You could be mistaken for thinking Hollywood has finally given up pretending that it actually uses sentient beings to make movies but, that’s not the case. The BBC is airing the first film shot entirely by chimpanzees as part of a natural history documentary on January 27, 2010.
Take that Quentin Tarantino with your insane mash up of war film cliches and World War II fantasies!
The movies is the brainchild of a Betsy Herrelko, a primatologist at the University of Sterling in the UK. Having taken over 18 months to introduce 11 chimps to movie making at Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, Ms. Herrelko set them up with two challenges. The first was to use a touchscreen to select different videos, and the second was to give them a “Chimpcam.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
The chimps could see the video in a live feed. At first they seemed more interested in each other than the videos. At least two chimps vied for alpha male status, otherwise known as producing credit but, eventually, all the chimps got into the swing of things, so to speak.
The research may not have yielded Revenge of Kong, but it is going to be a world first, and it’s pretty clear from the results that home movies made by chimps are just as bad as home movies made by almost every human being with a camcorder.
But seriously folks, you can learn more about the fascinating Chimpcam project here, and the original BBC news story is here.
