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.

Larissa Ness – Thoughts of You

Artist : Larissa Ness
Song : Thoughts of You
Album: Hello
Director: Raymond J. Schlogel
Producer: Ruben Cantu
Production Company : Underground Planet
See Extended Credits Here : Extended Credits Page

My first music video for a pop song! Not to mention my first with choreography! Whoot! I think I had watched too much “So You Think You Can Dance”, just enough to want to do this and just enough to drive our Choreographer Carly Bell crazy by asking her for all sorts of dance move things as if I knew what I was talking about. Can’t even begin to say what a blast this one was.

This would be more or less a dream sequence theme part of which was inspired by two pictures of Larissa that were taken by the award winning photographer Maria Bernal. One was of Larissa in which she was wearing a black bra, another was of her feet wearing high heel shoes resting on the keyboard. Those two elements became the first building blocks of the concept.

So, the concept, in case you missed it, is that Larissa is missing her guy. In her dream she wakes up and is living in this amazing mansion, she goes down stairs wearing only the bra and slip that she woke up in and finds that there is a party going on. Everyone at the party is formal, cordial if not a bit pretentious and putting on airs as they exchange frivolous banter. No one really notices her nor her lack of appropriate attire.

Her love interest is one of the hired help, a waiter who she makes eyes at after she makes her way to the piano and begins performing. The guests begin to dance, but even in their dance they are stiff, formal, lackluster. The waiter is seen, essentially going to her level, as Larissa is only wearing her undergarments he removes his uniform just before the breakdown in the song. He climbs atop the piano and extends his hand, she accepts and joins him. Whether its the music or in response to Larissa and the waiters chemistry or just because its a dream the rest of the guests follow suit and disrobe, shedding the formality, we see them more as individuals, they smile more, and the dance changes from the formal ballroom-esque style that they had been doing earlier to something more fun, sensual and free flowing. Larissa and the Waiter make their way back to the piano, they lay down and he covers her with his red jacket. We see a close up of Larissa singing the last few lines as the camera pulls back and we notice that the jacket is actually a blanket and she is in bed, alone, and thinking of him.

Didn’t get all that from watching it? No worries, I’m a fan of abstract and not being to literal and at the end of the day hopefully even those that don’t necessarily understand the concept will enjoy the visuals nonetheless.

This one truly was a blast, from Larissa’s willingness to learn to play the piano with her toes to the two months of practice and choreography not to mention shooting at one of the most amazing homes I’ve ever seen making this one was an incredible experience on every level.

Black Tusk – Red Eyes, Black Skies

For this one I should warn ya that depending on your musical tastes you may want to turn your speakers wayyy up or wayyyy down (I turn em up). This vid came together pretty quick after a call from Director Kevin J Custer who was coming to town in three days to do a music video shoot with the band Black Tusk from Savannah who were here for a gig. He was going to direct and edit the piece but needed me to DP, dig up a location, light, equip and crew the shoot, not an easy task with so little notice but as ya can see we pulled it off. Kevin was great to colab with and he did a frikkin amazing job on edit. All the guys in Black Tusk were awesome and gave 110% each and every take.

This was shot on an EX1 with the trusty Letus35 Extreme.

Funny side note, about six months later I was asked to shoot some bands for Roxwel at Emo’s. Showed up for the gig while the bands were doing sound check and much like Norm on Cheers walked in the door and heard “RAY!”, Black Tusk just happened to be in town again and were on the bill. I’ll suppress my desire to break into a Disney song (“It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all …) but the happenstance of working with them again randomly was not lost on me. I’ll post a link to it once it goes live.

Here’s the link to the the Interview segment I shot and edited for Roxwel:

Black Tusk – Interview & Live Performance on Roxwel

And the other funny thing about the interview is the bit I included at the beginning where Athon is saying “Is the camera on? Is the f*cking camera on?” was him giving me sh*t (forgive the French) because while we were shooting the music vid,  just before we were supposed to take a break for pizza, we did an entire take, great shot down the neck of the guitar, looked awesome, Kevin called cut, band put down their instruments and I realized much to my horror that the camera must have still been rolling from the last shot so when I hit record at the beginning of this shot I had actually paused the camera and hadn’t recorded it. After fessing up and a good bit of ribbing from Kevin and the band we re-did the take and thankfully the pizza wasn’t too cold by the time they got to it.

Last but not least if ya started digging this band like I did you’ll wanna check out their live performance without the previous intercut interview:

Black Tusk – Live Performance on Roxwel