• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Finding Bigfoot ?

B

BillyNoTalent

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Nov 5, 2009
Messages
5
Hi if there is already a thread regarding this my apologies. I would just simply like to know wht everyone else on here makes of this show ?
 
Well obviously, like the entire subject of bigfoot, it's total nonsense but that doesn't stop it from being entertaining in its own way. At least that's my take on it.
 
Agreed I do find it it entertaining I must admit. They amuse that they expect to spend one night in an area and find a Bigfoot a creature that if it does exsist continues to avoid capture. I have a small problem with Matt Moneymaker just because I think his surname is far to accurate, I think he tends to over egg everything in order to try and keep the viewer watching. I just wondered what everyone else made of it. I do like to think of Bigfoot sitting in a tree with his mates trying not to laugh as Matt and crew howl toeach other below them.
 
BillyNoTalent said:
Hi if there is already a thread regarding this my apologies.
Click to expand...
There is now :).

I share many of your reservations about it over all. I do, however, believe them to be entirely sincere in what they're doing. One reason being Moneymaker et al have rounded on the progamme-makers, accusing them of wilful deception. The full article is here, but bear in mind it's a fairly sceptical site, so regards the whole bigfoot thing as suspect, not just the programme. I personally still think it has objective reality, whatever the true nature.

Anyway, some quotes:
In a recent show, the team stumbled upon an upright figure in a field. The figured showed up very brightly on the FLIR. It was hard to make out just what it was but it looked alive.

The team approached closer and closer and, just as it seemed we might find out what the object was, the producers clumsily cut away from the FLIR image and we are told (but not shown!) that the creature disappeared into the surrounding brush. We lost Bigfoot!

As a viewer, this was a most frustrating experience. Why did they cut away? What was that figure?

Matt Moneymaker explained the whole thing on the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) forums:

"The heat blip in the meadow was a horse. I said so on camera. I talked about the horse for a good long while. I figured the producers would edit it honestly, but they didn’t. Their editing made it look as though I did not identify the figure before it ran off. I did. It was a horse. They inserted lines from other scenes where I talk about something running away before I could figure out what it was."
Click to expand...
In another show Matt is again in the woods viewing things through the FLIR and sees a figure on a hill above him. He takes off yelling and wildly running after it. We see fleeting glimpses of humanoid figure fleeing. Is it Bigfoot? Alas, the creature gets away again. Should the show really be called "Losing Bigfoot?"

After some stilted and manufactured drama in which the team argues with Matt about how wise it is to run off alone after a potential huge hairy unknown creature, Matt ends the argument by saying, "Let's go back and look at the tape." For some reason we viewers are not shown the tape again. Why would that be?

Moneymaker says:

"… the thing I ran after up the hill was a human — someone who was sneaking around us in the woods trying to watch the production in progress. I said so repeatedly and vehemently at the time, for the cameras, but they edited out all of that in order to make it seem unclear what I was chasing after."

Other members of the team also seem to be upset with the way the show came out. In another forum, someone claiming to be Bobo wrote about the show:

"Everything Matt said is true. We’re getting screwed. You people have no idea how much Matt and I fought with the producers to have any legitimacy on this show...Sorry to all of the squatchers that are bummed out on how they’re doing it. I assure it isn’t us."
Click to expand...
Which I personally believe. The site does continue to criticise the team's apparent lack of rigour, much of which I can't argue with, and also I agree the conclusions they sometimes draw do smack of wanting desperately to believe.

Having watched every episode now (they're freely available on YouTube), there are nonetheless lots of very intriguing first-hand reports, and occasionally baffling apparent missed-opportunities, such as the Kentucky backwoods shack. This is apparently visited almost nightly by bigfoots, which the team then drove away from preferring instead a howl-and-lowlight fest in a random lump of hunter-infested forest. I mean, at least rig up some cameras at the shack or something? Unless of course they did. I've heard rumours there's as yet undisclosed footage, pending Melba Ketchum's DNA revelations. Well, we'll see - Oldrover and I have both agreed to disagree until on that one until it's in the open.

In the end, as we've previously discussed regarding Ghost Hunters, (early, pre-pantomime) Most Haunted, Destination Truth etc, the problem is and always will be that any form of anomaly investigation involves vast swathes of absolutely sod-all happening, in relative silence, and often in the dark too - which makes for decidedly dull telly. As a result, the producers (who after all have a product to shift) muck around with it. However diligent the team, the viewing figures are the bottom line.

I'll still watch it though :).
 
I can't comment because I don't have that channel (Animal Planet).
 
I refer the honourable gentleman to my earlier mention of YouTube.

For example: Season 2, Episode 1.

They're all on there. Actually there's quite a lot of squatchy stuff around. Much of it drivel, but some pretty good.
 
Oh, thanks!
Might have a look later.
 
The inevitable Bobo re-enactments are good for a chuckle :p
 
stuneville said:
I refer the honourable gentleman to my earlier mention of YouTube.

For example: Season 2, Episode 1.

They're all on there. Actually there's quite a lot of squatchy stuff around. Much of it drivel, but some pretty good.
Click to expand...

I read a comment on another site that said he was at the event that this "baby Sasquatch" was filmed near, and one of the attendees had a monkey with him.
Renee dropped the ball as the skeptic in this episode methinks :p
 
I remember the swamp ape episode I think that the cut away refers to in the article and was inceed left frustratsed saying well what was that ?????? So this at least explains that. I would of thought they would of inserted a clause that said they could have a say in the final edit of a program that deals with a subject that woudl already be regarded by many as hocum. I think they dropped the ball there.

