Lights! Cameras! Bigfoot!

By: Cheryl Caswell

Daily Mail staff

Two actors portray a Bigfoot couple for a television documentary filmed in West Virginia last month. Charleston resident Robert Haddy created the suits and special effects makeup for the characters. Stories of Bigfoot sightings are often scoffed at, but if someone says he saw the big hairy beast last month in the mountains of West Virginia, it's true.

A crew from the National Geographic Channel was in the state last month filming a show on the fabled creature. Two actors dressed as a cross between a human and an ape were filmed in numerous scenes shot in Canaan Valley and Smokehole Caverns.

Pam Haynes, director of the West Virginia Film Office, said, "West Virginia stood in for central Mongolia. They filmed for four days the week of July 10."

The shoot was especially exciting for Charleston resident and Capital High teacher Robert Haddy, a special effects artist who was contacted by the National Geographic producer to turn two actors into Bigfoot creatures.

"When they called me I was on my way to the beach," Haddy said. "And I hadn't had a vacation in five years. But I don't get very many of those kinds of calls.

"I was very ecstatic. Then they told me they needed it in a week. I told them there was no way I could do a suit like that in a week, and I was out of town. But the producer was insistent that I do the show.

"And she needed two suits, not one," he said."

Haddy squeezed in a few days at the beach, then headed home to tackle the Bigfoot project in time to meet the crew for filming.

"I came up with the idea of getting a nude body suit and gluing the hair on that," he said. "Or I was going to have to glue hair on a real person and do it again every day of the shoot."

After the two actors -- two men portrayed both the male and female Bigfoot -- were suited up and the long hair glued on them, Haddy spent about an hour and a half creating their face makeup.

Haddy has a master's degree in theatrical design technology from West Virginia University and has studied theatrical art and special effects at West Virginia State College, the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and the Joe Blasco Makeup Center in Hollywood, Calif. He worked for Alterian Studios in Monrovia, Calif., where he has assisted with various movies.

Locally, he has been active with local theater groups and teaches special effects, makeup and video production to students at Capital High School.

The National Geographic Channel also hired Larry Dowling of Morgantown as a gaffer and Glynis Board of Morgantown as a production assistant.

Said Haynes, "We heard from them after the shoot and they said everything here worked out great, the crew was superb, amazing and hardworking."

Haddy said he kept the Bigfoot suits used in filming, but they can't be used again.

"It was so torn up from four days of shooting," he said. "We were shooting in a cave and I wasn't counting on the moisture in there. It loosened all the glue and I had to keep putting the hair back on."

Haddy said the producer, sent drawings of the kind of look she wanted for Bigfoot, and was very happy with the end result.

"You can do so much with so little," said Haddy. "That's the fun thing."

Jerry Hedrick, owner of Smokehole Caverns Resort since 1977, said the filming was an exciting experience for him and the guests staying in his cabins and motel.

"It just captivated everybody," Hedrick said. "It was a big production, more than I anticipated."

The National Geographic Channel sent representatives earlier this year to check out the Smokehole site before deciding to film there.

"They were looking for an optimum quality atmosphere for the Sasquatch idea," Hedrick said. "I thought it was Hollywood the way they were putting it together."

Filming was also done on a private farm in the Canaan Valley area.

The Bigfoot episode will be part of the "Is It Real?" program on the National Geographic Channel, one of several that has been filmed on the legendary beast. It will air later this year.

WCSRO, 2006.