Norcal Bigfoot Video
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on February 20th, 2007
Some interesting videos of cryptids have popped up on youtube, many of them have been talked about here on Cryptomundo.
The following Bigfoot footage is interesting. I emailed the people involved with the project, inquiring about the footage and any additional information, and never received a reply.
As the folks involved seem to be involved with film production, I am left to believe that the footage was staged.
This is the background info regarding the footage from their website.
Bigfoot
Thursday, January 11, 2007Latest
The Hi-Rez and Ipod version of the footage currently are not available. All of the footage has been and is under investigation by expert primatologists, an anthropologist, cryptozoologists and paranormal experts.Youtube
The footage is available on youtube at the recommendation of a primatologist who is correct in assuming that other people who had spotted the creature in the same area would come forward with similar evidence, and they have.Conservation
If the habitat of the bigfoot was not in danger you can be assured we would not be making this footage public.Part of the Story
Believe it or not about a year ago in October of 2005 my friends Eric Baxter, Aaron Wise and myself Shawn Bannon went backpacking in the Giant Sequoia National Park. We were out on a photo expedition, something we do several times a year, we packed up a variety of film stocks and several cameras. The drive was about 4 hours long, the last hour of it being on curvy mountain roads to a nice elevation of about 7,000 feet. We arrived to the trailhead at about 9 p.m. on a Friday night and hiked in about 5 miles to set-up camp, carrying a total of around 125 pounds of gear between the three of us. Not a big task since we mountaineer several times a year. We hiked for a few hours wearing headlamps and backpacks. Really just looking for a nice spot that was far away as possible.What we witnesses the next day has changed our lives forever.
All of the Bigfoot footage you are about to see was shot within the matter of about a minute, by Shawn Bannon, Eric Baxter, and Aaron Wise. The images you are about to see are 100% un-retouched, the only adjustments made to the images were brightness, contrast and gamma levels. All of the photos and motion footage was shot with extremely long telephoto lenses. It appears we might be close but we are at least 100 feet away at any given time.Shawn Bannon
STUDIODROME
And here is the slowed down and magnified version.
There are some stills from the footage, as well as some seemingly unrelated photos on their website.
UPDATE:
The first video above has been removed from view. The second one is still available.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Looks like a human on a suit. Too large and slow to be able to hunt, so the unprovoked attack makes no sense. Walking away slowly makes no sense.
Complete and utter BS. It’s a stunt to garner attention to their main site.
I love the one handed leap over the tree branch.
Its on Youtube
The slow jog made by the guy-in-a-costume/creature at the end of the video is humerous.
As being a Youtube video, its pretty entertaining, even without sound, good quality, even if it is a fake.
Too theatrical, for starters. Then there’s the very quick over-the-shoulder-Patterson-Gimlin-video homage (albeit brief) that seals the deal.
Although I think this is a (well done) hoax, what will the first footage of Sasquatch look like? It will be unheralded for sure; but if we didn’t have the PG footage grandfathered into our subconsciousness, how would we react to it today? Would we dismiss it as quickly as we do 90% of the videos that come across here?
Food for thought.
If it is a hoax, it’s well done – must be a rather fit guy to be able to bound down the hill in that big costume without falling over.
Bigfoot, Action Hero!
Finally we have one where the big guy moves with a little spring in his step, unfortunately he’s a little TOO light on his feet if you ask me. At least we know where the BF from the 6 Million Dollar Man has gotten to…
Looks fake.
Another piece of evidence that points toward this being staged is the the fact that the camera guy was far away from the guy he was recording, why would he be far away, and why was the camera guy shaking so much and not focusing on recording what the guy was picking up from the floor?
Fake, but a well done one. I haven’t seen a good fake in a while.
I like how there was extra tufts of hair by the wrists and neck to hide the different parts of the costume.
