Ep. 303 - Seth Breedlove: 10 Years of Small Town Monsters!

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bubo.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
These guys, are you fave? It's so like say subscribe
and rade it.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Live, stary and.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Greatest con Uesh today listening watching Limb always keep its watching.
And now you're hosts Cliff Barrickman and James Bubo Fay.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hey, everybody, welcome to Bigfoot and Beyond with well most
of us. Bubo's not here today. He actually has a
very very good excuse. We have a note from his mother,
so's it's everything's fine. I checked the signature, Boba did
not forge it. So he is off today doing something
more important than this, if you can believe it. So anyway,
but we do have Matt Pruitt here with us today,
and we have a fantastic guest. This is one of

(00:52):
my faves because one of my favorite people in the
Big Boo community in general, and you know him of
course from small town Monsters that the power house that
is now the giant media conglomerate that Rupert Murdoch is
shaking in fear of. Today we have Seth's breedlove with us. Seth,
thanks so much for coming on Bigfoot and Beyond with
most of us.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
Hey, thank you, thank you for having me. I'm beginning
to think Bobo just doesn't want to talk to me anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Though.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
I like that you said he's part of a big
media conglomerate. So yeah, I think we could say like
Seth represents big Cryptid at this point.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Oh no, I'm an aper too.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah well, oh no, see it's more conspiracy. Well yeah,
I really do mean that though, because Small Town Monsters
is not what it used to be. You've you've kind
of put all sorts of tentacles out in various directions,
and I mean you have all these different arms, different
branches that you've been poking around with, and it's very,

(01:47):
very impressive. I was talking to Heather about that when
we had Heather on the podcast last year. At some point,
I know there's some podcasts associated with your Small Town Monsters.
There's a book publishing arm. Now you have a team
of documentary filmmakers out. They're doing all sorts of stuff,
and I think I'm even missing a few things here.
There's some members stuff that is fantastic. Man, what you're doing,

(02:07):
it's a lot.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
I mean you have to I mean, you guys know this,
but like you have to grow or you'll die. I
mean that is that is the current production landscape, especially
when it comes to like video. But yeah, it's we're
doing all the things I wanted to do with STM
but never believed we would actually manage to do so.

(02:32):
I remember once I was talking to John Dodd, who
does like a lot of our art artwork, you know,
like the ten year anniversary artwork and stuff, and we
were talking about what STM looks like these days, and
he said, you're like the Roger Korman of Cryptid filmmaking,
just because like we've created this I don't know, it's

(02:53):
like a production company, but we're focused on like one
topic and then there's all these little different arms like
the public arm and the podcast arm and stuff. But
I mean, I can tell you behind the scenes. My
goal this year especially, but really for the last like
six months up till now, has been to focus on
raising the quality of what we do across the board
when it comes to all these different arms, because the

(03:15):
tough thing about it is like trying to maintain the
quality that created STM to begin with, Like gave us
an audience to begin with, people responded to the quality
of the work we did. While still expanding you know
the scope of what we're doing, and sometimes that's hard
because you're you know, as big we see we might

(03:35):
seem bigger than we actually are. But really this many
people doing the amount of work we're doing, which is
seven to eight hours of new video every month, Like
there's seven to eight new videos going up every single
month on the YouTube channel and most of them are
over an hour. So, you know, just keeping my hands
on all that stuff and making sure everything's that the
quality we needed to be. Not that I really had

(03:56):
to watch it that closely when it comes to like
Alex and Eli's work, but you know, when it comes
to my work and then the work that we is
created out out of outside of SCM, that's the tough thing.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Well, I know my philosophy, at least with my business,
you know the museum there is that I try to
hire the best people I can and trust them to
do a good job. I mean, I kind of stole
that from Miles Davis. I think I've said that several
times in the podcast that Miles Davis continually for decades
always had the best band and literally reinvented music no
fewer than like four or five times. Because he would

(04:31):
hire the best musicians possible and then trust them to
do their job. But at the same time, Miles is there,
It was there kind of directing things to some degree,
but in a very hands off way. What's your philosophy
for managing the situation you find yourself in?

Speaker 4 (04:46):
I mean it it is that to some degree, like
hands off approach. But like I said, when it comes
to Alex and Eli, they can kind of just do
what they want and I kind of, you know, I'm
there to make sure that they have the funds they
need to do what they want, But as far as
like keeping a close close eye on like what they're
actually working on, I don't do that.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Where it gets tricky is we have series.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
Like UFOs Revisited or Buckeye Bigfoot that are being edited
outside of STM by like an editing firm actually, and
that's where it gets tough, because like you have to
make room to watch numerous rough cuts and give notes
and all that stuff. And then when you factor in
the fact that, like we're also seeking distribution for all
this work still and you know, we've struggled as a

(05:33):
business over the last couple of years because of like
our former distributor going out of going bankrupt basically during
the middle of last year and not paying us for
two years worth of films. There's all that, all those
kind of things. But yeah, I do try to I'm
not a micro manager at all. In fact, like I think,
if there was a like a weakness I've had, it's
probably been not being involved enough in certain things. But again,

(05:57):
like Alex will be like, yo, I need a handycam,
a new handycam because one broke. I'm going to go
stay like two weeks in Alaska on some remote island.
It's just a matter of saying, Okay, be safe. Sending
them off.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
On one of those things is probably the less, you know,
the better.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
Honestly, Yeah, no, actually that is true. But yeah, it's
kind of a hands off approach to the whole thing.
But I mean, at the same time, right now, I'm
overseeing three of the YouTube shows. And when I say overseeing,
I mean one of them I'm shooting and editing myself.
One of them I am editing based off of a

(06:36):
script and transcripts that Heather or Heather and Aaron are doing.
That show is called The Bigfoot Archives. And then I
have another show Bucky Bigfoot that I'm now editing, but
it's being shot by Heather and Courtney, so it's a
weird mix of stuff. And then I also have to
make three movies this year. So I'm definitely much more

(06:57):
involved so far in twenty two twenty five with multiple
projects than I was in twenty twenty four and twenty four.
I really focused on running the business and trying to
keep things running after the fallout from the former distributor.
But this year I'm much more involved. Like I was
out in the Woodbury Wildlife Management Area a couple of

(07:18):
weeks ago with Mark der Worth interviewing him, and the
week before that, I was out with Brian and Terry
seech Over in Beaver Creek interviewing them about Bigfoot in
Beaver Creek State Park. And I have an interview next
week in Kyaga Valley with a couple of witnesses for
an episode. So but I keep saying, like I keep
telling coordinating this, I've actually really missed this, Like this

(07:40):
part of things, I've actually missed a lot for the
last two years because I just haven't had I mean,
I guess when we were filming The Ancients, I was
more active but for the last two years it really
I was focused on getting the movies we were working
on done and just kind of guiding the business. And
now I'm actively involved in the you know, in the

(08:00):
creative end of the episotic stuff in addition to the film.
So I really had missed that, Like I miss the
having a camera in my hand, being in the woods
talking to witnesses or experts or whatever, and then figuring
out those stories on the fly and then having that
story out come out for an audience within a couple

(08:21):
of weeks. Like I just shot the do Worth episode
a couple of weeks ago and it's out, you know,
came out on Wednesday of this week. That's kind of
like a fun That's a very big difference start contrast
between the films and the episotic stuff, because the films,
I have movies that have been sitting here done since
November that we still don't have a distribution plan in
place for. So the short answer is I try to

(08:42):
remain out of the way of the filmmakers and keep
my hands on everything else.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Well, yeah, and you also have a business to run
on top of it all. I mean, I again, I
can only speak from my own experience, I guess. But
having the museum, I don't have to cover hours any
longer because I have enough employees now to do that.
And when I do have to come hours, I don't
see how I even can. There's so much to do
outside of the shop, just to keep things rolling, between
books and making contact and emails and requests coming in

(09:09):
and all that sort of stuff. It's just insane. I
don't know how you do it, but it must be
very very nice for you to get back to your roots.
I guess, with that camcorder in your hand out there
in the woods, done what you love to do.

