Creature Suit Analysis - Part 3 - The Mime Inside

[Guest soarwing]

How about - 'Patty looks like a guy in a suit until you start making excuses for it looking like a guy in a suit'?

- - -

I think Patty does - upon casual observation - look like a guy in a suit.

Many people think that Patty is a guy in a suit even after closer study of the film, and I can understand that too.

I think that when people reach the suit conclusion, they largely base it on the pre-existing disbelief in bigfoot creatures - not so much any actual suit hallmarks on Patty.... "Bigfoot is a myth, so the PGF must be a guy in a suit". Case closed.

People like Dfoot are different in the sense that they're open to the possibility of bigfoot, but claim that the PGF is riddled with evidence that the film is a hoax. Which is plainly false. Are there lines and bulges on Patty? Yes, but I've posted pictures of real animals that have every single "suit defect" that Patty has - and many more. There are no smoking guns on Patty as far as suspicious details are concerned. As has been stated before; If Patty sported a smooth, line-free and perfectly glossy coat, the suitnik would likely argue that she's too perfect to be a real animal out in the wild.

What I don't understand is that certain FX people say that it was OBVIOUSLY a suit... while other FX people flatly disagree and claim that even if it was a suit, it's the best they've ever seen. What opinion is valid and why?

The Harry costume wouldn't show much of anything if shot under the same conditions that Patty was shot. You'd see a shaggy-haired figure walking. Any jiggling or zooming would still show an indistinct shaggy body with little, if any muscular or skeletal detail - just like in the movie. The details on Harry wouldn't look better or more real, because there wasn't much detail in the first place - save for the face.

If we replace the Patty suit with the Harry suit and film him under the same conditions as Patty was, it would probably be impossible to prove that it was a suit. But I think there would be fewer reasons to think that Harry was real - given the typical seam-hiding shaggy fur and indistinct torso and legs. Even more troublesome for the Harry suit would be rewinding the clock, using nothing post 1967 and keeping the many designers, fitters and FX folks that were needed to create the Harry suit, QUIET about the whole thing.

With Patty, it would be just as valid to argue that if she were shot under studio lights and in close up, like Harry, EVEN MORE authenticating detail would be visible. With the "suspicious" lines and "wristbands" resolving more clearly into what has already been shown to commonly occur on REAL animals anyway.

[Guest cryptidon]

And......if this was an elaborate hoax, why hasn't the supporting cast come forward to claim their share of the "credit" as did Bob H. and Philip Morris? If the "cat was out of the bag", there would be no secret to keep.

Actually, I think it is perfectly logical to believe that Philip Morris sold a suit to Patterson. He was shooting a documentary on BF, was he not? I have yet to see a documentary on BF that did not use a man in a suit. I just believe that Philip Morris was wrong when he claimed it was his suit in the PGF film. Is he lying or does he really believe it is his suit? I can't say. I do believe BH is lying....his story has changed too many times and usually to fit the details of the time.

I have often thought along similar lines, Jack. It only makes sense to me that he would have had a suit. How interesting would a Bigfoot documentary be without referencing the animal visually?

Although I can only assume that if Patterson had produced his Bigfoot suit, and it looked nothing like Patty, it would only ultimately lead to the speculation that he made two suits.

[Guest Jack]

Then the legal affairs executive chimes in with the concern that doing something like "Patty" is risky because the owners of the PG film could sue us for merchandising their "patty" look, so let's change it to something more "our" look."

Bill

I was with you until I read this line, Bill. How could the owner of the PGF claim ownership of the Patty "look" any more than the photographer can claim the look of a lion he photographed? Since they claim to have shot the real mcCoy, they'd first have to admit they designed and built the "suit", wouldn't they? And wouldn't that lay them wide open to fraud charges?

[Bill]

To All:

The debate about Patty vs Harry is really "apples vs oranges", because Harry was made to the highest standards of intended use, the film industry for a major studio film. In that sense, he was the highest quality for his time and technology.

He looks different that Patty, yes, but there was no particular reason he should have looked like her. He's a different "species" so to speak. And so his design criteria are different and the standard of what is quality is different. He is clearly a suit, and some of his design elements were clearly made to help hide the fact of the suit and convey a sense of believability to the audience. But many of his design elements were for the effective dresing, undresing, maintainance, support, and operation of him as a film suit creature.

And as my notes indicate, some choices are clearly easier to work with than others, and a wise professional suit designer does choose many specifics based on what's easier to be functional and consistantly effective on set in use. They want to succeed, and there's no reason why they shouldn't choose the methods more condusive to success, if their "species" of bigfoot is open to any design appearance they want.

