what you would want to see put into a show. What topics. The host. The guests. The equipment. The visuals. History covered. Maps shown. Techniques explained. Results evaluated. Taboo ventures.

Consider it a wish list that producers in the future will want to read through and take heed.

I could go into detail on all the aspects you've listed DDA, but I believe I can sum it up in a shorter order. Simply get the producers of Nova, which airs on PBS, to put a documentary together. I've yet to see anything that they've produced that wasn't quality viewing material as well as being extremely educational.

Yes, I agree. NOVA is a top notch avenue!

Nova would work...but I was thinking along the lines of "Investigative reports" from the A&E channel..heck the old "Dragnet" would would be better than some of the shows in the works/of the past..."just the facts ma'am"...

I really like the NOVA-type, too. Or maybe Nature . . . something that would have a narrator to help the audience with what's going on, but someone who's never on screen. That just seems so much classier and more informative than anything else.


~Ice

I like documentaries that recreate the sightings, and interview the actual people in a *no frills* sort of way.

I'd like to see a modern *erie* sort of documentary that starts with recreating the 2000 Dr. Johnson sighting, as that report drew so much attention..... Focus on the latest sightings and leave the *back in 1873 Sir John reported something unusual*..........type of dialog out of it.....

I'd like to see the latest sightings, evidence, witnesses, forensics, and academics in the field covered in depth...

I'd like to see Greenwell on there, as well as John Green.....and Dr. Bindernagel..

Good thoughts, Quake....even as a more unconventional means of investigation...have the local investigators more involved in the area that they know...(if they're willing)..if its going to be like the OLN series based on regional geographic variations.. would it better be seved by an "outsider" coming in to do the investigation...or someone whos reputation is known among the populace and reportees (?) of a given area...? just some thoughts

How would a whole week encounter recreation sound - like Albert Ostman's? Never been done before. Maybe a whole show on people who claim to have been kidnapped.

Doing a video too good though might actually get it re-classified as independent field research instead of media at the BFF.

Imagine that 25 years ago someone put together a real quality video for, lets say, Ok. It contained maps with every sighting and track find location. It contained examples of all the tracks and casts made or found there, with context, pictures and measurements. It had eyewitness testimony done from the actual site. It cataloged all known animals in the area that could be a source of confusion. It interviewed all known local investigators. It showed the then state-of-the-art techniques, equipment and methodologies used. It organized recorded sounds, comparing them to known sounds from other wildlife. It showed all suspected images. It went over statistics up till the time of production including human / wildlife population, when highways were built, when housing was put in, tracts of land leveled in the name of progress, green belts, hunting and fishing, weather patterns, etc. It went over all known media productions on the subject from the area.

Wouldn't that still be worth it's weight today? I think that is what needs to be done. Focus on a specific topic within the subject or on a specific location. It is too big of a subject to encompass within 30min, 1 hr, hell even 2 hrs, to satisfy everyone involved. They all have their own interests.

Now imagine a whole series of these for each major area. Put it on a DVD for each state, with a menu button for each county.

Just an idea I am playing with.

As I take a break from working on an essay I’m really starting to hate with a passion . . . I need to ask . . .

Am I the only person who doesn’t like reenactments?

Yes, I liked the sasquatch sighting reenactments that used to be Unsolved Mysteries back in the day . . . But now . . . Eh. To have a good sasquatch reenactment, one of the things I think one would need, would be a realistic sasquatch mock-up. And this is just problematic on so many levels—at least, to my mode of thinking. Maybe it is just me, but I wouldn’t feel good about trying to do serious research if I was able to put together a realistic squatch costume and fine someone of sufficient physical ability to make it look good in motion. I’d just be too worried about something like that haunting me where ever I went. The vague, shadowy sort of reenactments just, well, annoy me.

Granted, then it’s one of those, “Well, how else do you do a sasquatch documentary?” kind of a catch . . . Nothing I could possibly come up with would appeal to any demographic of interest. I’d honestly kinda like to see something that follows different groups of researchers in a given area, people who are there any way, observing the habitats, techniques, and fun pieces of equipment they use; maybe with the addition of any video, audio, or photographic evidence they feel comfy with being shown. Something to show why they have the findings they do that could make this pursuit look sane and not ultra-spooky to outsiders.