Speaker 4 (09:21):
I mean, were you were here for a Bigfoot project
shoot when we stayed out Heather's cabin and stuff, and
like that's what Drew made of filmmaking in the first place.
Like that, that whole experience of just having a camera
in my hand and filming what's going on and then
turning that into something you know that'll be digested by
a million people or whatever.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
That's what drew me to do this in the first place.
And running.

Speaker 4 (09:47):
I mean, I've been incredibly blessed because my ex wife
Adrian really kept you know, her hands on the finances
when that when we were together and she guided us
through sort of the early days of the company, and
now Courtney kind of runs that side of things and
she's been doing the same thing. It doesn't free me

(10:08):
up necessarily when it comes to like making big business decisions,
but it doesn't mean I don't have to be constantly
aware of how things are financially and all that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
I mean, I can.

Speaker 4 (10:19):
I've been much more free to get out and film
stuff for the last like six months than I was
for the previous three years. And I'm not sure what
accounts for that, but I've just I've found that I've
had more time to actually be actively involved in the
creative end of things.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, I wouldn't question it, just roll with it.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Then.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, I love what you guys do, and I do
think it's great that you do have these unique voices.
Listeners might know because I've made plenty of Beatles references,
but you know, when you hear like a John song
or a Paul song or a George song, like these
are unique voices, unique songwriters with unique takes. But at
the end of the day, you're like, oh, yeah, that's
a great Beatles song. And I think it's the same
with like yourself and Eli and Alex et cetera, is

(11:00):
that they do all go through the great filter of
being small town monsters films, but you can tell that
there are these sort of like unique visions and unique styles,
and that also makes it like there's something for everybody.
It's there's a diversity of like perspective there that I
really love so and just working with all three of
you now, like it's just a wonderful experience.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
It's easy going. It's like especially for.

Speaker 4 (11:25):
People who are coming out of like working on television,
which you guys have both done, but like working on
television or even like some of the other independent shoots,
I just think that the way we do it is
like way less. We don't take ourselves as seriously. I
think we take the subject seriously, but we don't maybe
take ourselves as seriously as We're also all a bunch

(11:47):
of amateurs regardless of you know, yes, we do this
for a living, but at the end of the day,
I still very much believe I'm an amateur. Like I
still spend hours every week watching filmmaking tutorials because that's
how I learn. I mean, I never went to film school,
so but at the yeah, at the end of the day,
I think we all love what we do too. Like

(12:08):
Alex and I were talking about it yesterday, just like
he told me, this is the best job I've ever had,
Like there's there's no way I can beat this, And
I kind of like I felt that way for a
long time, just because you.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Know, I did.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
I did so many horrifically boring jobs for years, and
this is the first job I've had where you know,
I'm inspired, like every day, not just inspired by the
stories we're telling or the people we were interviewing or whatever,
but I'm inspired to like try to be better at
what I'm doing. And I'm not that guy. Like I

(12:47):
have a very strong lazy streak in me, and this
job kind of has beaten that out of me because
I just I want. I always am trying to better,
you know, myself when it comes to filmmaking and that
kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
I heard a great quote the other day, and I
wish I knew who to attribute it to, but they'd said, like,
you know, there's that saying that if you do what
you love, you'll never work a day in your life.
And they said that's not true. You'll actually work harder
than you've ever worked in your life, but the tools
will feel very light in your hands.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yes, yeah, no, is that is perfect.

Speaker 4 (13:20):
That's perfect because I've heard that too, that like do
what you love and you'll never I mean, I work
more and harder now and I make less money than
I did when I was doing medical billing, but.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Like it still is.

Speaker 4 (13:35):
It's the trade off is so worth it, just because
the inspiration behind it is so strong and I'm always
there's always something to do. There's always some new story
to tell, and you know, like a big thread this
year in our work. For me anyway, it was like
family and generational traits that might be passed down and

(13:58):
like you know, storytelling was a big part of my
family in North Carolina, and I think I found that
so interesting learning about that because to me, that kind
of like tells me who I am, you know, which
is like, end of the day, I was a storyteller
and that's what I should have been all along.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
It just took me, you know.

Speaker 4 (14:15):
Twenty some years out of college to get to this
point where I figured it out.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
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Speaker 2 (16:00):
With all these different people out there shooting things for
you and I get outside editing firms and stuff, what
does a work day look like for you? And I
realize it probably varies day to day to day, but
you know what, what are some typical things that you do?
Like are you shooting notes back to the field, are
you communicating with the editing team like every step of

(16:20):
the wad are you just like proofing the final cuts
or what are you doing now?

Speaker 4 (16:25):
I mean, like every day is different, But the tough
thing right now is Tommy and Teagan days. So Corney
and I have Courtney has a daughter, Tegan, and I
have a son Tommy Tommy is seven, Tigan's nine, and
Teagan has autism. So like there's a lot of work
that goes into these two kids, and so Monday Tuesday

(16:46):
are like they're with us all the time, and so
that can get a little tough unless it's a school day,
and even then I'm driving back and forth between school.
But no joke, on a drive to school. I have
done hiring meeting on the phone. I've done firing meetings
on the drive back from drop off at school. I've
we do phone calls with We're talking to multiple distributors

(17:09):
right now, which is the nightmare part of what I do,
so like I have to have. Right now, I'm having
probably two or three meetings each week with different firms
and stuff to talk about distribution and trying to get
that rope ball rolling again.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
But I mean, I'll be honest.

Speaker 4 (17:25):
Since January, I have spent a good deal of time editing.
I've edited probably five or six hours worth of video
episodic work that's going up on YouTube, and that will
be my focus until March, probably in the April, even

(17:45):
when we shoot down to The dog Man, which is
our next movie, and then I'll work on that. But
a typical work day is just if it's a non
Tommy day, I will wake up and start editing in
the morning. I started editing on Friday at five thirty
am and wrapped up around three in the afternoon. But
that's not always the way it goes. I mean someday

(18:06):
I get up at nine and I start and then
I just go till six or seven or whatever. But
I still spend the most amount of my time is
spent editing. The least amount of time is probably still
spent actually shooting this stuff. Like the du Worth thing
was like a four hour afternoon in the woods and
then I came home and edited it. So yeah, the

(18:28):
actual field time has gone way down a typical I
mean Matt experienced this during ancient So our ancient shoot
was only I mean really, if you looked at it, it
was three full days we were there, I think four nights,
is that right, four.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Nights, Yeah, something like that, like a Wednesday through Sunday
or something like that.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
Yeah, And I mean it goes We're to the point
where we'll crank this stuff out pretty quick when we're
in the field actually shooting it, and then I spend
months putting it together in the edit, unless it's like
an episodic work, and then that's so much quicker turnaround time.
But there is The short answer is there is no
typical day, Like it's just it's whatever. I will inevitably

