Today, I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Professor Chris Hansen, the director of Baylor University’s Film & Digital Media division, and his graduate media class about World of Depleted, what changes in technology and society that it’s inspired by, and what it is part of the groundwork for in the future!
It was a great interview and I really enjoyed chatting with the next group of storytellers to come out of Baylor. We chatted about the types of stories we explore, what sort of interaction contributors can expect to have, and the interesting connections between the Post-Apocalyptic and Gothic subcultures in Depleted.
Well, the new Contributor site is now live, featuring the stylized new World of Depleted Contributor Logo (as pictured below):
The major element of the new Contributor site is that folks can easily sign up as Contributorswithout having to mess around with .PDFs or extra hassles on their end! (Plus for the fans, rather than a CAPTCHA code for verifying your humanity, you get to solve a very simple Gavin code. A nice touch that adds some fun to the process!) To simplify things, the Contributors section is governed by the Contributor agreement as part of the official registration for it. Non-Contributors can still read and watch the main content found in this page, as well as comment with their thoughts, but they can’t do some of the fun things Contributors can do (like the Challenge mode below) and they won’t have access to some of the building block assetts until they choose to become a Contributor.
One of the now realized elements (which we’d alluded to earlier) of the Contributor section is the Challenge section. After having been able to check it out a bit, it’s very cool! Clearly an encouragement for folks to sign up as Contributors immediately, the Challenge feature is updated regularly with short challenges in one of five categories: Writing, Films, Audio (including music), Photography/Art, and Games. You have to be a Contributor to be able to submit stuff, but, if you are, it’s super easy. Once you decide to apply for a challenge, you fill in a bit of information about yourself and submit your short story, or photo, or whatever else. (Small attachments for stories and photos can be included with the submission, whereas you’ll need to link to larger attachments you have hosted elsewhere to cut down on clutter during the review process.) Not sure what all the winner perks will be, although they are all eligible to be canonized and some seem to be designed to fit directly into pre-envisioned collections. (For the latter, this means that there’s a specific work you’re contributing toward, which is often times easier than just submitting whatever comes to mind.) I have heard from Jeremy Hanke that they’re setting this feature up to be a specialized feed that fans can subscribe to, so they will be notified whenever new challenges are available.
Example of the Challenge Mode
It also looks like, at this point, the short film Forsaken will be launching on March 2nd in its official capacity as External Canonized content!
Finally, a few new groups have started covering the new elements Depleted is embracing, including YURDigital (who will also be helping provide specific products that are useful to Contributors) and Megaton.Us, a group that is very much abour post-apocalyptic tales!
Bunch of new things on the Depleted horizon so far:
– MicroFilmmaker Magazine arranged a press review deal with Sorenson Media (the company that creates the most powerful video codecs in the world, including Spark and On6) for Depleted, which will allow them to use the most state-of-the-art compression for Depleted’s Canonical films. Additionally, the Sorenson 360 video streaming option will give Depleted fan’s the ability to see higher quality videos than they would normally be able to get, as well as permitting numerous password encrypted videos for more secret ARG elements. Director Jeremy Hanke is very excited about this new arrangement and feels it’ll be a great benefit to Depleted fans and to Sorenson!
-In conjunction with this, the new Contributor site for Depleted will be rolled out shortly, which will be the location for all Canonized and Apocryphal content: From videos to stories to photos!
-With the completion of the beta test of the contract submission process, the finalized contracts have been completed and are now in the process of being encoded for digital submission by fans! This area will also be in the Contributor section of the WoD site!
-In addition to the much anticipated Forsaken film submission, story submissions are getting rolling. Currently, die hard Depleted fans Julie Stratton and Fred Koskin are already on the list for submissions. Additional contributors are also going through the contracts, as well!
– Score composition on Depleted: Day 419 appears to be going very well. I had a chance to listen to the first scene and was really impressed with the use of both music, narration, and sound design to sculpt a 3D backstory outside the confines of the scene. (The folks at Oakwood Sound Design are doing a great job on the sound of the film!)
We are now essentially done with the Contributor contracts that will allow the World of Depleted to become the global movement it is. (We are about to commence the final testing process to make sure everything is where it needs to be.) Prepared meticulously by our entertainment lawyer, Paul Battista, these agreements will allow fans from all over the world to submit pieces of the entire Depleted landscape to be used, mixed, and remixed by fans around the world. The Canonization process will allow everyone to easily know which elements are actually part of the massive world we invision and which ones are not. (Those that are not, but which are still interesting, will be shown in the Apocrypha section of the website.) Content creators whose work is Canonized will share in profits any time time their work is used for profit. As such, you don’t have to be a filmmaker to contribute to Depleted and profit from your involvement…you could be any sort of creative person: photographer, videographer, special effects artist, writer, artist, editor, musician, remixer, whatever. If you enjoy the World of Depleted, you can find a way to help sculpt it into the truly global, breathing entity that it’s designed to be! And, for the content that’s truly extraordinary, the Depleted Core team will have special secrets and mysteries that the content contributors can add to their work, so that fans will have additional reasons to be drawn to the different elements that make up this universe!
