Uncle Larry, the someday Official OnMilwaukee.com House Band has set a Sunday, June 12 shoot date for its next music video.
The four-minute video is for "Chandelier," a song off Uncle Larry's upcoming EP, "House Fly," the follow-up to 2009's LP "The Life and Times of Frederick Caesar." "House Fly" will be released this summer.
Uncle Larry vocalist and guitarist Billy Judge Baldus says that the music video for "Chandelier" is one of four that the band plans to make. "One music video to go along with each song off of 'House Fly,'" he says.
Uncle Larry recorded "House Fly" with their prize money from the award earned for their video "The Life and Times of Frederick Caesar" at the 2010 Milwaukee Mad March Film Festival.
Uncle Larry is Baldus, along with drummer Garrick Karpinski and bassist Shane Frederick Wagner. The band describes its work as "colorful DIY punky pop songs energized with a grungy sweetener and a heaping spoonful of stage performance and visuals." Uncle Larry released its first album, "Battery Acid Style," in 2005 and has played many live shows locally as well as on the college circuit.
According to Baldus, the concept for the "Chandelier" video involves a woman (played by Baldus' girlfriend Anna Stone) making a homemade hoop video to post online when some friends show up (played by Barb Ignatiev, Kristi Tarantino and Rachel Ignatiev) and things get a little wild.
A police SWAT team (played by Ryan Baker, Mike Baldus and two Uncle Larry band members) arrive, in pink uniforms, to bust up the party.
"Just when the hoop dancers are about to get caught a magical tunnel vortex thing appears. The dancers and officers are hypnotized by this supernatural force and look into the tunnel. At the other end, awaiting anyone who dares to enter, lies a beautiful tropical island inhabited by a strange hairy couple," says Baldus.
It will be interesting to see how the production teams pulls off the "hairy couple," who are played by Stone and Baldus, presumably, from video producer Baldus' storyboard renditions.
The video production team includes director of photography Tate Bunker, winner of two Milwaukee International Film Festival "Best Milwaukee Filmmaker" awards and production assistant Kyle Buckley. In addition to playing characters in the video, Anna Stone also choreographs the hoop dancers.
Baldus plans to release the "Chandelier" music video in fall 2011. And Baldus says it's destined for the 2011 Milwaukee Film Festival.
Music videos for the other songs off of "House Fly" are already in the works. The band shot part of the video for their song "At the Beach" in March on a beach in Cudahy.
The other two songs, "Love Is A Thing" and "Rice Pudding," are in pre-production.
"My plan is that when all four music videos are done they will link together so that they can all be watched together as a single short film. The end of one video will flow into the start of the next – even the last video will flow into the start of the first video – an infinite loop," says Baldus.