(19:09):
be taking breaks in an edit to either do a
podcast or have a meeting with a distributor. So it's
like it's the least to anyone on the outside, it
probably seems incredibly boring, but as someone I really enjoy
the challenge of like putting a story together. And so
you know when I talk about how this is my

(19:31):
dream job, that's the part of it that I really
respond to. It is like sitting down in front of
and edit and needing to put together a story. Because
we're working on this series right now called The Bigfoot Archives,
and it's written by Heather Moser and Aaron D's So
they sit down and they what it's supposed to be

(19:51):
is like we used to do this YouTube show called
Small Time Monsters Case Files, and what we would do
is we'd take cut pieces of interviews and put them
all together into a cohesive story. So you're seeing something
that wasn't in the final films. But that relates to
the final film, so we've started doing that again. But
I just called the Bigfoot Archives. So we just did
this episode that was originally just supposed to be a

(20:13):
you know, a single sixty minute episode, but it ballooned
into two parts and it basically takes you through the
entire history of Bigfoot research.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
You know, I get you the.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
Four Horsemen, the Don Keating's and all all that kind
of stuff. And we're pulling from year's worth of interviews
to do this, and mostly stuff that didn't make it
into the final film. It has been a really wild
process doing that show, in particular because I'm not the
one writing it. I just sit down with a script

(20:44):
that's sent to me by Heather and Aaron, and then
I'm like, okay, now I got to go through this
script and get this all done.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Edit this.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
The final episode ended up at seventy two minutes, and
I edited that in three days. And it's a really
weird process though, because it's not they're the ones that
are telling the story and then I'm just kind of
helping them bring that to life. But it's it's fun,
but it's a whole new challenge. We have a thing
at small Town Monsters we call the Story Group, which

(21:12):
is myself, Heather and Aaron and Mark Matski. And that's
been a big part behind the scenes that people probably
don't know about. I mean, mostly because I don't think
people find that stuff very interesting.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
But we we.

Speaker 4 (21:25):
Formed the story Group because we have Alex and Eli
on staff obviously, but you know, there's a lot of
work that we could be doing that don't necessarily require
Alex and Eli. And so we came up with like
this idea of putting putting together a team. And what
we do is we come up with ideas for projects

(21:46):
we want to make into either series or films, and
then we're actually constantly working on those projects behind the scenes.
That way, if some opening comes up, we've already got
the thing ready to go. It's like, here's here's the script.
You know, this is what the show is going to
need to be. Let's go either shoot this or make
it happen. With the literal thousands of hours worth of

(22:07):
footage we have just sitting around around at small home
monsters hqu.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
My jaws like on the ground. Actually, because seventy two
minute thing edited together in three days, you have all
this archived footage that you have to go through. And
I just make you know. At the Museum, we do
two little documentaries a month. They're about ten twenty minutes long,
and it takes me a full week to edit that
stuff together, Like I started yesterday today. I was working
on it before the podcast, and I'll be working on

(22:32):
that every single day this week because my due dates
Friday and I got to publish it. Then. Editing for
me at least takes so long, you know, so so long.
I'm just astonished that you guys can turn it around
so quickly.

Speaker 4 (22:44):
It's that thing though, what Matt, you probably know that
one of you will know this. There's like a quote
about how you're supposed to do something. I can't remember
if it's writing or playing guitar or whatever, but it's
like ten thousand hours.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Correct, And they say that to reach mastery takes about
ten thousand hours of iteration or practice.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (23:02):
Yeah, And I'm no ten thousand hour editor. But I've
edited long enough that the story comes together in my
head as i'm editing it in a much more fluid
way than it would have in the earliest days of
doing this. And a lot of that also has to
do with the fact that I did newspaper reporting for
three or four years, four years I guess when I
was doing freelance reporting, because I've always said, the thing

(23:24):
that I have over everyone else that does this kind
of storytelling is not filmmaking prowess, because I am ultimately
not a very good filmmaker. It's solely the storytelling aspect
of it. And all of that was like learned through
obviously years of reading, probably most importantly, but those four

(23:44):
or five years where I was doing freelance reporting really
drilled it into me. The idea of having like an
economy of words to tell a complete story and boiling
down stories into X amount of work words has come
in so useful when I'm working on STM stuff, especially

(24:06):
now that we're at the point where I can edit
something that's seventy plus minutes in two days, two or
three days, and I have done I've done full blown
ninety minute edits in twenty four hours in less than
twenty four hours before. So, but I think that's just
from doing this over and over again, you know, and
you kind of you can.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Suss out the story a little quicker.

Speaker 4 (24:28):
I do think, I do think that works for the episodic,
you know, especially the episodic content. But when it comes
to the films, I have to kind of turn that
like rush side of my brain off, and because otherwise
I'm afraid I'm going to like rush through a story
that might need to be told while I'm trying to

(24:49):
tell the story I wanted to tell. If that makes sense,
like that's I think that's a danger when it comes
to the films. I don't want to rush those as
I mean, obviously there's always gonna be deadlines and stuff,
but I don't want to fly through a film edit
in the same way that we do the episodic stuff.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
That definitely makes sense.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
And yeah, I definitely think you start to routinize or
maybe automate or at least like streamline certain processes over
so much time and iteration. And the great thing about that,
because you brought up guitar playing, it's like, you know,
when you're first learning a song, all your attention is
focused on learning it to the point of like you
can't really focus on anything else, and then you get
that so routinized and automated that you know, when you're

(25:30):
playing a show, you're not even thinking about what you're playing,
you're like listening to the other band members and paying
attention to the audience and thinking about like where you
are in the set and what comes next and the
amount of energy output. That is kind of my interpretation
of what you're saying is like when you're sitting down
to edit, you're not focused on the technical process, Like
the story is what's prominent in your mind rather than
you know, all of the button clicking, mouse pushing, et cetera.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yeah, because that's all learned now, A lot of a
lot of it's learned now and then and then the
other thing that I find is like that first two
days is usually me putting the story together, and then
the final day is me stylizing it in a way
that I think is like fitting of the project. Like,
for instance, we were doing this Bigfoot to Coded show
and it's basically just me in the field with a

(26:14):
witness or like a researcher, interviewing them about the history
of the location that we're in and their own experiences there.
So we just did this Woodbury Wildlife episode with Mark
and like the style of the show takes on a
life of its own in that third day, because for
the first two days I'm entirely focused on I got

(26:36):
to chop this down. I got to get you know,
all these sequences together in a way that tells us
a narrative story that's interesting. But at the end of
that you might be left with something that's kind of
like bland and boring. So I really try to spend
a lot of time on the final day of an
edit just going through and making fun transitions or giving
it a style that one has, like this matrix code

(26:57):
vibe that I'm trying to push as far as I can.
We do all these like fun glitch transition techniques and stuff,
and that really adds a lot of life to it.
And you know what I've noticed the most about the
stuff I edit specifically, is I just don't see a
lot of that kind of work in the cryptid feel elsewhere.
So if I can do something to elevate the production

(27:18):
value of it, I'm going to do that, because I
a lot of times this stuff is edited in a
very you know, kind of bland way. Not hitting on
other not trying to bash on other channels. I'm just
saying I'm always I'm very competitive and I want to
beat everybody else.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
That's when it comes.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
To well, you know, you learn about what you want
to do by looking at other people's mistakes and.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Your own, mostly my own.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, well yeah, I mean, I'm fully aware of I'm
way more aware of my mistakes than anybody else seems
to be. So I try to improve on whatever I'm
doing based on that. But I also look around and
I see a pretty barren landscape as far as cool,
entertaining stuff that's informative, and you can learn a lot
from that, you know, Like, for example, like in the

(28:01):
stuff that I am making for my my my members
at the museum is stuff that I would want to
see in a Bigfoot documentary. You know. The music that
I that I write myself and I play is music
that I want to hear that nobody else seems to
be doing. You know, that sort of stuff. You look
around and you see what's missing, and you make it yourself.

