Hey guys,
I”m pleased to let you know that Episode 2 of Day 419 is now live!
To check it out, simply go to: World of Depleted’s Day 419 area !
-Jeremy
Episode 2 of Day 419 is now live!
Day 419 DVD completed…
Lots of people were wondering when the official Day 419 DVD will be getting out there. Well, we have now completed it. While we will be reviewing additional DVD distribution options in the future, we will be selling a batch utilizing Amazon.com’s CreateSpace service. This will mean that, as soon as all the stuff is mailed in and approved, you’ll be able to buy it on either the CreateSpace site or the Amazon.com site. (Of course, considering the Amazon.com site takes a much bigger cut of profits, if you’d like to buy it from the CreateSpace site, that’d be a great help! *smile*) We will then be setting up the official Day 419 IMDB page, as, for all practical purposes, using CreateSpace to sell your film is the most direct way to get IMDB to provide you with a page for your film, since IMDB is now owned by Amazon.com, as well.
Folks who pick up the DVD will get to see the film in its entirety with high quality audio and have access to both of the Day 419 teasers, as well as getting a chance to see and hear some of the time sensitive codes hidden in Day 419 without other distractions! Each screen on the DVD includes part of the hand crafted sounded design we set up for Day 419, so, like the short, you can get as much from what you hear as what you see! To reward fans who choose to purchase the DVD via the CreateSpace site or through our Distrify player, if you purchase it through either of these options you will be emailed a copy of the official .PDF of the Day 419 Novella and, as a special treat, a .PDF of the shooting script of Day 419!
Just our way of saying thank you for all your support!
-Jeremy
Taking off the gloves and getting real…
Hey folks,
One of the things that’s been brought abundantly to my attention of late is that the World of Depleted needs to be something that is authentic and honest. We’re exploring some pretty dark elements of the human condition and one of the most pervasive mysteries surrounding this world. I realized that I was often times so tied up with trying to make everything look just right–whether it be the site, or the publicity, or the interactivity–that, at times, I was slowing down the process of getting content out there. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t strive for excellence, because that will always be of primary importance, but there’s a big difference between striving for excellence and being swamped in the doldrums of perfectionism. One is attainable and helps you move forward, while the other swamps your creativity and sucks your soul dry.
As such, to help combat that, I’m launching the new Lo-Fi World of Depleted podcast. Experimental as everything else in World of Depleted, this pod-cast has all the niceties of modern filmmaking stripped away and, with it, lots and lots of the time wasting perfectionism I struggle with, as well. I’ll shoot it with my old school iPhone 3GS with no internal edits, no extra lights, no tripod, and no extra audio. In the process, my commentary is going to be a lot more raw and a lot more real. You’ll get to see things we’re working on at the good times, but also at the bad times, when we want to bash our heads through walls.
At the end of the day, the time for fear is past. If we are to explore the darkest things that go thump in the night, we’ve all got to move beyond our own insecurities and the things that tie us up! Hopefully this will prove to be beneficial to all of us as we explore the future!
I look forward to sharing the journey and the mystery together!
With that said, I invite you to check out the two initial podcasts, below!
-Jeremy
The Contributor site gets a facelift…
If you’ve been checking out the Contributor’s Inner Cloister recently, you’ve undoubtedly seen some of the many changes that have been going on there. Amidst the release of Day 419, we’ve been tweaking the layout pretty substantially. The new page is quite a bit different than the old layout and that was intentionally arrived at to provide the community based setup that we want for our Contributors. The fact that the looks are fairly disparate isn’t a huge issue, as they’re supposed to represent a visual difference that would be seen when moving from the battered exterior of a post-Fall city into the untouched inner recesses where secrets and mysteries lurk undisturbed.
Some of the new features that I’m excited to be able to share with you are an auto-login that takes you to your own personal Contributor page. When you haven’t logged in, you’ll default on our news page, like normal, but, after you log in, your personal page will be your home page. (You’ll still be able to easily click on the News menu and check out all the newest breaking news, of course.) We feel that this will make communicating with one another much easier and faster, not unlike getting on to your main Facebook page (although I’m biased enough to feel our layout is cleaner than facebooks).
