpet telecasts and tabloid magazines: "If I look forward five years, what's the climate going to be?" he recalls thinking. "It was very clear that it was going to be more on socials. So I thought, 'If I start now I can be [ahead] of the curve.' "