Occasionally FX people get an "iching" to try to do the impossible, but usually our ambitions get scaled back to doing what's right for the film and what's likely to succeed. So we adjust our designs to be condusive to success. Ricj did with Harry and it was a very successful character, as well as a splendid example of suit technology for the time.

Bill

[Guest soarwing]

To All:

The debate about Patty vs Harry is really "apples vs oranges", because Harry was made to the highest standards of intended use, the film industry for a major studio film. In that sense, he was the highest quality for his time and technology.........

.......Occasionally FX people get an "iching" to try to do the impossible, but usually our ambitions get scaled back to doing what's right for the film and what's likely to succeed. So we adjust our designs to be condusive to success. Ricj did with Harry and it was a very successful character, as well as a splendid example of suit technology for the time.

Bill

- - -

I agree.

It's not that Harry was a "bad" suit or was somehow supposed to look like Patty or any other guy that might be in monster duds. In that sense, it is an apples vs oranges comparison. But I think it's fair to point Harry out as an example of what was being done with bigfoot - and bigfoot-like - designs some two decades after the PGF. Sure, if there was a boatload of cash available to the FX guys to make the suit, Harry might have had visible calf muscles, scapulas and flexing thigh muscles, etc. But in the absence of said boatload of cash and the extra difficulties involved in producing these details, one has to wonder how the Patty FX guys managed with what would probably be a shoe-string budget in comparison.

What hammers this home for me the most is when I compare the Patty "hoax" with OTHER alleged "real" bigfoot films. No comparison.

I can buy the notion that Hollywood isn't trying to make their bigfoot creatures look like Patty, but the basic intent is to make something that doesn't scream "Guy in a suit!" Chewbacca syndrome so to speak.

The PGF is impressive from that perspective alone.

[Bill]

Jack:

Sorry in the last reply I missed this question of yours, as follows:

"I was with you until I read this line, Bill. How could the owner of the PGF claim ownership of the Patty "look" any more than the photographer can claim the look of a lion he photographed? Since they claim to have shot the real mcCoy, they'd first have to admit they designed and built the "suit", wouldn't they? And wouldn't that lay them wide open to fraud charges? "

As I understand copyright law, a person cannot claim exclusivity over the image of a real animal, but Patty hasn't been proven to be a real animal by the exactitudes of either science or law. The PG film owners would not have to prove Patty wasn't real. Patty is simply an entity on a film and they own her. The people who copied her likeness would bare the burden of proof to prove she is a real animal in order to prove they had the right to copy her. She only exists on one film for now. She's only an image, not a proven real animal you can see in the wild or at a zoo.

There is only one way to produce a Patty likeness, and that's to copy the content of the PG film. I have no idea how this might settle out if the PG film owners did try to sue somebody, but I can assure you studio legal affairs lawyers would anticipate such, and without confidence they had a clear and unambiguous right to copy Patty as a live animal public domain image, they'd defer to caution and recommend an original bigfoot design instead of a Patty replica, for clarity in a truly propriatary bigfoot character look, one they own 100% and nobody has a conflicting claim to.

That's the way they think.

Bill

[Guest Jack]

Jack:

Sorry in the last reply I missed this question of yours, as follows:

"I was with you until I read this line, Bill. How could the owner of the PGF claim ownership of the Patty "look" any more than the photographer can claim the look of a lion he photographed? Since they claim to have shot the real mcCoy, they'd first have to admit they designed and built the "suit", wouldn't they? And wouldn't that lay them wide open to fraud charges? "

As I understand copyright law, a person cannot claim exclusivity over the image of a real animal, but Patty hasn't been proven to be a real animal by the exactitudes of either science or law. The PG film owners would not have to prove Patty wasn't real. Patty is simply an entity on a film and they own her. The people who copied her likeness would bare the burden of proof to prove she is a real animal in order to prove they had the right to copy her. She only exists on one film for now. She's only an image, not a proven real animal you can see in the wild or at a zoo.

There is only one way to produce a Patty likeness, and that's to copy the content of the PG film. I have no idea how this might settle out if the PG film owners did try to sue somebody, but I can assure you studio legal affairs lawyers would anticipate such, and without confidence they had a clear and unambiguous right to copy Patty as a live animal public domain image, they'd defer to caution and recommend an original bigfoot design instead of a Patty replica, for clarity in a truly propriatary bigfoot character look, one they own 100% and nobody has a conflicting claim to.

That's the way they think.

Bill

I understand what you're saying. It just seems to me (and I'm no lawyer) that they've been taking money for their film for some 40 years claiming it to be real and to sue anyone for copyright infringment, they'd have to admit they designed and built Patty. To admit a hoax is to admit that they were taking money under false pretenses.......and, I' believe, that's fraud. At, the very least, it seems to me, they'd be opening themselves up to a myriad of law suits by those that paid them royalties believing that it was the real mcCoy. Of course, if it is a real animal, all they own is the PGF film, not the likeness of Patty.

