BUCKFIELD - Like a kid with something big to say, Michael Raymond talks about his movie-to-be all at once.

Punctuating his storytelling with constantly moving hands, he describes his plans for a film with ominous music, shocking jolts and surprising laughs.

Almost as an afterthought, he adds that one of his main characters will be Bigfoot.

The hirsute creature will create many of the scares in the 45-minute horror/comedy, tentatively titled "Big Stuff."

"It's not cutesy, cutesy or anything," said Raymond, an artist from Massachusetts who settled in Buckfield six years ago. "It'll be no 'Harry and the Hendersons.' "

Imagine a movie by "Sixth Sense" creator M. Night Shyamalan, only with laughs, he said.

Raymond came up with the idea for his story, set on Buckfield's Streaked Mountain, last year.

He wrote a short screenplay and immediately began imagining whole scenes, using his mountaintop home, barn and fields as the location.

He plans to shoot the film over four days this August or September.

The cost: $15,000.

He has raised about half of the money. He believes the rest will come.

"It always does," he said.

During the 1990s, Raymond made two short films, "Blue Plate Special" and "A Touch of Gray."

He wrote, directed and edited the movies, which were recognized by Worldfest Houston and the Boston Globe film festival.

Yet, to Raymond, the biggest prize came from Francis Ford Coppola, the maker of "Apocalypse Now" and "The Godfather" films. He met him at the Houston festival.

"He told me he loved my movie," he said. "That's a big, big statement coming from Francis Ford Coppola. That's cool."

The famous director and vintner even gave him a bottle of his wine.

However, it didn't inspire Raymond to make a follow-up. His daughter was young and his career as a painter was keeping him busy.

Thirteen years passed before Bigfoot called.

In part, it came from some of his time alone in the woods near his home.

"Your mind starts moving sideways," he said. He'd see puzzling stuff - like the tops of trees that were twisted and ripped apart - and stories would start churning.

"The seed has always been there within me," he said. "I've always been fascinated by Bigfoot."

He believes he exists, he said, tapping a stack of Bigfoot texts on his kitchen table.

"If one sighting is accurate, there's a creature," Raymond said. "Is everybody delusional? Is everybody wrong? I've come to the conclusion that there is something out there that is unexplainable."

Raymond's next step is to gather a cast and crew.

"I'm in early pre-production," he said.

However, he has a composer who has already begun writing music for the soundtrack.

Jeremy Ellis of North Turner is writing themes for the characters, including Bigfoot.

"The entity of the creature is in the soundtrack," Raymond said.

Early versions of Ellis' work use violins and French horns, tuned by computer to a much lower note, to punctuate the sound of Bigfoot walking through the forest.

Ellis, a longtime member of local bands and theater orchestras, said he jumped at the chance to work on a film soundtrack.

For the past two weeks or so, he has been writing, using Raymond's descriptions.

"I've just tried to visualize being in the woods by myself," Ellis said.

The filmmakers hope to give people a fright when the movie is completed. Raymond has targeted Thanksgiving for a possible premiere. Then he'll send it to festivals, including a pair of biggies: Sundance and Toronto.

His aim is to get a movie studio to open its wallet for a feature-length version of his story.

"That's where I really want this film to go," he said. "I'm ready."