As for theTeam itself I do think that they do want to believe and are deseprate to find some evidence however questionable their methods in trying to gather this evidence. I find Renee approaching the subject as I would wanting to rule out everything it could be before proclaiming 'theres a squatch in these woods'. Bobo just really really really wants to believe and as mentioned his re-enactments are a highlight haha. Cliff again is really quite informative when out squatching and he really believes without doubt. As I said it is just Matt I am unsure about but perhaps I ahev taken a personnel dislike to his insistance that some bins have moved therefore it must be a sqautch. But I have found it has prompted healthy debate in work which is normally reserved for the topic of football only so it must be doing some good.
 
I would of thought they would of inserted a clause that said they could have a say in the final edit of a program that deals with a subject that woudl already be regarded by many as hocum. I think they dropped the ball there.
Click to expand...

To be fair I doubt that they were in any position to negotiate. I'd imagine if the BFRO tried to dictate terms then the TV lot would have just gone somewhere else.
 
Where's the science in the search for Sasquatch?

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency recently issued a statement indicating it knew of no evidence of the existence of “aquatic humanoids.”

This remarkable statement was prompted by calls from viewers of Animal Planet’s “Mermaids: the Body Found,” which claimed such creatures exist. A swarm of television programs, listed as “scientific” and “reality based,” perpetuate similar pseudoscientific ideas that are gobbled up by viewers, especially kids.

This incident illustrates a dangerous trend: Viewers’ acceptance of claims made by untrained laypeople as authoritative, and their simultaneous rejection of work done by experts in science, history and politics. This idea argues that egg-headed specialists — with a lifetime of focused academic work, peer-reviewed scholarship and study — are hiding the “truth” from us so that the only way to get answers is from down-home folks with little schooling but good sense. In other words, formal education is bad.

One program that encourages this fallacy is “Finding Bigfoot” (also a product of Animal Planet). It follows members of a group called the Bigfoot Field Research Organization as they search for the elusive creature. The investigators travel to various locations of supposed Bigfoot activity, with the genre staples of night vision cameras and hushed voices. While full of enthusiasm, the BFRO members don’t seem to have any technical training or follow scientific method in their search. They often say, “There are ’squatches here!” but viewers never see the big hairy beasts. And that’s about all. The show imparts no knowledge of environmental science, animal behavior studies, primate anatomy or even the history of monster hunting. Yet with spurious “evidence,” the group makes claims that the creatures are real and just around the corner, and expects us to accept it.

Sasquatch-like creatures may actually exist — they are some of the only mythical monsters to have an evolutionary and biological plausibility — but stumbling around the woods claiming every blip on an infrared scope or twig snap is a “‘squatch” isn’t helping the searchers’ case. There are a number of intelligent, capable, trained individuals who do scientific work searching for cryptozoological creatures, who ought to get more coverage. Unfortunately, good-natured and quirky amateurs, like the guys on “Finding Bigfoot,” are better for ratings, despite the fact they never find anything.

The format for “Finding Bigfoot” is not original. It‘s lifted largely from the earlier and equally problematic “Ghost Hunters.” We also must contend with “Ancient Aliens,” “Destination Truth” and “Long Island Medium.” Especially egregious is “Psychic Kids,” which perpetuates the myth that people can see spirits. And don’t get me started on “American Diggers.”

These programs glorify amateur investigators, who have little knowledge of the fields they “study” while often disparaging the work of professional scholars. Genuine experts — physicists, evolutionary biologists, historians, classicists and others — rarely make it to the screen because they might explain why there are no mermaids, ghosts or sasquatches, that there is no evidence aliens have visited the earth, and why our lives and our history should be valued as more than just junk sold for a couple of bucks to a pawn shop.

Programs such as “Finding Bigfoot” should be getting viewers, especially children, turned on to science and history as the way to understand the world; it should trumpet the value of education and expertise. What it actually does is turn us away from learning, books, science, history and the hard work of the intellect for a view of the world where serious study and intellectual pursuits are suspect or unnecessary.

How to combat this? Tell your kids that smart people are not the enemy; then buy them a microscope or a telescope. Get them a book on biology or zoology or even history from the library and read it with them; fight to make sure they get a good education. We’ll all be better off and, yes, if it is out there, someone might even actually find Bigfoot.

Brian Regal teaches the history of science at Kean University. His latest book, “Searching for Sasquatch: Crackpots, Eggheads and Cryptozoology,” studies clashes between amateurs and professionals at the fringes of science. Join the conversation at njvoices.com.
Click to expand...

http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2012/ ... _sear.html
 
Tea and crumpets anyone?

I have this wild fantasy when watching Finding Bigfoot that that Bobo and friends will come out in a clearing at night and find a large group of Bigfoots clustered around tables with candelabras
having a nice dinner and look at the Bigfoot hunters with curious disdain over the edges of their monocles.

Or at least one big foot walking up to them in the forest at night taping them on the shoulder and saying "Yes, what do you want? You are disturbing our opera simulcast night."

When watching Finding Bigfoot my mind asks just how big is the breeding population? How many of these creatures are there? And just HOW do they know so much about habits (liking the smell of bacon, for example) if they are so elusive? I still watch this show and other shows on Bigfoots. But the FB show just seems to lower my IQ a few points. It's great entertainment, I must say.
 
The problem with programs like this is if they did film a bigfoot, they would have raced back to civilisation and got the footage on the evening news the same day, and not spent 6 months making a documentary and revealing it then.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top