Mysteries & Monsters Returns!
This episode is filled to the brim with high strangeness, but the actual truth of what happened back in 1981 mattered less to me than how I was going to pull it all off.
Episode 10 of my series Mysteries & Monsters has released today on the Small Town Monsters YouTube Channel!
Official Synopsis: In 1981, a family was besieged by a Bigfoots, UFOs and shadow people. Forced to defend themselves, the terrifying encounters lasted for weeks, but then mysteriously stopped. Eli teams up with Mark and Andy Matzke to investigate the strangest story from the land of Ohio.
The strangest story indeed. This episode is filled to the brim with high strangeness, but the actual truth of what happened back in 1981 mattered less to me than how I was going to pull it all off from a filmmaker’s perspective. One of the goals I set for myself when I started Mysteries & Monsters back in 2023, was to be able to do full on recreations for every episode. I didn’t want to use A.I. or artistic recreations, I wanted full on live action, with actors and special effects, which is even more daunting when you consider how low the budgets are for this series.
But for the past nine episodes I’ve pulled it off, with simple Bigfoot costumes, Seth’s really nice Dogman suit and other tricks. The most ambitious shoot I’ve done was featured in Episode 5: The Man From Venus, where I hired two actors to go out to Palm Springs to recreate the famous scene where Adamski meets Orthon out in the desert. It was stressful, hot, but I managed to pull it off.
But this episode was something else, it had so much more involved. Shadow people, Bigfoot, glowing red eyes, mysterious lights, light beams and more! I remember standing in my buddy Tyler Hall’s parent’s yard (where we shot most of the recreations) thinking “how am I going to pull this off?”
Well, I managed to skirt around some of the more difficult stuff (the horse and the transforming tree faller), but was pleased to have gotten much of the more iconic stuff from the book taken care of, like the light above the corn field and the truck scene. Most of the more unbelievable aspects, like the light, we accomplished with simple 2D compositing and lighting effects done in DaVinci Resolve.
Tyler Hall stars in this, as well as his father, Greg Hall. I couldn’t have asked for a better duo of actors than those two. I presented them this idea I had and they just jumped up on the roof, no questions asked. We shot it in the middle of the day and I just did an effect called “Day for Night”, where I made the day look like night. DaVinci’s sky replacement feature helped tremendously in this aspect, because no matter how dark I made the two actors look, the sky was still too blue.
Doing the muzzle flashes on the very real guns used in the making of the recreations was really nice for me. Not only were they easy to do (not that they even look very realistic) but it reminded me a lot of the visual effects I used to do in high school.
In high school I made over 30 short films with my friends. My brother and I spray painted nerf guns to make them look “real” and in After Effects I would add muzzle flashes and blood effects to complete the shoot em films. It was a lot of fun, and I learned so much about compositing and special effects work by doing that. The best film school truly is making your own films. So when I went to film school and I felt my editing experience wasn’t necessary, turns out it came in handy when putting together ten episodes of Mysteries & Monsters.
While my self made VFX may not be the best, I think it only adds to the charm of the series. I really wanted to capture the corniness of the recreations in old shows like In Search Of, and I think I’m doing that well enough. People don’t remember that series for how great the recreations were, people remember that show for visualizing what people’s experiences might have looked like. Which is what I’m trying to do.
More than that though, facing these challenges and working with talented actors and filmmakers like Tyler to make these kinds of projects is inspiring. It is true filmmaking in every sense. We have a limited budget, a limited amount of time and yet somehow it comes together and looks decent and most importantly, we’re having fun.
I hope everyone who watched this episode enjoys it. The story the has a lot of heart to it. Both Mark and Andy, in my opinion, tie this story together with their passion for this odd little story. And while there are several leads to pick up on to discover more of this case, I’m not sure if it will be expanded upon, leaving this as one strange unsolved mystery for the foreseeable future.
Cursed Waters Screening in Penticton
Hello all, there will be a screening of my film Cursed Waters: Creature of Lake Okanagan at The Towne Theatre in Penticton on October 12, 2024! I wish I could be there but schedule conflicts prevent me from making it all the way up to B.C. this time, but it’s very exciting and currently the only way to watch that film in Canada!
Jason Hewlett will be there, as well as Coralee Miller of the Westbank First Nations. Who knows who else might show up?
