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

My first music video for a pop song! Not to mention my first with choreography! Whoot! 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 being willing 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.

larissaness.com

forloveandstacie.com

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 : bside.com/films/forloveandstacie

MySpace : myspace.com/loveandstacie

Facebook : facebook.com/loveandstacie

And of course you can find me on my main site which has links to all my little networking places right here:

undergroundplanet.com

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:

imdb.com/title/tt0773284/

Thanks a bunch and hope you like it.

- Ray

P.S. I'm also allowing you to download it on Vimeo for free, link is on the bottom right of the page. It should play just fine on your iPod or iPhone! =)

P.S.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! So here's the link for those inclined:

PayPal : tinyurl.com/lo3djb

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.

dexterfreebish.com

So this is part of the closing video for the "Ray's Efudex Treatment" video, it was shot and edited this segment in about 4-5 hours (this segment anyway). If you haven't seen it yet you might want to just watch it at the end of the Efudex vid as it might make a wee bit more sense. =)

You can view that here:

vimeo.com/1793802

And if you haven't yet make sure to check out the video blog Katy Perry has here on Vimeo ... oh, and don't forget to tell her ya liked this vid ... and that she should hire me to do a music vid for her!!! Well, I can dream can't I? =)

vimeo.com/user372736

* The term "lip dub" was coined by Jakob Lodwick, founder of Vimeo. The videos are filmed with the song dubbed over the footage during editing, which lends theatrical heft and volume to what would otherwise be a routine lip-sync.

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. =)

myspace.com/adandavila
cdbaby.com/cd/adandavila