But . . . *sigh* . . . I know, I know . . .


~Ice

We hear all sorts of field reports where researchers get return calls, tree-knocking, etc...just once I'd like to hear it as it happens, on film, while the teams are out there.

Maybe do reenactments with CGI?

In a way, CGI wouldn't be so bad. A big plus for it would be using it for things like modeling the estimated size of the sasquatch, distances to the witnesses, lines of travel . . . That could provide something a lot more pointful than a quick flash of a shadowy thing in the brush.

Haven't thought enough about it to have any real deep comments.


~Ice

A very intriguing idea... my ideal DVD (or show) would probably change each and every day.

How about a show based on Dr. John Bindernagel's book, detailing how he came to believe that Sasquatch is North America's Great Ape.

In his book, Bindernagel discusses Sasquatch appearance and anatomy, feeding behavior and food habits, and physical evidence.

What a wonderful documentary that would make.

In my opinion, the reentactment is crutial for the viewer to be able to visualize what happened in the original sighting.. It is not exact, nor is it intended to be, but, I think it is merely a *rough idea* of what happened to help the viewer feel like they can relate to the experience.

Keep in mind, I am only refering to the well done re-enactments... The poor ones, I agree...They diminish the believability of the entire program.

For instance, the reenactment of the Patterson sighting, that was on a TLC special on Bigfoot soem years back. The *costume* was horrible, and the *actor* walked along like he was swimming with a cob up his a**.....

But good re-enactments........ I think serve a valuable function..

Very good thread. Please, keep up the good work.
I see some great points being made here by all. DDA, the DVD idea is one of the most appealing yet. A DVD for each state, with menu buttons for each county? Top notch. I see something very important developing here.....

The CGI basics are already made with what was done on Legend Meets Science. They might be able to make it do just about anything they could imagine.

We come up with good ideas, things that would work and be believable - the only ones we could blame for failure would be ourselves. Who else out there knows as much about this topic then the people who are researching it?

Ditto what Vol said. I will be watching this thread closely and hopefully make some contributions soon. great stuff all. My main concern would be to provide an avenue of connection for those who can contribute to the mystery and are influenced to come forward with those contributions by being captivated and motivated to act. This includes both observers of sasquatches (people with reports to fill out) and top level researchers who can make a difference, from both private and academic categories. Sure, technology, the quality of the show's content and creativity especially need to be well thought out, so its not only exciting to us, but also appeals to a very wide audience. The quality of it imho should definitely be along the lines of the Legends production.

* Ice, I like recreated scenarios but only if its credible and done well. Otherwise, junk is junk. If its not credible and its all sucked up with soap opera it wont be anything that will moisten the lips of any top level professional who can help make a difference... and I think that more of that along the lines of blair witch ... eh.

Below is a 1-page article of mine on this topic that was published in the August Bigfoot Co-Op. It is much less ambitious than what’s been suggested above, but more realistic. It requires little money (e.g., no $100,000 for Computer-Generated Imagery, which is what it cost S:LMS), and little co-operation among individuals. It suggests that researchers and organizations who’ve interviewed witnesses go back to them and get their testimony on tape—ideally at the spot where the sighting occurred, to help viewers visualize what happened. The only reenactment that might be done would be a human following Bigfoot’s footsteps.

They’d then post a notice informing TV producers of the availability of their videos in a “room” devoted to centralizing such notices on someone’s website, such as Bobbie’s, or BFRO’s, or TBRC’s, or BFF’s. (You could set up a “pinned,” empty thread in “Independent Research” devoted to this, bipto. But do it fast—we don’t want more than one “central” database!)

