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.

Teera – Flashy

Artist : Teera
Song : Flashy
Album: Untitled
Director: Raymond J. Schlogel
Production Company : Underground Planet

Well this one was a long time coming! Teera had hit me up  over a year ago about doing a video for her song “Flashy” though it never made it into production. Finally, about a month back, she hit me up again rededicated and refocused on her music. As this song pretty much demands choreography I turned once again to dancer/choreographer Carly Bell who did the choreography for Larissa Ness’s “Thoughts of You” and more recently made a second appearance in one of my other recent favs, Free Agent’s “I’m a Monster” . In short time she had tapped the three other amazing dancers, Marisa Mingea, Amanda Slick, (who were also both in Larissa Ness’s “Thoughts of You” music vid. and Alia Williams. Teera and the girls began practice and I began trying my hardest to think of a cool location that would lend itself well to this song. Knowing we were on a limited budget and didn’t have enough for a storyline the location had to be pretty spectacular.

Fast forward a couple weeks my crew and I were cruising around downtown picking up b-roll of various notable Austin spots. Had been a long day of shooting and had just finished telling them I think we have enough when I realized that we were near the Long Center and begrudgingly told the guys we needed to stop and get one more shot. As I describe it in the description of the test shot we got “As soon as we walked up the steps I near about dropped my jaw at the little disco stage installation.” It was just beyond perfect, I have no idea who’s bright idea it was to plunk down a dance stage right there but someone give that guy or gal a hug. The backdrop was incredible. I didn’t spend any time making the test shot perfect but if you’ve ever wanted to see me dance you can check out the test shot we did that night here, if you have any desire to see us be goofy, here it goes:

The rest is pretty much self-explanatory, great pop-song+beautiful charismatic singer+amazing location+hot girls+dancing+great crew+awesome camera=would have been hard to screw up this one.

In post I went completely crazy overboard with the glint and starburst filters but did very little, if any, color correction. For me those two effects took it to the next level and completely fit the theme of the song. Without doing the literal of the story arch due to a lack of budget I wanted to stress the whole “flashy” aspect of the song and provide an element that was strong enough eye candy that you overlook the fact that there’s no paparazzi nor any of the other numerous specific things mentioned in the lyrics. For me it’s kinda funny as I’ve never really cared for those two fx but in this particular vid I frikkin love em.

On a technical note, knowing that this was going to be an outdoor night shoot I finally bit the bullet on the nearly $900 Sony CBK-RGB01 Dual Link 444RGB Upgrade for my Sony F3 to enable me to shoot in S-Log. Though I recorded straight to the SXS card and didn’t get 4:4:4 with an external it still blew me away. As I already mentioned I really didn’t do much in the way of CC on this, the raw images themselves were stunning. The shots looked so good in fact that at times it almost looks like we faked the background and shot on greenscreen. The latitude between the highs and lows is markedly better, joyously better, and it made the upgrade worth every penny. That said I am still nothing but grateful that Sony dropped the price of the upgrade to around $900 as opposed to the 3 grand and change they had previously been selling it at. Edited in Sony Vegas.

As always huge thanks are due to my crew, Arturo Cavazos, Eliazar Mendoza, and Matt Friede for making my job so easy and Shane Mikeska for the great makeup!

installation

Dirty Wormz – Dirty Weather

Artist : Dirty Wormz
Song : Right Now
Album: The PARAZITE
Director: Raymond J. Schlogel
Production Company : Underground Planet

One camera live music video for Austin band “diRTy WoRMz”. Recorded with a Sony EX1 during the bands free fan appreciation show at Antone’s on Febuary 1st 2008.