1.The Fear Factor (or lack thereof)> There is a slight twitter in Freeman’s voice and the camara is vibrating. That leads me to believe that either there is at least a little bit of apprehension in Freeman, or some adrenaline is pumping. Either way, it shows to me that he is a bit surprised to see the “creature”. I believe if I had hoaxed a bigfoot vid, then there would be a complete lack of adrenaline, cuz I would know what was happening. If I came around a bend and saw an animal ahead of me, my first reaction would be “Woh, look at that” (2nd reaction, for me at least, would be RUN LIKE HECK if I was unarmed and/or LET IT RAIN!!! if I had a firearm lol.)To me, Freeman’s voice sounds a bit surprised when he says “There he goes”.

2.Taping the Ground> It sure looks to me like he was only out to videotape tracks, and got a little more than he expected. All the ground footage looks to me as following a set of prints, but who knows.

In any case, either real or hoaxed, I am of an open mind to the footage. If it is real, then it is the sweetest thing since sliced bread for our field. If it is a hoax, it sucks that it is a hoax, but it is still fun to watch. Remember, you gotta take the good with the bad and the day with the night.

You do get people – weirdness magnets, as they might be called – who seem to have a preternaturally high chance of running into Hitler and Elvis waiting at the same back of beyond, middle of nowhere busstop, so I’ve no problem with his high hit rate.

The film, though…either this is Bigfoot’s freakishly large baby son Sasquatch Jnr. – hence the first one’s weird, “I’m some kid staring at my feet while playing giant steps” stride pattern – or it’s some bloke straining but failing to look like he’s so tall and heavy he’s got feet made of solid lead, something Patty achieves effortlessly.

Freeman’s ‘acting’ seems pretty convincing – to me – in fact, I’m suprised by his breathlessness he wasn’t tempted to say, “To hell with it!” and charge down there, risking life and limb for that one killer shot.

Feebfoot, though, with that crappy stride pattern…mind you, when Brad Pitt thinks he’s not on camera he’s probably perfectly capable of abandonning all pretence of superstar magnificence and going for a root in the lost Dutchman’s mine or digging for nasal gold.

1) The video starts off with him filming the ground. I don’t understand why. If I was out in the forest trying to film a creature, well I was going to conserve my battery for when that happens. If I were to film something like this (and it would be real, no hoax from me) my footage would start off aimed directly at the creature. If it were walking away, you would hear me yell “HEY!!” in hopes it would stop, and look at me. The longer I can keep it in frame the better.

2) The creature walks like a dumb animal just out for a stroll. It doesn’t seem to walk as if it belongs in that environment. It just looks hoaxy. It’s not the speed of the walk… I don’t think the steps the creature takes look very real.

And why does every bigfoot walk perpendicular to the camera?

P&G did have guns. They’d sworn not to use them unless their lives were at stake… but still, they had them. Don’t think Patterson had a cancer diagnosis yet, although of course who knows. Some really really scared sighters had the animal in their sights and a weapon presumably big enough to do the job. Some not-scared folks were unarmed.

The camera shifting is downright bizarre; it all but invites you to call it contrived.

As for Patterson, he may have been an adrenaline junkie, but you can’t really say, 37 years posthumously with any degree of certainty, what level of fear dwelled in his psyche. Which brings up 2 points:

I may be wrong, but didn’t Patterson and Gimlin have hunting rifles with them on that day? For personal safety only, to be sure, but having personal weaponry like that would make me feel just a bit ballsier in the woods, despite any real or perceived effect against the creature.
And this may be going out on a limb, but when was Patterson diagnosed with cancer? If I knew I had a terminal disease I think I’d be much less concerned about bigfoot aggression, and what a way to go.

So to sum up, I think fear, or lack of, is a very telling component of this video. For without that instinctive fear of big furry things with poin-ted teeth, we wouldn’t be sitting here bandying this about on a PC. Our bones, or rather the bones of our direct line of family ancestors, would be the ones being dug up in a quarry somewhere.