Speaker 4 (28:19):
That is, But that's that is the trap that I
see so many indie doc crypto guys fall into, is
they're not trying to tell the stories they want to
see told they want they're trying to ape what they've seen,
either on television or the ape, what we've done or
The most important thing to me is actually creating something
for yourself or or you know, like I used to

(28:42):
talk about Adrian's grandpa George, who was like this hunter
who had no interest in Bigfoot, And when when I
would make a project, I would always think of George
and be like, this is I got to make this
so like George would would open his mind up to
take this this project. But yeah, I mean when we
made Minerva Monster, I made it because at that point

(29:06):
in time, and Cliff, this is not me bagging on
finding Bigfoot, but at that point in time, there was
finding Bigfoot, Mountain monsters and mysteries and monsters in America
on television, and so there was nothing that I felt
was like for me like I didn't. I loved finding Bigfoot.
I've told you this before. My son is obsessed with
it right now and it has been watching it for
the last year. But like beyond, there was nothing that

(29:29):
I felt like was the seventies. There was seventies docs
like Mysterious Monsters and Man Beast and Bigfoot, Manner Beast
and In Search of Bigfoot the Robert W. Morgan, Like
I love those movies and that's what I wanted I
wanted that, but in like a modern, you know, a
modern way, and no one was doing that. So that
was when we made we made Minerva. It was because

(29:50):
I wanted to see a documentary about like an intimate,
small scale Sasquatch sighting, you know, and do just inner
views with witnesses and you know, police chief. And because
that wasn't done, I couldn't. You know, Sean Whitley had
made his Southern Fried Bigfoot documentary, which I think is great,

(30:11):
but that's a much more broad look at the Sasquatch topic.
I hadn't seen like a Bigfoot case really boiled down
in a fun way in a documentary. So that was why,
I mean, when we made that movie, that movie was
made for me because I didn't see that being done elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Oh I totally get it. And once I got off
the TV show, and mind you, I mean, I do think,
especially now that when time has passed, I really do
think that Finding big Foot was a pretty good show.
You know, Like I can go back and watch it
and laugh because that's not me on TV anymore. That's
some other nerd on TV doing whatever and saying funny things.
And it does make me laugh now because I realized
now got it was a lot funnier show than I realized,

(30:48):
you know, my little quips and Bobo saying Bobo things
and all that stuff. But at the end of the day,
it being a good television show is that saying I'm
the tallest short person in the world. You know, it's
still TV, and TV, by the commercial nature of it
tends to be shallow and superficial, appealing to like the masses,

(31:09):
and that's and that never appealed to me. I mean,
I don't watch TV. I don't watch Finding Bigfoot.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
I did I had.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
I watched it then because I was scared the way
they're going to edit me. But I've kind of learned
at this point that I'm not I don't watch the
stuff that I'm even in now. There's no point too,
because I was already doing it. And I also don't
want to be mad about the way something was edited
or some contexting. You know, I complete the ignorance, But
that was my impetus, I guess for making the museum,
because if everybody's learning about Bigfoot from television, that's a

(31:37):
sad state of affairs. So that's why I made the museum,
because I wanted something once again, something that I wanted.
You know, I made the museum that I would want
to go to.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Did you dream that up? Like the museum thing? Did
you dream that up during the Finding Bigfoot days?

Speaker 2 (31:52):
No? No, I didn't. Actually, after the show went off
the air, I was saying, oh, what am I going
to do? You know I could. I kind of kicked
around a podcast, made a pilot that sort of stuff,
and here I am net today doing this. But actually
Dave Pikara from Expedition Bigfoot out in Georgia and Lauren
both kind of and Lauren Coleman kind of both encouraged
me and say, well, you have a bunch of stuff

(32:13):
flying around, why don't you do this? And I said, well, god,
my house is kind of overflowing with Bigfoot nonsense. So
I did basically, and I thinking, well that's great because
it's it's a way for me to continue because I
thought maybe I'll go back into teaching or something. But
my credential had expired, and I didn't want to go
back to school and throw thousands and thousands of dollars
at a master's degree to get, you know, to get
my credential back. I might as well, keep teaching about

(32:35):
Bigfoot if I could, so they kind of fell into
my lap like that. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and
Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. Will be right back after
these messages. How do you know when you're done with
a film, because I imagine you probably go back and

(32:55):
watch the final cut and you go, yeah, this will this,
this is good. I like it. You watch it a
year later, you're gonna probably gonna say, man, I wish
I would have put this in there.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
At some point, you just had to let it go.

Speaker 4 (33:06):
And Eli and I had a conversation back in like November,
he was up here in Ohio about this, and he
said the biggest takeaway from his he came and stayed
here with Courtney and I back when he was editing
dog Man Triangle, And it was because he was going
to edit this movie that I was directing, and we
had never had that process before, and so he had

(33:28):
also never edited a like a movie movie for STM,
like a feature documentary. So he ended up coming here
and staying here for a whole month. He was here
for like the month of January, end of February back
in twenty was it twenty three or twenty four, twenty three. Yeah,
and during that time, like we really got to work

(33:48):
together a lot. And one thing I just kept telling
him is at some point you just had to to finish.
It just has to be done. And the biggest there's
two biggest parts of filmmaking to actually like doing something,
and one is just starting it, you know, like stop
claiming you're doing research, work, stop whatever, Just start filming

(34:12):
your thing. And the other part is just know when
to say that's it, that's as good as it's going
to get. That's you know, I'm out of time, because
you could work on this stuff forever and still feel
like you're not actually done. So I don't know that
there's I mean, with with the YouTube content, with the
episodic stuff, it's easy because we have a deadline. Like
I have a deadline on Monday. I have to post

(34:34):
the single on Monday that I was working on yesterday,
and so I work on it some more this afternoon
after I'm done on the show, and then I'll probably
wrap it up tomorrow. With the film, it's a little
harder because we don't have a We usually don't have
a hard and fast deadline anymore because of the distributor situation.
So I'll just like we had this movie Lost Contact.

(34:54):
You know, a typical STM production is filming in the
field for like four or five days and then it's
edited in two months. Well, we started filming Lost Contact
in twenty twenty three and we just wrapped up filming
back in October November, and then I was kind of
editing it on and off for the duration of the

(35:17):
entire production. And so that was a very different kind
of process for me because there wasn't a voice in
my head was like this is done. It was just
this has got to be done. I've had this, I've
had this way too long. So it was knowing that
all the story elements I wanted were in place, and
then just releasing it into the wild.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
You know. I think the other thing that's.