At least that's the way I think it would shake out. If it's really a hoax, they've (PGF owners) probably boxed themselves in and they're hoping nobody ever proves it to be a hoax.

Anyway, it's an interesting thought.

[Guest Lyndon]

I feel that the Patty-perfect suit is simply a product of the maginification & camera jiggle, and if you put patty on a film-stage with lighting, & cameras of Studio quality, you would see more of the flaws that can already be seen. Think how bad the wrist band would be, if it was shot close up in the same conditions as Harry.

Think of all the hoaxes there have been out there and are still coming in. By your simplistic analogy all these hoaxes should have it easy because there are no studio lights and in focus close up cameras of studio quality to give them away.

Yet we aren't talking talking about any of them are we?

Ivan Marx shot his footage at distance with no studio lighting, nor close up in focus shots. Why are we not debating his footage?? How about the recent footage from Canada where a black form was caught on camera walking across the road some distance away? It's shaky, out of focus and at a further distance than the P/G footage. There is no studio lighting nor are there any close zoom ins. Yet, it's quite obviously not a sasquatch and we won't be debating that in 40 years time.

I would venture that the Harry and H's costume, was light years in quality & budget, beyond the Patty costume, and if placed in the same shooting conditions as Patty, would not show any wrist bands, or hip lines

Sigh, it wouldn't show anything because it's all hidden under a mass of long shaggy hair. That's the point. You can't see any form/shape/detrails at all with Harry because the commonly used trick for such suits is to hide everything under a shagpile of hair.

Moreso, it's not just the LOOK of the P/G subject. It's the movement and fluidity of the locomotion. It does not move like anybody in a cumbersome padded suit with big fake feet on. It looks at ease and natural. Studio lighting etc etc makes no difference to how the subject moves.

[Guest Lyndon]

- - -

I agree.

It's not that Harry was a "bad" suit or was somehow supposed to look like Patty or any other guy that might be in monster duds. In that sense, it is an apples vs oranges comparison. But I think it's fair to point Harry out as an example of what was being done with bigfoot - and bigfoot-like - designs some two decades after the PGF. Sure, if there was a boatload of cash available to the FX guys to make the suit, Harry might have had visible calf muscles, scapulas and flexing thigh muscles, etc. But in the absence of said boatload of cash and the extra difficulties involved in producing these details, one has to wonder how the Patty FX guys managed with what would probably be a shoe-string budget in comparison.

Thank you Soarwing and I'd like to move away from this 'it wasn't supposed to look like Patty' divergence from the point. I never said Harry was supposed to look like Patty to begin with. My whole point was that in the 40 years since the P/G footage there has not been even one convincing generic bigfoot suit (whether it looks like Patty or not) built and shown in the plethora of movies, documentaries, commercials and hoaxes that have come along in the meantime.

What hammers this home for me the most is when I compare the Patty "hoax" with OTHER alleged "real" bigfoot films. No comparison.

Exactly. Precisely. They don't compare. If we follow Drew's analogy they should.......................because like the P/G footage these hoaxes also do not have the studio lighting or studio quality camerawork to give the game away, which Drew claims is the only reason why the P/G footage has continued it's controversy.

I can buy the notion that Hollywood isn't trying to make their bigfoot creatures look like Patty, but the basic intent is to make something that doesn't scream "Guy in a suit!" Chewbacca syndrome so to speak.

:lmao: :lmao: :lmao:

100% correct. And they have not done it so far, even though some have cleverly tried to keep their men in suits as obscure and out of view as possible.

Also, I'm pretty sure Rick Baker didn't want his Kong '76 to look like a guy in a suit LOL. What went wrong??:

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-8/799047/cap001.JPG

Oooops, sorry John. Couldn't resist. You know I'm not a fan of Baker's bipedal ape/bigfoot suits.

Edited January 15, 2008 by Lyndon

[Bill]

Lyndon:

Since you bring up Rick Baker and the Kong suit, Let me just add a bit of behind the scene background.

I was actually one of two people telling the DeLaurentis people to hire Rick (the other being Jim Danforth, the stop motion animator), and Rick was a friend then of mine. So he got a test suit contract, with Carlo Rambaldi also doing a test suit. Rick had his ready on the appointed day, Rambaldi didn't, but DeLaurentis apparently had need for Rambaldi to do the full scale hydraulic hands amd the much hyped but dismal failure full scale, full body animatronic.

