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.

Zhenya Kolykhanov – отец (Father)

Artist : Zhenya Kolykhanov
Song : отец (Father)
Director: Raymond J. Schlogel
Production Company : Underground Planet

This one was somewhat spontaneous. I actually first met Zhenya about two months ago at a club where he was playing with his band Zeerok & The Immigrants. A band which on their MySpace page describe themselves as “Rockabilly, Jump Swing”. The band was pretty incredible and something about a Russian guy doing Rockabilly in Austin Texas was just to cool.

About a week later he invited me out to see him do his solo thing at a little upscale chocolate shoppe called Viva Chocolato! In stark contrast to what I had seen just days before, here he played a variety of string instruments while running them and his voice through a loop machine. I’d seen some pretty amazing solo stuff using a loop machine before but till then it had always been hip hop/rap performers. Essentially an artist will record bits of music or a beat by tapping on on control board with their foot and then trigger their playback which “loops” that bit of recorded sound. He would play and record a bit on a banjo, have that looping, put down the banjo, pick up a guitar, add a little bit, put down the guitar, move over the bass, add the bass line, all while singing whatever song he happened to be playing at the time. It was amazing to watch. I was especially impressed by this song because despite using all this modern gadgetry the song itself was traditional, classic and to see it created live was fascinating.

Fast forward a couple days and Zee came over to talk about the vid were going to do for Zeerok & The Immigrants. I told him that on a side note I’d really like to do something to show his solo stuff. As luck would have it he had all his equipment in his van outside. I stapled a couple black blankets to the wall, threw up a couple lights, he set up, plugged in and played. As noted at the beginning of the video the audio was done in one take, just as he performs it live, we just ran an XLR from his Boss RC-20 Loop Station to the camera. He replayed it a handful of times so I could get additional angles and then in post I used black and white and split screen to denote the parts that were being looped.

myspace.com/zeerok

Dexter Freebish – The Other Side

Artist : Dexter Freebish
Song : The Other Side
Album: The Other Side – The Best of Dexter Freebish
Director: Raymond J. Schlogel

Production Company : Underground Planet

I got a message from Chris Lowe, bass player for Dexter Freebish, saying that the band was putting out a greatest hits album that included some new tracks and that they were interested in making a vid. As someone who, like most, loved their tune “Leaving Town” I couldn’t help to be a bit giddy!

Up till now I’ve always stayed away from doing an all black and white video. To be honest I guess I’ve just seen too many bad YouTube vids that have employed this technique or similarly, a film look filter, as a kind of short cut or crutch in an attempt to make a video appear “artistic”. Not that it’s never done effectively or even to imply that I used it well for that matter! Just to say that I was never willing to go there. That said, listening to this song a hundred times or more while trying to visualize a performance piece … I never saw it in color.

We started setting up for the shoot at 6 PM on Sunday evening, broke down at around midnight and the video went live that Tuesday before midnight in all it’s full black and white glory. Thanks to the band for letting me go this route not to mention being so awesome during the shoot and having a great song to work with! Kyle, Scott, Chris, Rob, you guys rock, nuff said.