I tend to have some sympathy for Matt Moneymaker regarding what is beginning to come out about the Animal Planet reality television program, “Finding Bigfoot.” Post-production by cable companies, production teams, and editors often go into areas of which those being taped for a program have little control.

As Moneymaker stated on Cryptomundo earlier today, in his growing frustration with people’s question who are totally unaware of how little direct say he had in the content of the program, he wrote: “Do you think the 4 researchers edited the show? Do you think we didn’t measure the track casts when we were being taped? Do you think Cliff didn’t state those measurements on camera when we were being taped, just because you didn’t see it? Are you assuming that because you didn’t see it in the show that it didn’t happen? Do you think we asked them to exclude the measuring of the track casts from the show? Are you assuming that the researchers have final say as to what the producers include and what they don’t include in an episode?….We don’t have copies of any of the relevant sounds recorded during any of the episodes. The only item of evidence we’ve had control over were the track casts from Georgia, and that’s because Cliff shipped them out of GA before they could spirited away from us. As for the recordings … It’s not our material, and they certainly don’t want to release anything from the show before the episodes are released….The producers decided who would stay and who would go. It was their gig. They couldn’t film a bunch of people spread out in the woods at night. Not enough NV scopes for that.”

Now, it is coming out, the program producers went far beyond the usual editing, and actually “recreated” events not recorded.

Matt Moneymaker has just admitted to the inner circle at the BFRO that Animal Planet “inserted…simulations” for the wood knocks and the howl. The show has lost credibility in (re)creating evidence without labeling this “evidence” as not actual field recordings. Below is Moneymaker’s statement from the BFRO board.

This is a quote from Matt being posted with his permission:

We heard both the scream and knocks in the field, but they didn’t get a good recording of either so they inserted their own simulations during editing, apparently. We didn’t know what they were going to do in that regard. They wouldn’t tell us whether they actually recorded the sounds we heard, and they wouldn’t let us see the finished episodes either … as if they thought we’d complain to the network about their casual Hollywood approach to what we consider evidence.

This latest clarifies that this program was more a docudrama in some parts than a documentary.