With the snow-falls across the midwest, things haven’t been snowed under at Viking Productions and their work on the World of Depleted! Here’s the exciting news I was able to glean from some of the folks in the various production and marketing teams:
- Foley Magic: When the sound effects libraries and wild sound recorded on set can’t measure up to the needs of a film, the audio designer takes his team to the Foley stage to create super-intense sound effects! Having garnered the advice of pro sound designer, Kelley Baker, who has done the audio on many Hollywood films, including 1998’s Psycho, Day 419’s audio designer, John Howard, had a good idea of where to start for some intense stabbing effects needed for the film. Director Jeremy Hanke was on set to capture the footage of the events with his pocket video camera. Folks wishing to check out the cool video can go to: Cutting to the Quick: Foley Work on Depleted: Day 419
- Official World of Depleted Contributor FAQ Channel on Vimeo: As the folks at Depleted come close to releasing the official Contributor agreements (which have previously been in a private beta), they have now launched the World of Depleted Contributor FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) channel, which provides video explanations of different questions about how distribution works! Three videos kick it off and two more are slated to appear next week. Director Jeremy Hanke states, “this is a way to boil down the main concepts present in the contributor agreements into easy to understand videos. I believe these will help eliminate confusion and reassure fans who may be a bit nervous that this has been well thought out ahead of time!” He went on to say that future videos would feature more pictures and step-by-step examples! (Additionally, there will be a printed version of these questions and answers at the World of Depleted website in the future, for folks who prefer reading them.) To check it out, go to: the Contributor FAQ channel.
- New Changes for Contributors: Jeremy Hanke will be meeting with entertainment lawyer, Paul Battista, this week to add a new feature to the contributor contract. After an in-depth exploration of the current rules during the beta process with Brain Candy LLC’s founder, Scott Walker, it was decided that the previous rules had been a little restrictive in regards to Apocrypha. For those unfamiliar, two forms of submissions would be recognized at World of Depleted: Apocrypha and Canon. Apocrypha is designed to be much like Fan Fiction is today, but would have the advantage of being officially displayed at the World of Depleted website, giving publicity to the creator. Canon, on the other hand, would be accepted as official information and/or mythology, helping to sculpt the world of Depleted, and permit both the creator and Viking productions to profit from this arrangement. It has now been decided that both Canon AND Apocrypha will allow their creators to profit (a first for things that would be accorded fan fiction)! According to Jeremy Hanke, “We wanted to really encourage people to shoot for Canon, because that helps grow the official world and mythology, which is why, originally, Apocrypha didn’t have revenue share with it. However, we realized that this de-encentivized (if that’s a word!) people who wanted to create well-told stories in the Apocrypha section. As such, both will now be able to profit using the same revenue share model.” To make sure confusion doesn’t arise with fans, once submissions have been reviewed and official certified as either Canon or Apocrypha, Creators will be given an official Badge which they will be required to use in the marketing of any of their Depleted products.
- New Footage for the Depleted Feature: The striking Kat Carney will be filmed in Kentucky’s snowy tableau for some of the flashback scenes in the Depleted feature this weekend. 2nd Second Unit (no, not an alliterative typo!) DP Eric Henninger (who played the role of Nash Fitch in Depleted: Day 419) will be filming.
- New Crowdfunding Updates: As fans recall, director Jeremy Hanke has chosen to use crowdfunding to raise the majority of the funds needed for shooting the Depleted feature film. While he has not yet released the date that crowdfunding will commence, he has stated that he will be borrowing a page from successful microbudget filmmaker, Mike Flanagan. Flanagan recently created an award-winning feature film (Absentia) on a micro-budget utilizing a crowdfunding campaign so successful that he actually made nearly double his intended budget with it! One of the large elements was creating targeted, humorous videos for each of the members of the main cast and crew, that explored information about the film, but which were funny enough that people would pass them on to friends because they were welll-done and genuinely amusing.
- RPG News: Twilight 2013 Rumors put to rest. While there had been rumors that Viking Productions (the production company behind Depleted) was going to be able to arrange something with the now-defunct 93 Games Studios for their core fules behind Twilight 2013, according to co-founder Jeremy Hanke, the terms required were currently untenable and Viking has to pass. While Viking continues to explore other alternatives for an RPG backbone, folks who want a good ad hoc way of getting into the game will be pleased to know that the rights for Twilight 2013 appear to have reverted to the original Twilight 2000 creator, GDW. While there is no word on whether they will be creating new bound versions of the set, they are now selling .PDF versions of the Twilight 2013 set at RPGnow.com .
- World of Depleted: Rumors of New Films – While unable to be verified, there has been a rumor that Viking Productions may be officially producing another short film in the World of Depleted. My sources say that it has a working title of “WoD: Dark Day Tomorrow” and tells some of the backstory of the enigmatic sniper, James Fallhery, one of the protagonists of the Depleted feature.
More information as we know it on the World of Depleted!
WOW – a lot to work through in this update 🙂 (haven’t even gotten to the Gavin journal yet 😉
Most cool beans on the elevation of the Apocrypha – lots of potential and perhaps as much fun to see how the behind the story structures weave as well as the stories themselves.
Bummer on the RPG – I’ve passed the info along to my friends who already had thought of other possibilities and systems (one had the comment when first looking at T2013 that the system looked like calculus 😉 we are still very interested in RPG and similar branches of experiencing the WoD universe
Crowdfunding – cooools and a mega-awesome – having engaging ways to interact and draw backers in is important and can help build interest in and of itself – I loved the Tilt the movie Kickstarter campaign as the campaign itself became (and still is) part of the story (I am a proud resident of the TiltTown 🙂
Docwho,
Yeah, we’ve definitely been working our butts off over here! *grin*
Yeah, the Twilight 2013 thing was a bit of a bummer. But, like you said, the more complex methodology of some of the level 2 (and definitely level 3) rules for Twilight 2013 did get a bit overly complex. (Of course, I do want to go on to say that, folks who get the rules for Twilight 2013 will really find the character development engine–especially with the level 3 elements–to be an amazingly powerful way of making fully fleshed characters for films, stories, and novels! ) As such, I think there’s a lot of room for development of a separate RPG that will focus on existential things in this new world–exploration and free-form storytelling, rather than excessive math! (Shoot, I think it would be fun if the RPG elements had kind of that weird mix we see in Gavin’s journal, where it’s part mystery and suspense, with learning how to throw knives or cook with cast iron over a fire! BTW, got a swear by Gavin’s recipe for the truffle cream! It sounded so good from his journal that I had to try it out! I’m doing weight watchers and I made a low-fat version and it was still super yummy!)
As to crowdfunding, I couldn’t agree more. Truthfully, even if we were to get some sort of major sponsor that would totally cover the entire budget of the film, I would still want to have a crowdfunding campaign because it allows people to really get involved in the world of the film you’re wanting to create! (And their donations specifically help a franchise their interested in get made. That’s so empowering for fans, who, for too many years, have had to be at the whims of corporations who would cancel beloved shows or film franchises without providing a direct way for fans to get involved. Goodness, if the TV show Jericho had provided a crowdfunding option for fans to continue the show, they could have legitimately proceeded to have new shows for seasons to come even if CBS didn’t make an extra dime on advertising!)
Further, the content we plan to create for a well-done crowdfunding campaign is really cool stuff that lets you get to know the actors better and to feel a greater kinship with them!
All good stuff!
-Jeremy