PIRATES!

Mostly, I am amused. It took all of 4 days for someone (probably a 'bot) to pirate Beast and make it available for download. You may have seen other cases on YouTube where a movie appears to be there... but really it's just a video to redirect you to their site where you can (allegedly) download the film. Am I angry. No. Maybe the tiniest bit. I mean what is the point of pirating something that is free? Am I honoured? Uh... sure? Really though, no. An internet spider crawled out and found the words "Full Movie" in the title of the official YouTube version and posted it at least partially automatically. Mostly I am entertained, though not very well. Its like my five year old told me the chicken crossing the road joke. Was it inevitable? Yup. Was it objectively funny? Nope. Was it noteworthy that we past that threshold? Yeah... but so what? Anyhow... here is what I posted in the comments:

Hi. I am the co-writer and co-director of this film. This is pretty hilarious that this is here.Yeah it's a copyright issue, technically - but...whatever - its a new world technologically speaking, we all have to adapt. What is absurd here is that anyone would click on said link in order to get to see and or download a 4K version of the film. The movie was shot pre RED (although we talked a lot on set about REDs as their release was imminent and our Director of Photography as well as one of our equipment suppliers were high on the waiting list to receive RED cams when they were released)... but Beast of Bottomless Lake was not shot in 4K. No amount of up-res-ing will ever make it 4K. EVER. Last week Provost Pictures decided that the film had made all the money it was reasonably likely to make and that in the spirit of making the film available to the most people possible, that it would become available on the most immediate and basic of platforms - for free - on YouTube. So don't download it from someone who wants to put tracking cookies and/or outright malware on your computer, just watch it here: https://youtu.be/whW57js2XjA You will also find every single DVD extra on the same channel that the main feature is on, as well as links to every single related video that we could find that was about the film from Provost Pictures' original channel and other sources - News interview, talk-backs from Conventions and more. And the quality? Well, considering that the film was never in 4K in the first place and that this pirate copy was almost certainly acquired from the YouTube version (this appeared only 3 days after Provost Pictures released it on YouTube) - the only way you are really going to do better is if for some crazy reason it ends up back on cable TV or PoD... and even then, the difference in quality is next to impossible to see with the naked eye. Oh, and hey... enjoy the film. You are welcome. Oh.... and.... the 20th C Fox production card at the top of this? Totally bogus. Beast of Bottomless Lake is not and never was a Fox asset.

The Beast is in the Stream

People have been asking us for ages how to see The Beast of Bottomless Lake on line.  We haven't had an answer for them - let alone a good one... but that is in part because we hadn't settled upon one. We did explore a number of options. The ones we were most interested in had too high a bar of entry - either requiring a significant investment we didn't really expect to get back, or having gate-keepers who could not be dashed-past (it rhymes with "pet-chicks"). When we took a step back and asked ourselves what our main goal was, the answer was "for people to see the film easily."  Once that was clear, our top option became pretty clear... the number one free video platform on the internet - YouTube.

So, here it is - THE BEAST OF BOTTOMLESS LAKE is AVAILABLE to VIEW on YOUTUBE for free.

But wait! There is more!

Not only is the movie available on YouTube on a dedicated channel, but so are every single feature from the DVD. ALL the commentaries. ALL the deleted and extended scenes. ALL the featurettes. As well as a few specially created playlists for watching all of the latter two groups of videos together in one sequence, and (yeah, more) a playlist which includes every video about The Beast of Bottomless Lake from the main Provost Pictures channel, as well as a few that we found on various other channels - news items and interviews mostly in that latter designation.

So, if there is anyone you've really wanted to tell about The Beast, or whom you wanted to see it, it has never been easier.  Just send them the link.

And a bit of a teaser....

Obviously the posts about The Beast of Bottomless Lake are getting fewer and farther between, and truth be told, after this announcement, there isn't likely to be much more to shout from the rooftops...
HOWEVER...!
In the process of preparing to put the Beast on YouTube we came across a bunch of amusing material that has never been seen - at least not clearly.  Behind the scenes photos.  Text from various printed props. That kind of thing.

There will be a few posts of some of these gems over the next while before we officially sign off from this blog (until such time as there is something unexpected to report upon.)