Other new elements we’re unveiling are a quote generator that has a plethora of quotes I’ve hand-picked to rotate from time to time as you navigate about the site, which will reside tastefully on the left sidebar. Some are short quotes, while others are from well known (and lesser known) books and songs. Not every quote is designed to be something that is representative of something good (like a few quotes from Adolf Hitler, for example), but all of them are designed to make you think about the human condition in the light of the World of Depleted. I believe that many of these quotes will surprise you (at least, many of them surprised me) and, from surprise, often comes creative inspiration! We’re also optimizing what information is in your sidebars, so that you have important things easily accessible to you whenever you log in!
As always, there are a few things we’re working on that haven’t gotten all the kinks worked out. One of them is a sidebar mounted music player which, when fully completed, will allow special “listening” room chambers where you can listen to music from a Contributor artist while you chat with other collaborators in a chat room. Right now, there are still a few bugs to work out (such as the fact that the player vanishes when you log in), so you can sample the music we have up right now (from zero-project’s Fairytale album) by logging out of your account and clicking on the sidebar player when it appears.
Further, if you check your custom profile area, you’ll note that there are a few new options, including an ability to choose what “role” you will take in this world. When completed, you’ll be able to choose a number of basic roles that you want to associate with (such as Knights of Xeno, Neo-Palidins, Dark Dreamers, Healers, Reapers, The Order of the Steel Rood, or even the N.I.R.) based on your personal ideals in this world. As you improve your skills by publishing more work in this world, you’ll be able to rise in rank in the role you’ve chosen. (For example, if you chose to be a Dark Dreamer, you will start out as a novitiate, but you can rise to visionary, prophet, and finally to seer as you progress through the ranks.) And, with greater rank will come greater levels of authority and control within the actual structure of the Inner Cloister, giving you access to places that few others have!
I think that adding a role-playing style edge to our creativity will only make this a more interesting experience for all involved! And, of course, we’ll be treading a careful path so that folks who are uninterested in the game-type mechanics will not find them overbearing against their own speed of creativity in this world.
If you haven’t been by the new World of Depleted Contributor site, go ahead and check it out!
-Jeremy Hanke
Interim Leader of the League of Dark Dreamers
To Check out the Day 419 Pre-Release…
Hey Folks,
The Day 419 pre-release is now available for viewing pleasure. The $1.99 rental price will allow you to watch the film through three times over thirty days in HD quality. We chose to use the Distrify release service to release this in this manner, as it has options for a lot of scalability for additional elements for the film down the road and has a great commision option for re-posters. Folks who would like to embed the player in their own blogs will be given a 10% commission for each person who rents it. Additionally, because the Distrify player will allow us to link in the Collector’s edtion DVD, soundtrack, and commemorative gear associated with the film as purchasable when they become available, folks who repost the player will make commissions off all of those sales in the future, as well!
Folks who view the film will get access to a code which will lead them to the secret epilogue of the film. Additionally, the first fifty rentals of the film will receive a free specially mastered MP3 copy of credit track, “I Want to Destroy Something Beautiful,” by Josh Woodward.
With no further ado, we invite you to check out Day 419 in it’s rental pre-release at:
World of Depleted’s: Viking Productions Page
-Jeremy
Final touches…
Hey folks,
As we have now finished the last touches on the Master version of Day 419, I wanted to do a more official announcement about release and how it will come out.
The pre-release date of Monday, the 17th, will allow fans to see the film in its entirety and in HD early for a $1.99 rental fee. (Folks who choose to rent it will get a surprise bonus!)
Starting on the 22nd, we will begin making the film available on the World of Depleted YouTube page in a serial fashion. Once a week, for four weeks, a new episode will be released. In addition, each week, we’ll have a new podcast with behind-the-scenes information about the making of the film to go along with it. For folks who want to purchase the Day 419 DVD, it will be released in the near future, and will include a number of special bonuses for fans of the franchise!
I appreciate all your support, both in the making of this World and in the making of this film! We, at Viking, look forward to new ways we can help you explore new elements in Depleted!
-Jeremy Hanke
Day 419, Writer/Director
Login Error on World of Depleted’s website corrected…
As some of you may know, we recently had a plugin issue at the World of Depleted website which required people to login or register before they could even view the site. This has been corrected so that anyone can view the main the site, regardless of membership. While additional options and secrets are unlocked with membership, we will never exclude fans and those who explore our site by forcing them to sign up first!
