Post by Joanna on Dec 16, 2015 13:45:13 GMT -5
Beast of Whitehall Documentary Coming in 2016
WHITEHALL, N.Y. – Even though it took place nearly 40 years ago, the story of a local run-in with Bigfoot keeps getting bigger and bigger. “We were originally looking at a 30-minute film,” said Seth Breedlove, a 34-year-old freelance writer and journalist, who is wrapping up editing on Beast of Whitehall, a documentary about Bigfoot sightings in Whitehall, including the 1976 Abair Road incident in which several local residents, some of whom were police officers, say they encountered Bigfoot. “It was pretty well done, but we felt like there was something missing, so we pushed it up to 40 minutes,” Breedlove advised in a telephone interview last week. “We got way more than we expected. We could go to 90 minutes if we had the money for that.”
According to Breedlove, the film will officially debut April 1, but people who take part in his company’s Kickstarter campaign for the third movie in the Small Town Monsters series will get to see it in March. “We are going to make it a bonus for the people who support us,” he said. The Whitehall investigation is the subject of the second in the Small Town Monsters series, coming after a film based in Minerva, Ohio, which has been the site of a number of Bigfoot sightings. The third movie in the series will focus on the Boggy Creek monster, yet another Bigfoot-type creature, in Fouke, Arkansas.
Among those interviewed for the Whitehall film were Abair Road witness Brian Gossellin, investigator Bill Brann and local Bigfoot expert Paul Bartholomew. The film is directed by Breedlove and produced by Brandon Dalo with an original score composed by Dalo, 25, who was the composer for Minerva Monster and took on the producer role for Beast of Whitehall. Breedlove and Dalo and their crew spent more than a week shooting in and around the town of Whitehall. Another member of the team is Zac Palmisano, a 33-year-old film school graduate.
Oddly, Breedlove did his filming at the same time another examination of the Whitehall legend was aired. The season finale of Finding Bigfoot, on Animal Planet, titled “Bigfoot State of Mind,” chronicled an April hunt for Bigfoot filmed around Lake George and the New York-Vermont border. Breedlove said even though his film was the second of the year on Whitehall, he and his crew were still welcomed to the town and village. “The people were super. We were not expecting that. Sometimes people are cynical of what we are doing,” he added. “Local residents were welcoming to us, but then we are not there to mock people.” He said he is happy with the result. “There is so much more to the story than people know,” Breedlove asserted. “We did a lot with Abair Road, but we also focused on other incident.”
The press release for the movie trailer describes the incident this way: “August, 1976: Three teens driving on an isolated stretch of road somewhere in the Adirondacks of upstate New York have a brush with a bizarre creature. Standing over 7 feet tall and covered in hair, they referred to it as a ‘beast.’ Hours later, Abair Road was crawling with local and state police. Many of them recounted seeing the creature as well.
“As the weeks and months passed, more individuals came forward with their own sightings. The Abair incident became the impetus for a rash of sightings around the town of Whitehall that continue to this day. Today, Whitehall is frequently referred to as the Bigfoot Capitol of the East Coast.”
“Our goal is to let the story tell itself,” Breedlove insisted. “We’re not going for over-the-top recreations. We want to let the witnesses tell the story.”
Source: Bill Toscano, The Glens Falls Post-Star, December 13, 2015.
Watch the trailer here: youtu.be/H-GeEtGLat4
For additional information, see: facebook.com/minervamonster or smalltownmonsters.com
