Underground Planet is an award winning production company based in Austin Texas. From concept to completion we develop, plan, shoot and edit amazing videos for some of the most incredible bands and artist that a company like ours could ever hope to work with.

Aron Dees – American Dirt

This would be my “America!!! F*CK YEA!” video. I received a very nice email from a very nice wife inquiring about the possibility of getting a music video for her husbands new song “American Dirt.” They were planning a trip to Austin and were thinking that while they were down here getting one shot might make the trip all the more worthwhile.

So they sent the song over. When Aron said the line “And I’m proud of the soldiers that fought, and the ones that are fighting right now” I was in. 11 months ago I did a music video for “Free Agent” just days before one of its members, J Brooka, shipped off to Afghanistan. (vimeo.com/24435370) We’ve been in contact via the web a handful of times throughout his time there and am always relieved to get a message. At the time of this writing he has a month left to go and I, along with all his friends and family, can’t wait to have him back safe.

For me that was the motivation. The video came together relatively quick to coincide with their coming to Austin. Initially it was fairly simple but then the thought of Aron getting an actual tattoo came to mind. Though he all but scoffed at the idea, Amanda (remember I said she was a very nice wife) loved it and somehow convinced him to do it. And of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how awesome my tattooist Nathan Hebert is. Not just for the great tattoo he gave Aron for the vid but also for being willing to come in and do it on his day off. And big thanks to Atomic Tattoo on Burnet for letting us shoot in the shop. (atomic-tattoo.com) Note to Nate: We need to finish my sleeve ASAP! =)

You can check out Nathan’s other work or book him here: natestattoos.com

The night before we were to shoot I had yet another idea after being told they had their two sons coming with. I through out the idea that it might be cool, if we were even able, to find various public service type uniforms and have them more or less represent the either our future or a younger version of those in service now. They managed to get the costumes the day of the shoot and we bounced around Austin finding suitable backgrounds as we went. I feel I should apologize to all the women out there who take on the same roles as men and unfortunately are not represented in the video but these were the kids they had, don’t fault me for them not having a daughter! Do know that its as dedicated to you as to them =)

I also have to give a quick nod to Angela Lee for finding us the great location to shoot the band. (austinlocationscout.com) While I often don’t mind the fun of “gorilla” type shooting (just find a location and set up shop wherever I think might look groovy) it’s never fun getting kicked out of a location and with Aron and fam being in from out of town and not a whole lotta time to switch gears if something like that happened, it was nice having a great location with the landowners permission. Not to mention the landowner seemed to enjoy our little shebang and invited the entire band, cast and crew up to his house for a celebratory beer after we wrapped.

This was shot on a Sony PMW-F3 and edited in Sony Vegas.

http://www.arondees.com

For Love & Stacie

“Before he has a chance to think too much, struggling filmmaker Michael Davis throws himself wholeheartedly into crafting a celluloid valentine for Stacie, his very recent ex-girlfreind and soul mate. What could go wrong? Even Michael couldn’t have predicted the unbelievable twists and turns he would capture on his camera in the following days, which would eventually evolve into the feature “For Love & Stacie” – at once a courageous, cathartic, hopelessly romantic testament to the lengths to which we will go for love, and a darkly comic, almost-too-honest, painfully familiar odyssey through the kind of misery and psychological debasement that only a loved on is capable of inflicting”

So it’s been quite awhile since I made my feature doc For Love & Stacie, though it’s won a handful of awards it’s yet to make me rich … or even buy me a taco. With that in mind like most “artists” it’s become more important to me for it to be seen than for it to make me money. Of course it would be nice to have both but as the latter hasn’t happened I’ll just have to push for the former. Basically I’d rather give it away and hope its seen by many rather than continue to try and sell it and have it only seen by a few. All that said, here it is, free on the internet for the world, or at least a couple people with too much time on their hands, to see in all it’s original glory. Well, not “all” it’s original glory, had to compress it quite a bit to get it online but you get what I mean. I only have two favors to ask if you watch it:

1) Post something about it! Somewhere! Anywhere! Even if you hate it and want to dog it that’s fine with me. If you love it tell the world. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, your blog, message boards, whatever. Since it seems impossible for a little indi filmmaker to make a dime doing this (at least for this little indie filmmaker) it would mean everything to me and I’d be ever grateful just to know it’s been seen by many and hopefully liked by a few. So give it a mention and share the link.

2) No SPOILERS! Again, you can crap all over it if you want to when you post but do me the one honor of not giving anything away to those who haven’t seen it.

That’s it, if ya really REALLY like it you can find it for sale on DVD or a much higher res download on bside.com but honestly at this point it would actually mean more to me for people to post about it than to buy it.

DVD : http://www.bside.com/films/forloveandstacie

Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/loveandstacie

MySpace : http://www.myspace.com/loveandstacie

Look forward to hearing what you think. There are some tidbits about the film on it’s MySpace page but in here I’ll only say that For Love & Stacie went from concept to completion, by that meaning literally from the day I had the idea till the day it was shot and completely edited in six months. The total budget was 3k. It was filmed on Canon XL2’s (oh how I wish I had my EX1 back then!) and edited in Sony Vegas. Any questions just ask, but if your question has spoilers I won’t be able to answer! For full cast and crew visit it’s IMDB page:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0773284/

Thanks a bunch and hope you like it.

– Ray

P.S. Okay, a friend of mine nicely pointed out that since my electricity is about to get cut off because it’s two months behind and I don’t have rent, mayhaps it wouldn’t hurt to put up a donations page for those who enjoyed it and would be willing to make a little donation. I can’t imagine anyone would but if you do well God bless ya, a penny would make me smirk, a buck would make me smile, 5-10 and I’ll do a happy dance, and anything more I think I’ll just spontaneously wet my pants. Know that anything I manage to get back from this will go to rent and the pile of bills I’m behind on. If it ever gets more than I need (like that’ll happen) it will help me payoff some equipment. So if your feel so inclined just click the link below to PayPal and pick a number! I seriously find the quality of my life is just so much better when I have the lights on!