Speaker 4 (35:39):
Happened in the last few years that I think is
probably not a great thing is I think I've hit
my Peter Jackson phase of my my filmmaking quote unquote career,
because I like Ancients is real long, like probably too long.
And I did the same thing with Origin, which was

(36:00):
the one beforehand, and that was like my movie. I
made Origin between my mom's passing and her funeral, and
so like my mom. My mom died of cancer in
May of twenty twenty three, and I was sick with
the flu when she passed, and the crew had to

(36:20):
leave for the shoot because we had everything scheduled for
this flight to British Columbia. They were going to go
film in Harrison Hot Springs, and we had all this
stuff in place, and then I got sick with flu,
and then my mom died like the day after I
got sick, and so everyone ended up leaving and it
looked for a little while like I would not be

(36:41):
a part of the production of that movie. And then
I ended up getting better, and then my dad scheduled
her funeral for later than we were expecting. He gave
me like this window where I could go film, and
he encouraged me to go film the movie. So I
happed to plan and flew this flu to British Columbia
film film this movie, and there are it's very obviously

(37:03):
like a really personal movie with real long sequences where
there's just music playing and shots of like beautiful waterfalls
or whatever. And in the edit, I kept thinking, the
Bigfoot audience is not going to like this, because this
is like there just is not enough Bigfoot in it.
But at the end of the day, the most important

(37:24):
thing to me with that movie was telling a really honest,
giving an honest look at like this really specific point
in my life where my mom had just passed, and
also telling I wanted to be able to tell a
compelling Bigfoot story at the same time. And I could
have cut out most of the personal stuff and probably

(37:45):
ended up with a much shorter, less sprawling movie that
an audience might have actually watched because this movie's barely
been seen now. But I ended up just going with
what I wanted to do, which was, you know, kind
of like honored my mom's memory and tell the story
I want to tell.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
So I don't know.

Speaker 4 (38:01):
I've been told twice now that I'm in like the
Peter Jackson phase of my career, so I think that's
where I'm at.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Well, just don't go make a Hobbit film and you'll
you'll be okay, man.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
Yeah, no, dude, don't get me started. I think those
are beautiful films.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
I thought The Ancients was beautiful when I finally watched
the finished cut of the Ancients, because I kind of
knew the gist I mean, in the meetings that we
had had the element of the relationship with your father
and your father's family and being on family land was discussed,
but it was still you know, because like, what am
I going to say about that? So I think most
of our conversations were mostly about Sasquatch history of the

(38:36):
Southern Appalachians, and so when I did those interviews, you know,
the personal element was sort of the furthest thing from
my mind. But then when I watched the cut, like
I spontaneously told several stories about my dad, and then
my very good friend Jeff Carpenter tearfully told multiple stories
about his dad, and then Russ was talking about his
father and grandfather, and I was like, Oh, there is
this really beautiful through line that just spontaneously happened out

(39:00):
side of like your vision of the through line, and
it just so happened to work.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
And your dad was so cool.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
I had great conversations with him there and then again
at the Smoking Mountain conference last year, and I'm so
grateful to have been a part of that. I think
you made a beautiful film, and if you made the
film you wanted to make, that's the biggest victory that
there could be regardless of I know you said, oh
it's probably too long. Who cares, man, If you made
what you wanted to make, that's an absolute success. And
I thought it was beautiful and there were some teary

(39:27):
eyes at the conference when it showed, especially during some
of Jeff Carpenter's sequences and stuff, And so I think
people found it very moving.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
I know I did.

Speaker 4 (39:36):
I wouldn't know what the response was because I was
violently ill back at my hotel.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
I know I didn't get to see all we can
was a bummer.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
That's my I got some vicious food poisoning on that trip.
So that's a good time.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
You know, making things short is hard. It always brings
to mind that Mark Twain quote is like, I'm sorry
my letter is so long. I had not the time
to make it shorter. It's really hard to cut things
out and keep the message there.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
It is.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
Yeah, And and with those movies in particular, it was
even harder. And I'm sure I could have cut you know,
with Ancients especially, I'm sure there were little things that
could have cut out. But the things that I could
have cut out that would have streamlined the film are
the things that our audience wants, you know, So, like

(40:22):
I wanted to make a movie about my family and
the family history in North Carolina and Appalachian culture in general,
and that was the movie I wanted to make. But
I also wanted to be able to do it, you know,
through the lens of Bigfoot, and there were little you know,
there were a couple of sighting stories in there. I
probably could have chopped out. There's a there's a really

(40:43):
cool story about this one witness that saw a Bigfoot
and a younger one like down on this riverbank. And
after the movie's done, I was like, I could cut
that and it'd be six minutes out of the movie.
But I really responded to that story, and it happened
in real close proximity to like my family land, so
I thought it ended up staying in there. I mean,

(41:05):
that's one movie where it's it's long, and you know,
it's probably realistically, it's probably longer than you know, our
audience is used to or want. But I think I
think I told the story like the way it was
supposed to be told. So yeah, like you said, I
think that's the most important thing most of the time.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
That's one of the things I enjoy most about making
my own little things for the museum members is that
they don't have to be a required length. You know,
if you're working in the TV world or something, then
a half hour episode turns out to be twenty three
and a half minutes or something. I think Finding Bigfoot
stuff is forty two forty three minutes or something. And
then there's a different length for Canadian and UK episodes
where there's all this stuff in those episodes from Finding

(41:47):
Bigfoot that has ever been seen by the American public
and whatever. But doing your own thing, you can be
as long as you darn well please. And I think
that's really cool and it's very very freeing.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
In a lot of ways. I'm glad you're taking advantage
of that. Did you know how to edit before you
started doing this?

Speaker 2 (42:01):
No, no, not a bit, man. I don't know how
to do anything before I started doing it. I just
kind of hop in and see what happens.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
So that's the mark of an independent business person. Though,
like everything, it all eventually falls to us to do it,
whether we know how to do it or not.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, I mean Connor was great. Connor knew how to
do all that stuff. When Connor was working for me,
but when he split he kind of I said, well,
I mean I've done pro tools stuff like music editing,
and he goes, oh, it's very very similar to that.
You'll catch on pretty quick, and I did. I'm not
as affluent and funny as say Connor's films were or whatever,
but I'm kind of still kind of getting my sea legs,
so to speak. But I've been doing it now for

(42:40):
about two years, and I generally do one a month.
And Nico, luckily, the manager for the museum he went to,
he had a couple of film classes in school, so
he's done editing before, so he takes one a month
and I do the other one a month, so that
helps out a lot. But yeah, I'm still kind of
making my sea legs here.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
So I think anyone can do. I've always said I
think any idiot can can become a filmmaker because it's
like it's the tough part is the storytelling. But if
you figure that out, like the actual technical know how
of how to make a movie, it's it's not much
like you don't know. You don't have to know a

(43:19):
ton to do this.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Well, I think it's about having something to say you know,
which I see something I see that lacking in, say
like a lot of books or podcasts or movies or
little YouTube snippets that I happen to accidentally catch. I
think a lot of people don't have much to say,
so they don't know how to put it in a
concise story to begin with. Yeah, no, I think that's accurate. Yeah,
I could be wrong, though, I don't know. I mean,

(43:41):
for me, at least, I go out, I just film
what I'm doing anyway, and when I get back, I
go through the footage I make. This is my own process,
and i'd like to I'm bringing this up to get
what your process is when you are doing the filming
and edding. But I go out, I basically carry a camera.
Anything that I think is interesting or cool, I shoot,
and I maybe talk to the camera or maybe not.
And when I get home, I have all these video

(44:01):
clips that I upload on the computer, and then I
go through and watch them, and I take a note
or two, like a line or two of notes about
every single one of them. Then I see what do.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
I have here? What is the thread?