We do apologize for the confusion!
-Jeremy Hanke
Co-Founder
World of Depleted
Update on Day 419 progress…
Hey folks,
I wanted to touch base with you all personally on the Day 419 progress. As you know, we’ve been trying our utmost to get a first master of Depleted: Day 419 finished by June 1st. The team at Oakwood Sound Design spent all day on Thursday working on it. While I was only able to be there for part of it, we’re really close to the end. While it doesn’t look like we’ll quite make June 1st for the 1st master, we believe it’ll be done around a week from that date. Once the first master is completed, we’re almost ready to release it. What will occur at that point is that we, as the creative team, will make any final tweaks that need to occur after the first master is done and then allow a few weeks of space to occur, so we can watch the film with fresh eyes and, more importantly, fresh ears, to make sure everything works together sonically. Doubtlessly a few more corrections will occur and then we will be ready to release it at that point!
One interesting thing with this entire process is that we’re going to have two versions of Day 419 available almost from the outset. One will be the “Internet Mix”, which will feature maximized audio, so people can hear the film properly on everything from an iPhone’s speaker to a battered pair of computer speakers. This will be hosted on YouTube (likely as two parts, as the film is clocking in at just over 21 minutes). However, because maximizing audio so it could be heard on all possible systems gets rid of a lot of detail, this version will minimize a lot of the amazing work that was done by the professional audio team at Oakwood Sound Design for this film. As such, we will have a higher quality version with a much more dynamic audio track available for people to watch in one setting which will be hosted by Sorenson360. We highly recommend that you watch this version on a system with either a good speaker system or with a good pair of headphones. (Interestingly enough, while really good headphones can be amazingly expensive, I recently discovered a pair of headphones that’s less than $5 that allows you to hear a lot of the amazing lows and range in Day 419. It was a happy accident, as I was looking for some inexpensive headphones that could be essentially “disposable” and I managed to find ones that had amazingly good quality for their price point. As we will soon have a World of Depleted store for elements that you might find useful, these headphones will definitely be on that list! )
Now that all the content has been finalized for Day 419, I can confirm that there will be codes hidden inside of Day 419. Where they are or how many there are, I will not tell. However, I can tell you that every one of them will impact your viewing experience of Day 419 and give you a greater clue as to where some of the story archs are headed. (Now, with that said, while some clues are obvious once you decode them, most of them must be first decoded and then thought about more fully to be truly understood.)
At the end of the day, we hope that this film will have been worth the patience of our Contributors and fans, and that it makes even more people interested in this Creative Community as a whole.
We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for your support and enthusiasm,
Jeremy
Writer/Director, Day 419
Co-Founder, World of Depleted
The Second Depleted Day 419 Trailer Is Now Up
Hey folks,
We’ve kept you waiting longer than we wanted to release a new teaser trailer, but now we have one for you to watch and think about! This one has final visual effects, actual sound design from the film, and official music from the sound track collection in it by David Todd Singleton.
We hope that you enjoy it as we continue to prepare Day 419 for final release!
New information about Depleted: Day 419…
Friends and Depleted Family,
A lot of you have been waiting patiently for Day 419’s final appearance. Those of you who’ve submitted pieces have had a chance to see some tantalizing segments of the film, but no one has yet had a chance to see it in its entirety. While I still can’t give you an exact date on the release, I can tell you its getting very close as we wrap up our audio and score work and get into final mastering.
With that said, I am working on a reward for your patience. As many of you undoubtedly understand, no film can ever have as much information or content packed into it as its creators would wish. With that said, I am in the process of writing a short novelization of the film to accompany its release. This will have additional elements that didn’t make it to the screen and exerpts that are slated for a director’s cut, as well as additional insight into the World of Depleted itself. It is my hope that this will augment the immersive experience you find in Day 419 and further wet your appetite for the continued work in the World of Depleted that you will see both from Viking, but also from your fellow contributors who are helping to form this world with their blood, sweat, and tears!
To all of you, I want to thank you for your support, encouragement, and excitement from the bottom of my heart! As we build more into this world, it is exciting to me to see the kindred spirits who do it with us!
Chag sameach,
Jeremy
P.S. Look for some more exciting new information to go live later this week!