UGA professor works as consultant for gorilla sounds on ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’

A primatologist at the University of Georgia provided gorilla vocals for the hit film “War of the Planet of the Apes” now showing in theaters.

A report by Alan Flurry on the school’s website says that recordings of gorilla sounds are rare so sounds used in films are generally not obtained from actual gorillas. In films, gorillas are usually portrayed as screaming, aggressive beasts when they are actually the opposite.

Flurry writes that the filmmakers contacted UGA’s Roberta Salmi, an assistant professor in the department of anthropology who has published extensive research on vocal communication of western gorillas.

The story can be found here.

Salmi once spent 18 months in the forest of the Northern Republic of the Congo collecting more than 2,000 recordings of gorilla vocalizations for her Ph.D dissertation.

She had already provided sounds in 2014 for “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.”

In the article Salmi says that 20th Century Fox needed high quality sounds and were very happy with what she provided.

Salmi worked as a consultant on the latest apes movie.

“They wanted help on gorilla behavior, vocal production, effects sof age on sounds, postural position during vocalizations. The new movie has three main gorilla characters and I shared with them 40 new calls. I also gave them comments on the soundsmade by the actors so that they better resemble gorilla vocalizations,” Salmi said in Flurry’s article.

This story was originally published July 25, 2017 at 1:25 PM with the headline "UGA professor works as consultant for gorilla sounds on ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’."