Speaker 2 (44:12):
What is the arch, beginning, middle, end sort of stuff,
And then I do a narration they go hey, blah
blah blah this, and I talk to the camera, you know,
and then I kind of paste it all together along
that backbone that I just laid down with my own narration.
What is your process of doing a film like that?

Speaker 4 (44:29):
The edit is happening during the shoot in my head,
and that is actually that's like a blessing and a curse,
because the curse part of it is and this used
to be a much bigger problem than it is now,
but I can't stop my brain from working during a shoot,
and it will be trying to piece together the story,

(44:50):
regardless of me consciously wanting to do.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
That or not. So back in the day.

Speaker 4 (44:55):
So we did this movie Boggy Creek Monster in twenty
sixteen with Lyle Blackburn and then a fouc and it
was our third film, and it was the first one
where we had a budget of like thousands, because our
previous two movies, the first one, Minervo, was made for
like five hundred bucks, the second one was made for
maybe two thousand. This one was I think there was
like an eight thousand dollars production budget, which is a

(45:17):
lot for us, and there was this huge crew of
people and then Lyle came, and then Lyle had friends there,
and so like in my head, I had a great
responsibility not just to all these different people that had,
you know, given us their time and we're on the shoot,
but I had a great responsibility to like the Crabtree

(45:39):
family and you know, all these other people. So during
the making of the movie, I would be frantically in
my head trying to figure out where like an interview
was going, and like where that we're certain lines throughout
the interview were going and in the movie. And I
ended up every single day of that shoot I had

(45:59):
on my great like a vicious migraine headache, and it
was because I couldn't I couldn't stop doing it. And
on that shoot, I think I was obsessively doing it,
maybe even purposefully, because I was really paranoid about screwing
that movie up. But I still do that, like any
any shoot we do, even even like that. I keep
bringing up the Woodbury shoot. But we just did this

(46:21):
Woodbury thing, And while I'm interviewing Mark, I'm trying to
figure out how I'm cutting his interview up. Because that
that series, specifically that Bigfoot to Coded series, is like
driven by one interview with one or two people, you know,
So it's you have to tell that plus narration, but
you have to tell that story in an interesting way.
And if it runs over an hour, you've got to
figure out visually how to break that up. How to

(46:43):
you know, Like, also, I don't know if you know this,
but Mark Dedworth talks a lot.

Speaker 5 (46:48):
I noticed, Yeah, you have to figure out how you're
going to chop up some of that, because like he's
really succinct actually, and like pretty like the way he
tells his stories.

Speaker 4 (46:58):
It's moving in a through line that makes sense. He
doesn't like get driven too far, like off the trail
he's on, but he still does occasionally. So like you're
trying to figure out, okay, this part here, Like he
tells his sighting story, then we start talking about other
stories from around Woodbury, and then eventually the conversation swung
back around to his description of what he had seen.

(47:21):
So obviously I'm going to take that description and put
it back at the beginning where he was talking about
his actual sighting. But that kind of stuff is happening
all the time while I'm in the edit. Then I
get home with the footage, put the footage into a
project file, realize that things are not going to go
the way I thought they would at all, and then

(47:42):
completely overhaul what my original idea was. I mean, nine
times out of ten, the final movie we end up
with looks nothing like what I thought it was going
to be.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Like, stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff
and Bogo will be right back after these menages.

Speaker 4 (48:06):
You know, Paul Thomas Anderson. There's this documentary on the
Magnolia DVD. I used to be obsessed with like behind
the scenes documentaries, and there was this one on the
Magnolia DVD and Paul Thomas Anderson talked about how editing
is a lot like painting, and I think he's referring
to like painting a room, but he's like talking about

(48:27):
how you paint a section and then you look at
it and then you'd be like, oh, I got to
fix here, and you'd go back over it again, and
then you do that over and over again. And that's
that That's always rung really true with me, because I
edit the movie into like a rough story form. I
call it like a story cut, and it'll usually be
over three hours two to three hours long, and it'll

(48:50):
just be uncut interviews, but in the structure that I
kind of see the story playing out, and then I'll
chop the all those interview sections down. I'll you know,
I'll have the narration usually temp narration that I'll write
and record myself while I'm doing the edit, and then
I'll start getting b rollin and then I start to
stylize it, like the cut in the way that I

(49:12):
think it needs to go. Whatever that style is, you know,
there's on the trail of Bigfoot is a very kind
of traditional you know, there's no quick cuts or anything,
but something like the Bray Road Beast movie we made
back in twenty eighteen, or our Mothman legacy, it's like
this David Fincher inspired quick cut style, and so it

(49:34):
takes more time, you know, to really stylize that. But
I usually spend a lot of time on that aspect
of the cut right at the very end, kind of
frantically trying to give the film its voice, visual voice.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
It's so funny that you talked about, you know, hearing
that in real time with people, because yeah, having edited
long form dialogue now for six years, like in my mind,
I'm editing people when they're talking to me. It's one
thing when I listen to other podcasts and I'm like, oh, yeah,
I would cut that, you know what. I'm on the
phone with people, I'm just like, yeah, clip that crossfade,
you know, cut those breasts together.

Speaker 4 (50:11):
It ruins like being able to watch the stuff for
fun because I'll watch movies and you know, I watch
a ton of documentaries. I watch a lot of movies,
but way less now than I used to because when
I sit down to watch them, I'm obsessively picking them.
They edit a part while I'm watching it.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Yeah, because everything's a choice, and so I think the
way that things hit people who are just viewers, they're
just seeing a presentation, you know, a series of images
and concepts through a storyline where it's like you're seeing
that or I'm listening to it something. It's like you're
being presented with a series of choices and you're wondering, like,
why did they make that choice when they couldn't? You know,

(50:52):
I would have made this choice instead. I totally get it.
I'm the same way with music too, Like sometimes when
I listen to things that are not guitar, bass and
drum based, I'm like, Oh, this is how normal people
hear music, Because when I listen to, you know, rock
and roll music, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's a twenty
six inch kick drum, and that is definitely a humbucker
on the neck position, and oh that's a strat on

(51:12):
the second pick up position. And I wonder why they
use you know, like I'm not hearing like the full picture.
I'm hearing every little choice instead.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
You know. Well, that's why I listen to peculiar music.
I listen to music that I can't hear the changes on,
like you know, like like really wacky, weird like modern classical,
or you know, like bands that really push the limits,
like like Less Claypool's side side projects and stuff like that.
I listen to that stuff because I can't figure out
what's going on. I say all the time, I don't

(51:40):
watch Bigfoot TV and stuff like that. A lot of
people just think I'm snobby because of that. But the
other side of it is I worked on finding big
Foot for nine years. I can see through the production
value of television shows. Now I can see that, Oh
yeah that was done for this reason. Oh they're just
doing this that that's that's just nonsense story stuff that's fake.
I can see through the production, right through it, like

(52:02):
it's invisible, and it just ruins TV for me. I
just can't do it anymore.

