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.

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

Drama – Full Version Now Online

So I had been pushing Timeca to do a short for some time, an incredible actress with a million great story ideas. “Drama” was one she had mentioned and one that I fell immediately in love with. Maybe it’s because when I was a kid when I told my Dad I was getting picked on he said “What do ya want me to do about it? Ya gotta stand up for yourself”. The next day I did, got my ass kicked. Anyway, as I was saying, we had bounced around a lot of ideas and this was actually part of an longer story she had thought of doing. From the first time I heard this particular part of the storyline I thought it would work really well as a short, picking up from when Drama gets out of bed and walks by her Auntie who’s passed out, ending with Drama’s moment of self-realization in the mirror, perhaps not exactly Norman Rockwell but a slice of life nonetheless.

Took me five months to convince Timeca to go for it and once we decided to do this it was cast, found locations, shot and edited within a week and I really couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out. We got incredibly lucky with the casting, only auditioned 6 girls for the parts of Drama and the bully and don’t think we could have found anyone better had we auditioned 100. Huge props to Ann Woodward (Drama) and Gianna Redeemer (the bully). Both just amazing and incredible to work with, I know we will be seeing a whole lot more of you two!

Of course Timeca rocked it, never had any doubts about that, and never had any doubts about her screen love interest of the moment played by Aaron Spivey-Sorrells. For those of you who watch “Friday Night Lights” you’re probably familiar with his work, he’s appeared in every episode except the pilot as Coach Spivey. We were all nothing but flattered that he was interested in being a part of our humble little short.

As for the making of stuff that I like to babble about, we shot this over one verrrrrry long day and picked up a few shots over a couple hours a few days later. Because of the nature of this one I wanted to keep it with a more real/doc type feel and opted for a handheld look. A little ironic that two of our actors were from Friday Night Lights (Timeca has also made an appearance on the show) and I went with the swishy sway cam but what can I say? When it works it works. My favorite shot of the whole piece is the shot coming off the roof. Took us awhile to find a location and when we did winded up with one that didn’t have rooftop access.

Thankfully, Austin Habitat for Humanity did have a trusty old lift truck that hoisted us up two at a time with our equipment so we could get the shot I wanted.

Side note, the song playing in the background while Drama is running from the other kids was a song called “Get Low“ by First Class Fresh who Timeca’s son, Elgyn A. Chandler Jr. is a member of. The group makes a guest appearance as the boys who tease Drama as she’s walking by. You can see the music video I did for their song “Wobble House” here:

First Class Fresh – Wobble House

This was shot on a Sony EX1 with a Letus35 extreme, edited in Sony Vegas.