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!

Endeverafter – Next Best Thing

Artist : Endeverafter
Song : Next Best Thing
Album: Kiss Or Kill
Director: Raymond J. Schlogel
Production Company : Underground Planet

For this one I was invited out to Nevada to direct, shoot, and edit a music video with the guys from Focal Bliss. They’d already done some amazing video work and wanted to see how it is that I do whatever it is that I do when making a music video first hand. A few bands and artist names were bandied about as were several locations. Three days before the shoot I was combing through MySpace and happened to stumble on this incredible band from Vegas called Endeverafter. Phone calls were made and somehow the pieces fell into place.

As it happened the band and their management picked the song “Next Best Thing” which not only was the one that I had hoped for but lent itself perfectly to one of the options we had available as a an option for a location, a little ghost town just outside the city limits.The desert, town and subsequent surroundings (replete with a crashed aeroplane) fit the mood and texture of the song flawlessly.

So basically this whole thing came together in about three days. Jim and Shawn from Focal bliss were great. Jim set the whole thing up and delivered on every level, not to mention doing an incredible job manning the jib, Shawn with the Stedicam and great eye for getting the shot.

As for the band, Michael, Tommi, Kristan, Eric it would be hard to ask for cooler guys to work with, especially considering that they had had no idea that they were even going to be shooting this just days prior. Consummate performers ready to entertain at the drop of a hat … even in the middle of the friggin desert. Definitely had a great time hanging out with em.

Huge thanks to Rob Hitt from Crush Management for miraculously being at the office well after hours when I first called and being willing to get the band on board to do this!

As for the technical this was shot with two Sony EX3’s and my trusty EX1 outfitted with a Letus35 Extreme. We had a jib, a Stedicam, a light truck (though we really only used bounce cards). Edited in Sony Vegas, CC with Magic Bullet.

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.

Crimson Envy – Ordinary (Live)

A quick and dirty lil live music vid for Austin/San Antonio band Crimson Envy. This was a one camera shoot so basically I bounced around the club grabbing different angles during their set and than through the magic of editing whittled it all down to one song … hence the uber short shots. The audio was taken from the board, huge props to Tatum Ruthardt for the final mix down.

Shot with a Sony EX1 w/Letus35 Extreme, edited in Sony Vegas with liberal applications of Magic Bullet Looks.

Adan Davila – I’m Sorry

Artist : Adan Davila
Song : Sorry
Album: Open Up
Director: Raymond J. Schlogel
Production Company : Underground Planet

This music video is for Houston Texas solo artist Adan Davila. Since this was going to be Adan performing without a band I wanted to try to incorporate some other elements to keep it visually interesting. Of course when working on a budget and needing some additional footage what better than old footage that’s now in the public domain?

I didn’t want to simply make the shots of Adan black and white or use a generic film effect so I decided to go with more of a ” Pleasantville” look. After some thought on how to best accomplish this it occurred to me that the easiest most efficient way would be by simply lighting everything but him with green gels and removing the saturation in post. There are pre-effect pics along the bottom right of this page to see how it looked before removing the saturation from the background.

This video was shot and edited in three days though countless hours were spent combing through footage to find the right clips that would capture the passion, angst, and longing that I hoped to convey … with just a hint of levity thrown in for good measure. =)