So get your tickets and go!
Road to Discovery Finale
Today it’s all over!
Today, Bigfoot: The Road to Discovery ends. As I talk about in the episode, this series is very near and dear to my heart and I’m sad that it is ending, but also, I acknowledge that it cannot be superficially extended. To do so would only weaken the series as a whole.
I want to thank the members of the Olympic Project: Shane Corson, Todd Hale, Chris Spencer and Rebekah Slick for being my friends and helping me through some of the stuff I was dealing with at the time of making the series. They really pulled me out of being in a dark place.
When I first met the Olympic Project in 2021, never did I in a million years think that I was going to be so close to them or that I would make such an in depth series about them. I know young Eli is geeking about the things that older Eli has done, and I’m very thankful to have done this series.
Thanks again to everyone involved in the making of this series, it was truly a once in a lifetime experience and can’t wait to see everyone again further on down the road to discovery.
The Road’s End is now on YouTube!
Cursed Waters Trailer and Clips
Full disclosure, I have not been up to date on this news page. Obviously. So I’m compiling a series of videos and clips from my film Cursed Waters: Creature of Lake Okanagan to have all in one place. Hope you enjoy!
Trailer
Extended Clip
2025 Projects Announcement!
I’m beyond excited to finally announce the projects I’ve been working on for 2025. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
First there is “The Siege of Ape Canyon” an upcoming film that I’m directing that features my good friend, Marc Myrsell, as he talks about the journey to finding the infamous Ape Canyon Cabin site, a journey that’s taken him over 20 years to accomplish. Marc is one of the weirdest people I know and his neighbor is even weirder and I’m so happy that their personality shines through the film. Also I want to thank Seth Breedlove for making this one possible by producing it and relinquishing a lot of his control over the film to me. That means a lot.
Then we have the new YouTube series, Bigfoot: Mountains of Mystery which will showcase the Sierra Nevada mountains in the context of Bigfoot History. The stuff I have planned for this series is off the charts. The amount of Bigfoot history there is overwhelming, and the cases are huge. There’s so much evidence coming from that region and no one has covered it. It seems like a no brainer, but just like with So-Cal, no one is taking the time to look.
And finally, another feature film from yours truly. Cryptid: Wendigo will focus on the Wendigo folklore as both a myth and a psychological phenomenon. This movie is going to be so wonderfully out there, that I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it. See what I did there?
I look forward to releasing first looks at these projects in the coming months!
I was never good at…
I was never very good at writing about myself. I’ve always had a knack for voyeurisitic storytelling, that is, telling stories about other people. But the times have changed, and I now realize that my place as an observer to all the strange and terrifying things that happen around me plays a role in the story being told. We are never casual observers, we are always a part of the story even if we are just witnessing it unfold.
Through various mediums I have tried my best to capture these stories in the way that they seem to me, but either through my lack of understanding of other platforms, I find that I cannot quite express it correctly. In fact, the only medium in which I feel most at home, and most able to express myself is in the written word. There is so much you can do with words that it is truly a shame more people don’t use them in fun or interesting ways, and in the age of the influencer, where a generic inspiring quote and an ass pic are somehow supposed to motivate me to go to the gym, I’m afraid wordsmiths are having a hard time competing. I don’t have an ass to grab your attention, nor do I have a perfect jawline or a pristine complexion that looks like it was made from the skin of a newborn baby. Most of the time I look like a disheveled homebody that barely managed to crawl out of bed. How am I going to compete with instagram models?
The answer is, I’m not. I’m not even going to attempt to enter that vanity contest. It’s no fun and there’s no prizes to get. At most, if you’re lucky, you’ll achieve the people’s approval for a whopping 15 minutes before they dump you and move on. Woohoo! The approval of random strangers on the internet! What a prize! People’s opinions of me have never mattered much to me to begin with. When I do things, its because I want to do it, and usually when I do things, I want to do them well, because well, something well worth doing is worth doing well.
And that ladies and gentlemen brings me here. I’ve wanted to start a blog for so long and I feel like I finally have the time to express this journalistic passion in some form or another. In combination with my observations of my adventures and mishaps through life, will be photographs and videos crafted by myself. This will be the Eli Watson experience, if you desire to give it a name.
Until then…