A few afterthoughts have occurred to me.
1. Prior to “B-Day,” most TV producers might prefer to interview witnesses themselves. But being able to preview witnesses by viewing the interviews researchers’ had made would enable them to determine which tales and witnesses would make good TV. (Hopefully, having done so, they’d give the original researcher a finder’s fee! Perhaps interviewees could agree, formally or informally, with researchers that they'd require TV producers to do this.)
2. To facilitate that, producers should be given the capability to preview the taped interviews on their computer. This would mean, in cases where witnesses would prefer to be seen only on a TV show, but not over the Net, that producers would have to apply for a password to view those tapes. Another way to preserve their privacy would be to omit their names and locations, except state. This would also help ensure that producers had to go to the interviewers to gain access to their witnesses.(Bobbie’s site currently has a room where videos can be selected for viewing. I don’t know how much work it would be for other sites to provide video downloads.)
3. Authors could be interviewed for hours, putting most of the essential points in their books on tape. Such authors would probably not want these tapes available for indiscriminate viewing on the Net, as they would diminish sales of their books (or would they?!), so once again a system of passwords, each good for only one user (presumably a producer or one of his aides), would need to be in place. (This password system could be implemented months or years after the basic system had been put in place.)
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Let’s Videotape Testimony & Create Documentaries
Roger Kni

Witness testimony has more impact the closer it hits to home. The ultimate impact occurs, therefore, when the witness is oneself. Next is hearing about a sighting from a trusted relative or friend, followed by reading about an encounter by a stranger one has heard of and respects. Near the bottom of the list is hearing about written testimony by strangers one doesn’t know. But (with rare exceptions) this is the only contact the general public now has with witness testimony. Even for believers, testimony in a book is only a shadow of the reality being described. If we were to be in more intimate contact with such testimony, it would have more impact. In other words, videotaped testimony of credible-seeming witnesses is desirable. Seeing it would counteract the dismissiveness of scoftical dogma, which implies witnesses are Fools or Liars All.

Any persons and organizations that produced such tapes would not only Do Good immediately (which is the purpose of my suggestion), they would also (eventually) Do Well—Very Well. In the weeks after B-Day, there would be a tremendous demand by TV (and radio) broadcasters for footage related to Bigfoot. There would be no time for them to go out and interview more than a few witnesses themselves. They would therefore have to pay well for the rights to videotape that’s already been shot. The Western Bigfoot Society’s collection of videotaped talks by buffs and witnesses might be worth up to a million, perhaps. And a one-hour high-quality videotape of witness testimony might bring in an amount over six figures, if it were re-broadcast a great many times. That would happen if there were high viewer demand. For example, Dan Perez estimates that the impact of B-Day would be as great as the moon landing. If so, virtually the whole country would be glued to its TVs for weeks to learn about BF, even to the point of repeatedly watching previously shown material. That would create a seller’s market for BF videos, and lead to repeat payments to licensors.

Until that happy day, such tapes might be shown over the Internet, perhaps, or on cable TV, or as part of talks by Bigfoot believers. But the producers should license only limited use of their product, so they’d be in a position to benefit from a price rise come B-Day. My hope is that this potential profit will loosen the purse strings of backers.

Here are some attributes I’d like to see in such videotapes:
• On-screen text supplementing the interviews; this text should include a web-page URL where further details on the sighting could be found. The text could deal with peripheral matters, the interview could deal with the actual sighting, plus its aftermath.
• “Best-case” compilations; i.e., those with some or all of the following:
o Visual conditions were good and the sighting was more than a glimpse,
o There were multiple witnesses,
o There was some confirmatory evidence (footprints, odor, etc.),
o Witnesses had high presumptive credibility (police, military officers, clergy, etc.)
• Sighting-locations shown, and the sighting perhaps re-enacted somehow.
• Validation of testimony by the new breed of portable, unbeatable lie detectors.

Investigators who’ve established relationships with witnesses should buy a tripod for their digital videocamera (digital for ease of editing on the PC), buy a book on videotaping techniques (or hire a professional videotaper), and obtain consent by phone or letter for an on-camera interview. Witnesses who were shy of publicity at the time of their sighting may be more willing to go public now. Or they could be promised that the tape would not be shown until BF’s existence were proven. Some BF website should help put these documentarians together with producers who’d package their interviews, and should post a list of tips for conducting video-interviews.

Damn good there RogerKni. I am very happy you posted all of that here!