Intriguing
PROS
Jet black color
Large dangerous agile leap with no obvious injury
All three persons accounted for
Typical bluff charge with no follow through
Quick retreat by alleged Bigfoot
No neck
Extremely long arms
Possible 12″ to 18″ long fire hose @ 1:44.5 seconds
Good Bigfoot pace on retreat
Convincing terror by streamside drinker
Timing of streamside drinkers first move to exit looked legitimate
Rapid escape by streamside drinker who bolted first and then looked back second
Cameraman was too rattled to keep the camera steady, as opposed to proven hoaxes like the Memorial Day footage where the camera was relatively steady
Appears to meet the long hair, no neck, long arm, with dangling fire hose defining Bigfoot criteria
CONS
Someone else took the video so it has to be a fake, so the decks are still clear for the next great Bigfoot footage to be captured.
Conclusion: worth further study and cross examination of witnesses
You know what, regardless of the hoax comments so far and the very real chance that it IS a hoax, there are a couple of moments in that video that look pretty good. There is a scene with the ‘bigfoot’ running that looks great, despite it being wobbly and short lived.
Looks like prime habitat, but looking at the video it lands and runs like a human, and the thighs seem disproportionally too thin to support a massive upper body. Definitely a hoax.
I think it’s a pretty interesting piece of work. Additionally I find it interesting that it was done by some young guerrilla style video makers.
I’ve some experience in on-site event video production and I wonder why the camera guy would be taking video of his friend taking a drink from 100 feet away…on one hand it seems like a narrative was being developed, cuz there didn’t seem to be any good reason to be shoot the guy drinking at the little spring unless you thought there was a reason to shoot it at 100 feet.. The shots looking up into the trees are obviously being taken to be used as establishing shots for editing later as stills, fades and freezes, or was he just adjusting his white balance and light levels, checking out the camera…that makes sense…then the shakey cam while examining the butt of the tree and a root wad…really looked like the guy may not have been aware the camera was on…..then the fatal drink at the pool…Why no sound? I just don’t get it, though I know that’s not the point. Their website doesn’t reveal much more either, and the tone of the site is a kind of edgy counter culture commercialism. There seems to be some concern about not revealing the location for the safety of the animal…you know, that old song. It’s made me curious, and I’d like to find out more, even if it’s an attempted hoax. Hoaxes reveal something interesting about us as well.
If that’s 16mm, fairly pathetic use of the camera and capability.
Love handle or wrinkle in the suit?
No IF for me on this one.
Overly Shaky camera days are really long past or shot by grandma with her first camera…with good equipment it can usually point to the camera person TRYING to look impromptu and amateur.
I like the part when the BIGFOOT ahem…slips down the hill after jumping the log and the camera does a quick pan away.
It was one of the more entertaining videos though.
Bigfoot looked like a skateboarder when he went over that downed tree. And I totally agree w/the comment above where they were saying how the camera man was so far away from the person. I bet they cut the sound out because they couldn’t hold their mouths shut from saying something that made this video even more of a hoax.
I don’t know how anybody can tell anything from something like this.
My take on why this is hoaxed is that they supposedly are in the film production business. Forget the shots involving BF, watch the ‘establishing’ shots. Shaky, zooming in and out recklessly, in one instance repeating the same shot (panning up and down the length of the standing trees) repeated, all totally amateur stuff. I have zero film experience and I could both hold the camera more steady -and- know better than to have the nausea-inducing zoom-in-then-pan-wildly moves. If you have -any- film experience, why would you shoot such shots to begin with, then edit them into a lengthy set of establishing shots for a few seconds of bigfoot footage? They do nothing to help verify the reality of the BF footage and serve only to expose that you’re intentionally trying to explain away the ‘shakycam’ footage later on.
That said, I think it’s a pretty nice suit, and wouldn’t be surprised if they used comments here and elsewhere regarding hair, neck, arm length, etc to cover mistakes made by previous hoaxers.
Great job by the cinemaphotographers, actors and their varsity basketball playing friend in the bigfoot costume. Very well executed! Those kids have a future in film making. They are actually good students in that they have learned what not to do to make it not look like a hoax–almost!
I got it: smoking gun evidence it’s a fraud!
Go to the site, check out the Medium quality QT version of the vids.
Play the full length footage.
QT won’t give me a time stamp, but forward to the point where BF is retreating through the woods. Pause it once he’s heading back up the embankment and into the trees, after the cameraman has turned back around after ‘fleeing’.
Using the step buttons on the right side of the interface, step through this sequence. Yes, it’ll take a bit going one frame at a time.