Speaker 4 (52:06):
Yeah, I don't watch any cryptid UFO, any of this
stuff anymore. I don't do it, and I think the
main reason is because I spend my entire day doing
this kind of storytelling for work, and so the last thing,
you know, I'd much rather watch this new Robbie Williams
movie where he's singing Chimp or whatever it is than

(52:30):
than watch, you know, another UFO documentary. But part of
it is just I pick them apart two because I
feel like the golden age of this stuff was the seventies.
I like when it comes comes to And that's funny
coming from a guy that owns a production company that
does this stuff. But I really feel like mysterious monsters

(52:50):
and man beast, bigfoot, man or Beast, and that is
my that's my golden age for especially bigfoot cinema.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
I mean, that's that's the stuff I love.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Yeah, there's so many things along that thread that I
wanted to talk to about. Maybe we'll save it for
the member section there because we haven't even talked about
your twenty twenty five slate and the Kickstarter.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
And all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's why why we
brought Sean is like a ten years in now that's
an accomplishment.

Speaker 4 (53:14):
Yeah, it is. We It has been very like strangely
emotional year and Matt got to witness a little bit
of it. But like, the last year has been really wild,
just from from a business standpoint, and Cliff maybe felt
like this before, but from a business standpoint, when I
look back at the last year, I'm like, I don't

(53:35):
know how we're still here, Like I don't know as
a business how we still exist, given like what we
dealt with, you know, just with distributors and everything. And
so to look back then over the last ten years
and see where we were and where we are now
has been humbling. I hear that word humbling get thrown

(53:56):
around a lot, and I think it's misused a lot
of the time.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
But I think that's the best way to.

Speaker 4 (54:01):
Describe it, because like, we really shouldn't have made it
this long. And then to look back over those ten
years and see all the people who were involved, maybe
even like in the earliest days, we couldn't you know,
like I always think of two of my best friends
have been involved with STM since the beginning of this,
Zach Palmsano and Jason Edis, And these guys are not

(54:24):
into Bigfoot, they're not into cryptids. They just did this
because we're friends. And in the earliest days, we didn't
have money to pay anybody, so these guys were donating
time to work on shoots for movies that you know,
didn't our early movies too. I don't the perspective. I
don't know what the perception is about STM quote unquote success.

(54:46):
In the earliest days, a successful movie for STM made
a few hundred bucks, you know, maybe a few thousand.
So for those first few years, Zach and Jason really
did it just out of love for me and like
out of friendship, And the amount of people that have
been involved in that capacity has been crazy. And then
when you really look at all the places we've gone,

(55:08):
all the travel, the people we've gotten to meet, you know,
there's so much negativity surrounding the field a lot of
the time, and I get it. But at the same time,
I've met people like Derek Randall's and Chaine Corson. I've
met you guys, I mean because of STM. I wouldn't
you know, And there's I consider you guys friends, and

(55:28):
that's kind of crazy that, you know, like we only
really know each other because of Bigfoot and the fact
that you know, I made a movie in twenty and
fifteen and then was too dumb to quit.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Well, the universe is obviously conspiring pretty hard for you there.
So you have everything on your side and you just
keep pushing forth. Maybe it's just your stubborn maybe you
don't know any better than to stop, but whatever it is,
everybody seems to love you. You are on the pedestal.

Speaker 4 (55:54):
Man to Worth told me when he met me, he
knew my biggest strength to my biggest weakness was that
no one would be able to tell me what to do,
and that is I think that's accurate. Like I'm if
you told me to quit, I definitely am not.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
Going to quit.

Speaker 4 (56:09):
And there were a lot of people that told me
to quit early on, so you know, that's a big
part of it. But I mean, there's also no blueprint
for doing this, just like there's really there's not much
of a blueprint for running a Sasquatch museum, right, So
so so you kind of have to make up the
rules as you go along. And yeah, there's other you know,

(56:30):
there's other filmmakers out there or museums or whatever, but
you still are going to make up the rules as
you go along, because there's no hard and.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Fast way to do this stuff.

Speaker 4 (56:40):
And so especially, I mean when we started expanding, and
you know, we hired Alex and then we hired Heather,
It's taken me three years to really figure out how
to utilize Heather, you know, in the company, because yeah,
you can say I'm hiring her as a research but
what is a researcher? But what does that mean? And
how does that look? You know, like, what are Heather's

(57:02):
strengths and what does she want to do? How do
I encourage her to do the things she's trying to do,
you know, like and let her have a voice in
the company. That's something that takes a little while to
figure out. When you had no intention of doing this
ten years ago, let alone still be doing it in
ten years and doing it on a larger scale.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
I think the secret is allowing it to happen. And
then it kind of goes back to that Miles Davis thing.
I said earlier he would hire the best guys, the
best players possible, and then allow them to do the
things they're really good at, you know, And that's what
I do at the shop. You know, I've got Dave
is excellent at some things, Nico is excellent at others,
and they don't really cross paths, and like they don't
share a lot of things that they're really good at together.

(57:45):
You know, there are some things of courses and crossover,
but I let them do what they like to do
and what they're really really good at, and then everything
else seems to fall in place. So a lot of
it is allowing things to happen.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
Yeah, but see a lot of people don't have that
trade like to allow those things to happen. It makes
me wonder, like is that a key part of like
personality trait of someone who can run their own business?
Because it probably is, which is interesting.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
I'm just a dallist at heart, you know, like WU
way do without doing, just like don't plan, just accept
what's comes and play off of it. It's like surfing
or I don't surf, but it's like surfing or for me,
you know, playing like if I was playing in a
jazz quartet. Somebody throws in a chord that I can hear. Well,
I'm going to play to that chord. You know that
sort of thing. It's just like seeing. It's like bigfooting.
You go out, the bigfoots aren't in the spot that

(58:36):
you thought they were going to be. You have to adjust, adjust,
according to the environment. And I let things come, and
I utilize what comes and do the best I can
with it. It sounds and I see how I do
that in my own little version of filmmaking as well.
It all just translates what one skill translates into another
at the end of the day.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
Yeah, and so what's on the slate for twenty twenty five?

Speaker 1 (58:58):
And I know you've got the kickstarter up and we'll
have a link to that in the show notes so
people can see that. But I'm sure listeners, if they're
not already familiar, which I think most of them are,
like just in case people don't know, I think they'd
love to hear about what you've got coming up.

Speaker 4 (59:11):
Yeah, no, we so this year we wanted to This
is our eleventh Kickstarter, by the way, we've been around
for ten years. But you know, we've done a Kickstarter
every single February, So the first one was a twenty
fourteen or twenty fifteen, it's twenty fifteen, but yeah, this
is the eleventh. So the thing this year that we
wanted to do was integrate, like the episodic work we're doing,

(59:33):
because the kickstarters traditionally just pay for the features, and
I mean, that's what people think they're funding, but the
money raised goes toward kind of everything STM does, and
we're doing so much anymore that you know, obviously that
money floats around the company. So this year we're doing
there's like a reward level where backers over. I can't

(59:57):
remember what level, but any anyone that backs over it
might be the first DVD the first DVD level. But anyway,
there's always been a film credit, like you can get
your name in the credits of our movies, but now
you can get your name and the credits of all
the YouTube stuff too, So that was fun and that
was also like a good way to integrate, you know,
like the stuff that Alex and Eli do with the kickstarter.

(01:00:19):
But the movies we're funding for this year are Donna,
The dog Man, The Cgabe Canyon, the Kinderhook Creature, and
this movie called From the Beyond. So do you want
me to I can give a rundown of each one.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
If you want. Yeah, I think that'd be great.

Speaker 4 (01:00:36):
Donna the dog Man is like in twenty eighteen, all
the movies I'm directing. One of these is directed by Eli,
but all the movies I'm directing, I wanted to be
kind of like a throwback to something we made earlier
because it's like supposed to be a celebration ten year
anniversary year. And also, you know, like a couple of
these do kind of feel like direct sequels.

Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
Donna the dog Man.

Speaker 4 (01:00:57):
Is a basically a direct sequel to our Bray Road
Beast movie from twenty eighteen. It's we always were getting
asked when we were going to do something about the
Michigan dog Man stuff and from the eighties, and so
that's kind of what the focus of this is is
Michigan dog Man, but kind of telling origin story of

(01:01:19):
the phenomenon in the US, and that's something we haven't done.
The cool thing is we had interviewed Linda and I.
Linda Godfrey and I were pretty pretty tight, especially during
the making of that movie. And then after the fact,
and we had talked about doing something else together, and
we had talked about doing a Michigan dog Man movie.
And thankfully, when we went back into the transcripts from

(01:01:41):
her bray Road interview, we found all this stuff that
we're going to be able to use in the Dawn
of the dog Man movie. So that was important because
it won't be a direct sequel to bray Road if
Linda isn't isn't represented in some way, So thankfully she
will be And I'm excited about that too, just because
the editing style is so different from anything I've done

(01:02:03):
in the last few years. It's just a really I
utilized this, like I said David Fincher earlier, and that's
kind of like the vibe I was going for with
the edit. It's not my typical editing style, but I
enjoy like stretching those muscles too. It's it's like a
completely different style from what I'm used to with, like
you know, crazy quick cut transitions and all that kind

(01:02:25):
of stuff. But the story I think will be something
that our audience especially has been wanting to see for
a long time, which is that dog Man, Michigan dog
Man stuff. And just you know, we're going to involve
a lot of the creative crew that we're involved in
Bray Road as well, So that's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
Will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 4 (01:02:58):
I should probably talk about CGVA Canyon, which is Eli's
movie and does feature Cliff. I haven't seen a cut
of this in like a week, but I do know
I watched a cut that Eli did maybe two weeks ago,
and I told him I think it's like one of
the most historically valuable things we've done, just because I

(01:03:20):
feel like that story, that Ape Canyon story maybe hasn't
been thoroughly told in any medium, but especially I don't
think the work that Mark Marcella has done has been
really honored in the way that I would like to
see it done. And you know, originally this was supposed

(01:03:41):
to be my movie, which, by the way, Cliff, I
was told by Mark when he originally approached me about
doing this that this was because of you, So thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Oh it's my fault, now.

Speaker 4 (01:03:51):
Yeah, apparently at some point you had told him to
just ask me about it. So it's a really good
movie and it is very very much, you know, like
a true documentary in the fact that it is going
to preserve this story that I really feel like, I
don't think it's been fully preserved to this degree, especially

(01:04:13):
when you integrate Marcel into the storytelling. I just don't
know that people outside of the Bigfoot world know who
Mark is and have really gotten to experience his level
of fun. And you know, I'm really excited with what
Eli did because it's not the way I would have
told the story. And that is what I think is

(01:04:34):
cool about STM is he's doing something that, yes, an
Ape Canyon movie made perfect sense for small tom monsters,
but he's not telling the story in the way Seth
breed Love would have told the story, and I think
that's a good thing. He's telling it in the way
that Eli tell stories. And Eli's voice is a unique
voice for mine, just like Alex is a unique voice

(01:04:56):
for both of ours. So I'm really excited about this one.
And we were you know, like, I don't know how
many people have actually filmed in Ape Canyon. I don't
think it's many, but we were able to do that,
and we were able to play a role in you know,
preserving that story and documenting Mark Marcelle's integral part in

(01:05:18):
preserving it the Ape Canyon event, so that one. I'm
really excited about the Kinderhook creature. So I've been circling
this story since twenty sixteen. We made a movie actually
filmed in twenty fifteen directly after filming a nerve and
monster called Beast of Whitehall. And in that movie, we

(01:05:39):
had an archival interview with Bruce Hallenback that ran on
television in New York in Upstate New York about the
Kinderhook creature. And I remember Paul Bartholo on You telling
me you should make a movie about the Kinderhook creature,
and I was like, yeah, someday. But last year, I

(01:05:59):
guess was the year before we actually published Bruce Halenbeck's
book about the Kinderhook creature, and you know, that kind
of like reinvigorated my interest in that story. And I
also really responded to the fact that, you know, if
we're doing this kind of like throwback year to I
don't think it's going to be like where every single

(01:06:20):
movie is a homage to ourselves or anything, but if
we're doing that, it made sense to do this story
because It is kind of like a throwback to that intimate,
small scale Bigfoot sighting story similar to Minerva. And so
that's this one to me, is like going to give
me the ability to kind of go back to that
method of storytelling that we utilized on some of the

(01:06:42):
earliest stuff we did.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
And then from.

Speaker 4 (01:06:45):
The Beyond is a look at the Bennington Triangle in
Vermont where people go missing, there's UFOs, there was a
pterodactyl sighting, all sorts of fun insanity, and that one
will be like a heavy Neon eighties vibe, similar to
our movie Invasion on Chestnut Rich. So those are that's

(01:07:07):
the four movies we're putting out, and then we're funding
all four through the through the ten year Anniversary Kickstarter,
which runs through March sixth.

Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
Link in the show notes, Yeah, that was my hard cell.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
Fantastic. Well, I'm sure that our members are going to
want to participate on some level.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
You are a beloved filmmaker amongst the Bigfoot communities, So
I can't imagine that people are just going to ignore this.

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):
So we've done so many kickstarters.

Speaker 4 (01:07:36):
The funniest thing about it is you'd think over time,
you would eventually get to the point where you're not
like just frantically nervous leading up to it, and then
for the duration of the campaign, and yet ten years in,
I'm still doing this so.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Well, that really says something too, because if the kickstarters
weren't worth it, you wouldn't be making any money after
ten You know, people clearly think that giving you some
funds to do your art is definitely worth it, and
they get something out of it, whether it's some of
the benefits of being participating in a kickstarter or just
seeing the films eventually made. They're clearly loving what you're

(01:08:12):
doing because the proof is in the pudding essentially, you know.
Otherwise ten kickstarters, what why should we give them more money?
Because you make excellent product and the people get something
from it, and the fact that you're doing another one
that is successful says a lot. Well, Seth, I think
we're going to leave it out there because we still
have another whole hour to talk to you with our members,

(01:08:34):
of course, and if you want to be a member
of Big One and Beyond, just click that link in
the show notes that Matt Proue put down there for you,
and thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
For coming on.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
I consider you a good friend. You're one of my
favorite people. You legitimately are in the Bigfoot community, and
whatever we cross paths, I know it's going to be
a good time. So thanks for coming on and hanging
out with Matt and I for this last hour.

Speaker 3 (01:08:53):
Awesome. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
Guys, Seth, you have a bobo imitation, don't you. Oh God, no, oh,
everyone's got one in there. Why don't you want to
just say thanks and keep it squatchy in your best
bobo voice? Can you do that for us?

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
Holy God, No, I know there's no way.

Speaker 6 (01:09:08):
I'm okay. Matt, you can take it away. Thanks Seth
for being here. Click like, click share, tell your friends,
and until next week, keep it squatchy.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you
get your podcasts, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram
at Bigfoot and Beyond podcast. You can find us on
Twitter at Bigfoot and Beyond that's an N in the middle,

(01:09:46):
and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag
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