John Nowak
Graduate Poster
We'd have the monkey.
Oh, certainly. It's sort of a back-of-envelope thought exercise on my part. Basically, what kind of photographic evidence would you need for Bigfoot to be "unhoaxable?"
To pass on a Bigfoot site all you really need is a Chewbacca mask, but let's pretend the audience is a bit more sophisticated than that.
The real answer is, it's impossible, because any digital photo could theoretically be hoaxed. But just to play with the idea, you'd need a sequence of shots, probably taken in drive mode, that showed some motion on the part of the subject.
So then the idea of hoaxing that with a life sized (so you can bring people to the site and show them exactly where it stood), stop-motion figure came up. If we're talking about a digital camera taking stills you'd get perhaps 3-5 FPS, which would be a lot easier to animate than full speed video. Then go back and edit the EXIF data to make the time and date stamps match the claimed scenario.
I'd go in with a big zoom lens because my story is that I was birding, which would explain the closeups and why you can't see the entire animal and the rig supporting it.
Bigfoot does a bluff charge and runs away. I don't want to follow it, because I'm concerned the animal is terrified and might turn on me. That might be a bit more plausible than the usual "I went home because I was bored" scenario. Or I stumble across a juvenile and get out of there because Mom shows up and she's not happy. Whatever.
I'm sure an expert could poke holes in this, but they'd need to work a little.