There’s a -cut-. On one frame, BF is almost completely in shadows and headed away from the cameraman, not going parallel. He’s headed to about the 2 o’clock angle. As he passes behind a tree, notice that one frame later, he’s suddenly passing into sunlight, dramatically more zoomed in than just one frame prior, and now headed almost directly towards the 3 o’clock position parallel to the cameraman. This gives a much better view of the hair, the arms, etc.
They did TWO TAKES. There is no physical way this is one contiguous take. The camera is zoomed in much further than the take that started with the drinking at the stream, and the ‘creature’ is heading in an entirely different direction. They flubbed the initial running away sequence and had to do it again, and thought using the trees and shakycam would cover their tracks.
That does that. They should have stuck with one take even if it wasn’t as good as what they wanted. By using that cut, with no possible second cameraman (if there were two cameras rolling, where is the second footage of the initial ‘attack’?) they’ve busted their own hoax.
If it is fake they sure put in a lot of effort into the monkey suit.
Yep, they sure tried to avoid making it look like a person.
So. We don’t have a single piece of unequivocally genuine Bigfoot film. What’s the standard against which to evaluate, then? If it looks human it does. If it doesn’t….OK, you first….
I’m very careful about pronouncing based on video technique and quality after seeing a Photoshop expert going on and on about how a genuine photograph was an obvious hoax.
Wake me when the media firestorm begins.
While not “bigfoot”, I can certainly think of another word that starts with “b” and ends in “t”…
🙂
I will say this (can’t resist becoming a member of the Hoax It Right! Club):
The guy ups and runs with scarcely a glace at what he’s running from. He MIGHT have seen the critter from the corner of one eye. We’re people. “Curious George” was written by a human. We LOOK. I would without question – even at the cost of my life, sorry, we’re made that way – try to visually acquire the subject before Fleeing Like Hades.
It’s like he was cued: Now. RUN!
I enjoy how the camera person is taking video of the friend calmly splashing water on his face, just relaxing, then boo!… the guy in the suit jumps out. Great fun!
And in an obvious screeching panic, the guy does a two-step tiptoe up a near vertical log. Off the first step.
Is it me? Or is that “The Move Voted Least Likely To Be Made In Its High School Class?”
If that’s a real sas, fine. No big surprise there. I want Log Man. Get that guy, and let’s do a study of HIM.
mrdark, Good Job!
Upon further inspection, the first half of the video is looking downhill into a ravine that appears to slope downhill further to the right, and the second half is panning right across relatively level ground.
The Studiodrome film clips (yes, there are multiple takes showing the same action) are nothing other than a well-produced, staged hoax. The mysterious figure moves like a human being wearing a costume– though the arm extenders are a thoughtful touch. Notice though that the hands at the ends of the arms never flex, grip or work like real hands.
When this film clip first appeared, it was thoroughly analyzed and eventually dismissed in a hominid discussion thread on the Cryptozoology web site forum. The clincher for me was the still photos from a Studiodrome party posted in a gallery on their web site that showed someone wearing what appeared to be the same hairy costume. (I don’t know whether these photos are still on-line– if someone downloaded copies, you should send them to Craig for a follow-up report.)
Based on my past experience investigating anonymous videos posted on the Internet of what might be Bigfoot creatures, I remain alert for new video clips and this particular piece did catch my eye when it first showed up last year. But this video clip only became more questionable under closer evaluation– and did not warrant further investigative time and effort.
Looks totally staged/lame. I’ll rent the same Chewbacca suit and make a video 10 times better.
Saw this about a month ago and saw it identified as a “Morris” costume, anybody know where you get a “Morris” costume?
BTW – film shot in a National Park – less chance of costume boy getting his tail shot off.
MR Dark
You don’t have to go through all that trouble. If you watch the magnified version in this track, you’ll see the cut, because the lighting changes.
It’s about 7 seconds from the end of the clip, and the light turns a little more reddish or amber, either way, you can see it with the naked eye.
Doesn’t sound like anyone needs convincing here, but just in case: the best confirmation that it’s totally faked is their website. There you will find still photos that absolutely did not come from the footage they’ve shown. By what other means would they have obtained those stills if what appears on YouTube is the entirety of the footage that they had taken? The smell of hoax outstinks that of an Italian cheese market (and I’ve been to Italian cheese markets).