So the Kong project became a joint venture with Rick and Carlo leading it togehter, at the studio. Rick couldn't do it all his way, or under a shop of his own. Being done at the studio, Rick needed to be in one of the unions, and six different unions had jurisdiction over the various aspects of the suit (sculptors to sculpt, costumers to sew, mold makers to mold the sculptures, prop makers to run foam, painters to paint the foam suit parts, and special effects men to rig the face mask animation)

They arranged for Rick to have a waiver to join the sculptor's union just for the length of that job, so he could actually sculpt the Kong face for the headpiece. but he couldn't touch anything else. Carlo tried to overrule alomst everything he wanted to do, or take credit for it if it was good and he couldn't overrule Rick. So what you see isn't Rick's best work, so much as the best Rick could do against a system so stacked against he that could hardly do anything.

So if you ask what went wrong, actually almost everything did. It was a nightmare job, and Rick struggled to endure it, rather than a job where he had control and let his true talent bloom. And he was nearly blinded by the contact lenses he wore, during long shooting days. The lenses oxygen-starved his eyes. Then DeLaurentis tried to bind him to a contract saying he couldn't make or perform in any other gorilla suit. That's why the gorilla suit he wore in Kentucky Fried Movie is called Dino, and he's impotent. Rick's way of telling DeLaurentis how he felt.

Just a bit of background there.

Bill

[Guest Lyndon]

Thanks Bill. :lmao:

I was aware of some of the above, though not the contractual points. Even so I still don't think it totally excuses the less than convincing full suit, however it was built or whoever was mostly responsible for it...........particularly when the face and head used in close ups is good so there is a juxtaposition going on. There doesn't seem to be a noticeable tell tale clash of personalities/ideologies regarding the head and face so that obviously worked for the Baker/Rambaldi/etc team.

It's still Hollywood and there was still a fair amount of money spent on 'Kong the suit'.

I really don't see what Baker could have done to make a full suit completely of his own volition much more convincing, especially seeing as his Harry suit over ten years later is hardly any more awe inspiring and hardly light years ahead and also considering the other attempts at ape men/bigfoot throughout the industry (various levels of budget of course) at that point in time.

I see an interesting correlation between Baker's work on Kong '76 and Harry '87 (both fully upright manlike postured ape men types). Excellent faces, less than convincing full body suits. What am I to make of that??

Now I don't know to what extent this is true but I have heard that for Kong '76 Baker apparantely wanted to go with a more gorilla type suit, rather than a fully bipedal manlike postured one, but he wasn't allowed/wasn't given the opportunity. I suspect he knew that making a convincing fully upright bipedal manlike postured creature is a tough thing to do. My own personal opinion is that knuckle walking gorilla suits look far more convincing than bipedal apeman/bigfoot suits have ever done.

Just a question for you. Do you think Rick Baker's 'best work' in '76 would have made made a convincing fully upright bipedal manlike ape Kong if he was left to get on with it??

Edited January 15, 2008 by Lyndon

[Guest Dfoot]

Just a note from someone who has filmed scenes of stuntmen in rubber suits constantly...

We have people pass out all the time. They hang from ceilings under hot lights in awkward positions while performing gymnastics in a harness. They repeat fights and falls down 50 foot rocky embankments while wearing fully enclosed rubber monster suits in 100 degree summer heat. I see it over and over (and have photos and videos from behind the scenes as well). This is the normal thing for stuntmen to endure. It's tough, but not unusual at all.

A cowboy simply walking for 100 yards in a suit and then yelling for someone to get him out of it is just what happened at Bluff Creek. What Bob H. says he did and wore is exactly the truth of the matter. Completely normal and nothing out of the ordinary at all.

[Guest soarwing]

Why would Bob H need help getting out of hip waders, bedroom slippers, gloves, a football helmet and a lightly padded suit - if any padding at all, depending on which story you believe - that opens in the front? Or did the suit open in the back? Or was the torso a T-shirt type of thing?

In the relatively cool month of October.

In a costume that was loose enough that he could wear his clothes underneath and walk quite smoothly....

Why would he need help getting out of such a thing?

[Guest]

The lenses oxygen-starved his eyes.

How long would this take? what about sleep?

What Bob H. says he did and wore is exactly the truth of the matter.

Different stories of the same event is the truth?

Edited January 15, 2008 by The Punisher

[Bill]

Punisher:

The lens Rick wore for Kong were hard sclearal lens, not soft lens most people wear. The hard lenses and the larger sclearal size was needed to the lens could be painted to look more apelike. I don't know how long Rick wore them on the set, just that the demands of filming kept him in the suit and lens longer than expected, longer than was advised for healthy use. That extended use and the hard lens material caused the oxygen starvation to his eye surface.

Bill