Artist : Free Agent
Song : I'm A Monster
Album: Free Agent
Director: Raymond J. Schlogel
Production Company : Underground Planet
J-Brooka and I had been working for some time on another concept for another video entirely, it was going to be for a song off of his solo album when last minute, two days before we were due to start shooting, everything had to switched gears. Long story short (not my strong point) there was cause for delay in production but the problem being that J-Brooka was in the military and only had a little over a week before he was leaving town to spend time with his family before shipping out to Afghanistan. It was pretty much devastating, not just because I tend to get emotionally invested in a song/concept but in this case because all of us wanted nothing more than to pull this off for him so that he could go overseas feeling like a rock star. It really didn't look like it was going to happen. A day later J called me and said he had an idea, he had another song called "I'm A Monster" that he had done with Money, Chivas Kimber & Genesis a group collectively known as "Free Agent". He said he just wanted something kind of in the vein of Michal Jacksons "Thriller". Time to scramble.
Like I'm sure a lot of people in this industry do I'm always making little notes in my head of people, places and things that may come in handy one day. As soon as he told me what he was thinking and I started listening to this track for so many obvious reasons a couple local special effects makeup guys came to mind. I had stumbled on their site over a year ago but till this came along hadn't had a project that would lend itself to their talents. Enter Matt Garcia & Michael Lynn Garcia of Global Fear Enterprises (globalfearenterprises.com). Not sure if Matt knew just how much of a panic I was in when I contacted him but told him the basics, that since we only had a few days before we had to shoot I just wanted to use some of the characters and costumes he had already created, shoot the artists performing, swap them out with the monsters, baddabing baddaboom, music video. Thankfully he was totally down and able to shift things around to accommodate our last minute shoot. The one caveat being that he thought he could only get three actors for the costumes though I needed four. I told him that wouldn't be a problem, I'd find someone. A phone call later my good friend Scott Ward, owner of Strange Brew (shameless plug strangebrewaustin.com) agreed to be the werewolf ... and bring coffee. If ya know me that's a big frikkin bonus. As a side note it would have been great if we could have just had the guys in the group in the costumes but as you may suspect getting someone into that and made up takes time that we didn't have the luxury of. The only way we would be able to pull off anything like this would be to have their doppelganger in the waiting watching the artists perform and do their best to mimic what they did.
I had a few places that I thought might work for the ambiance I was looking for but wasn't 100% that they were gritty enough. Doing what any good director/producer would do when you need something last minute I posted an ad on Craigslist while putting a backup plan into place. With one location locked while still hoping for another I went to work on finding girls, gotta have girls! Carly Bell had been working on doing the choreography for the previous concept and was totally on-board with switching gears and being in this one. Some may recognize her from the "Larissa Ness -- Thoughts of You" music video I had done, she did all the amazing choreography for that one as well (vimeo.com/7700275). Next to agree with little or no notice was Stephanie Schechter, she had been one of the stand out models in the "Threads of Hope Fashion Event" and was thrilled to have her join in(vimeo.com/11394371). Last, and to be completely cliché, defiantly not least was Kelsea Fontes. Though I had never met her in person we had become friends on Facebook through friends of friends and every one of her pics were just stunning. There was a fourth girl (name withheld!) was supposed to be there but more about that later.
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Cool Me Offby texasbamaboy2,817 views
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