Looks pretty good for a fake. If you compare that to the Patterson-Gimlin film you can tell that “it’s” a dude in a costume. I feel very strongly that the Patterson film was and is the only real footage.
The only thing to add is if it was made in 2005 why wait until now to release it – unless it was on youtube a while ago.
Skinny legs and long extended arms flapping about – a very camp bigfoot indeed!
Still, worth it for the chuckle factor.
Ok, I suspect that if I all of a sudden found myself that close to a Sasquatch, I wouldn’t be so much worried as to where I was running but just the fact I was running. I know for a fact that I wouldn’t hop and run along a fallen tree…I’d be running through trees.
What a joke! “Bigfoot” looks like he is carrying a large back pack.
Even if P/G were a hoax, you’d think with so many years of technology behind our belts, someone would at least be able to fake something to the same level of quality. This clip leaves much to be desired. It simply does not move as smoothly or naturally as an animal completely within its own environment would, I feel.
The only time in the video that can be classed as a ‘mistake’ in acting (potentially), is at first sight of the ‘beast’. The guy is washing his face, he is startled and begins to flee, then appears to remember he was meant to look behind him first, so he does but he’s already running. I don’t know about you peeps but no matter where i am I don’t just run at the first noise I hear, i’d be looking round BEFORE legging it.
One thing, I’ve been looking at the video to see this ‘two takes’ thing people have mentioned, you do actually see the camera zoom in whilst filming, as the view leaves the kid running away, it zooms in to the level that people here are saying happened in ‘one frame’, but I can see it happening?? Don’t think there’s a two take situation there at all, and my bigfoot or mr dude-in-a-suit could have quite easily passed into a small clearing and been illuminated, there’s also no reason to suggest that ‘he’ would just run in one direction.
UKCryptid- It’s interesting that you mention the way he runs away because my own personal take on it is that that is the most realistic part of the video. If I heard some huge thing crashing through the woods behind me or if my friend yelled “Hey look out!” (which he may have done, with no sound it’s hard to tell), then I would have just scrambled away as fast as i could without looking behind me first too.
mystery_man: I agree with you about P/G.
I’ve said elsewhere that no piece of current evidence can become any more compelling than it now is. That may not be the case with P/G. The more fakes I see, the better it looks.
Do you know what the first accepted video evidence will look like? I picture nature videos of chimpanzees and gorillas. Something in perfect focus, full light, unhurried and most likely very, very quiet so as not to spook your subject.
Pseudo-hunting parties are not going to find the evidence we need. Only organized field work will find the truth and that’s going to take decades.
I think you’re absolutely right, Seethingcauldron, and that is reason for optimism since a new generation of large scale optical devices tied in with sophisticated image processing software is making its appearance in the real world. I think new strategies using these emerging technologies could be promising….but a bunch of guys, even experienced ones, going out to try to a capture an event such as we’re likely to encounter (momentary and un-expected) is really very unlikely even given decades. Also the diet of high quality nature film we’re fed on TV and in the movies has the typical observer believeing it must not be all that hard. It is very difficult, technically and physically. Never the less, something tells me that if someone locates a population and has studied its behavior well enough that one could predict its movements so that one could indeed capture beautiful moving crystal clear images of the archetypical sasquatch, it would more than likely be dismissed as looking too good and bring up the latest special effects from Hollywood or Wellington. Controversy sells.
So I looked at the video, both regular and magnified, numerous times.
While watching the latter, watch the right hand (“plant hand”) of said BF when he first appears and hops over a small felled tree–it looks wrong. I don’t know how to explain it, but its hand appears to bend backwards like there was nothing in it.
I don’t know.
Regardless, I don’t believe its real.
An obvious hoax when you take into account that on their website they have still photos of a Bigfoot-like creature running and crouching. The bigfoots’ facial expression is always the same, indicating a static mask.
The Blair Bigfoot Project.
A typical obvious and amateurish hoax – hundreds like it at youtube. I’m not impressed in the least. It is in fact comical.
I would like to see the film after it has been cleaned up, and a few experts look and see what they think. I’m not going to be to quick to judge this one. I saw some things that looked different. So I want the pros to look at it first.