The Universe Surrounding the International Post-Apocalyptic Franchise, Depleted
The stunning Kat Carney (star of World of Depleted’s own soon-to-be-released Day 419) has been chosen by MicroFilmmaker Magazine to be the cover girl for their June 1st issue.
The issue, which has a dominant issue on casting, features an article by Day 419 director, Jeremy Hanke, on casting for action films, including images of the lovely Ms. Carney from her work in Depleted as Jenna Whitmore.
To see the new issue, simply go to:
Monday night, Kat Carney (Jenna Whitmore) re-entered Oakwood Sound Design, the Depleted post audio facility, to record new tracks for Depleted: Day 419‘s audio design and to record the Narration for the official Day 419 trailer. To give a teaser for some of the stuff recorded, check out this unmixed exerpt from the Trailer Narration:
Kat Carney’s narration for Depleted: Day 419 was successfully recorded at Oakwood Sound Design on Saturday. She was a trooper despite the fact that she was struggling with a sore throat. To combat that, we helped her keep going on a fluid regimen of hot herbal tea and honey.
In the end, it all went well and we’re excited to be able to get a final timing cut on the film with the final narration.
Our extremely talented graphic designer, Craig McDaniel, has created some new rough poster designs for Depleted: Day 419! As such, we wanted to let you take a look at them here!
Photos are from our last photoshoot and were taken by photographer Nate Eckelbarger. Featured in them are Kat Carney (as Jenna Whitmore), Tim Smith (as Andre Flanagan), Eric Henninger (as Nash Fitch), and Dave Haney (as James Rockland).
Craig McDaniel, Depleted’s super talented graphic designer, will be rolling out two new designs for posters, these ones aimed specifically at Depleted: Day 419, which will be posted on Monday. Both posters feature the main characters from the short: Jenna Whitmore (Kat Carney), Nash Fitch (Eric Henninger), Andre Flanagan (Tim Smith), and James Rockland (Dave Haney).
We concluded the Depleted: Day 419 pickup shoot on Sunday with a truly hellish shoot day. The day was set to begin at Noon and go until Sunday, with a fairly reasonable driving related shoot. However, rain pushed back the shooting until after 1 PM. We then pushed into the dialogue sequences that we needed to record between Jenna (Kat Carney) and Andre (Tim Smith). DP Nate Eckelbarger managed to come up with an extremely creative way to capture the shot which also permitted us to set up our “video village” (laptop and GV ADVC 110 video converter) on the truck’s inverter. However, the shot took longer than expected and the inverter failed to shut down before the battery on the truck was drained! As such, the truck refused to start and had to be jumped in order for us to get the next shot!
Unfortunately, the next shot proved to be an absolute bear. The truck couldn’t back out of the parking spot it was in, so most of the entire crew ran down to try to push the truck out of its parking place. (As I was trapped with the video village, I managed to snag some footage of this amusing scene, as did de facto videographer and co-star Eric Henninger! The footage will likely find its way into easter eggs and DVD extras later on! To see a sneak peak of this footage with Kat Carney’s thoughts on low-budget filmmaking, check out this YouTube video.) Eventually we managed to get the truck finagled so we could capture the next shot and we moved on to our next location: a nearly abandoned intersection in the college town of Wilmore, KY (which is all but empty in the summer). Despite all of the work we had put into finding a location that had nobody around it, the intersection was busier than Time’s Square. Fortunately, the adroit fingers of Eckelbarger managed to snag a golden shot in the midst of the chaos. (At that point, I finally stopped asking people to help me commit sepuku on the hot street corner!)
By the time we managed to work on our actual driving shots, we only had an hour and a half to get all of them. Undeterred, the Director and DP jumped in the back of the picture truck with the camera rig and recorded driving shots that way. From time to time, at a particularly picturesque location, the two would have the actors stop the truck so they could exit, setup the camera, and grab a tracking shot from the roadside. In the end, the shoot day was made! However, everyone was badly sunburned, especially yours truly, as I had neglected to reapply any sunblock on my head or even apply any to my arms!
The entire cast of main characters from Depleted: Day 419 got their marketing photography done this past weekend by Nathan Eckelbarger in the backwoods of Kentucky.
Unfortunately, due to a communication error from from Director Jeremy Hanke, while everyone was lathered in sunblock, no one was covered in insect repellant. As such, everyone got brutalized by insect bites. Kat Carney got over a hundred bites and Jeremy Hanke, who’s alergic to insect bites, had to take two days to recuperate from the swelling with heavy doses of antihystemines. Everyone’s up and functional now and the photoshoot turned out well.
One of the most complex shots was a massive mural-sized poster that was taken involving multiple pictures stitched together around Kat Carney and Eric Henninger’s characters composed of a massive nest of unruly woods. The finalized photo was a masterful example of photographic technique on the part of Nate Eckelbarger, as well as his wizardry in jigsawing all the pieces together from an organic background in Photoshop.
Jenna Whitmore originally was slated to carry a Glock 17, which was switched to the Beretta M9 featured in this early photo, but then was switched back to the Glock 17.
Fight choreographer, Jay Kerr (featured above), led the action players of Depleted: Day 419 through a rigorous first training for the dynamic action sequence featured in the film. Torrential rains flooded Central Kentucky during the choreography, but the hard work continued indoors.
In addition to an elaborate gunfight involving seven shooters, there is an elaborate knife fight between Nash Fitch (Eric Henninger) and James Rockland (David Haney). The knife fight features two custom blades created specially for the film by Jay Kerr, who’s also an accomplished knife smith, and by knifemaker, survivalist, and police officer, Gabe Kinderknecht. Fans of the film will have a chance to bid on these one of a kind mementos down the road after all principle photography is completed.
News for Depleted fans include the casting of the Depleted: Day 419 project, as well as additional folks who are going to be involved with it.
The speaking cast for Depleted:Day 419 is:
Kat Carney as Jenna Whitmore
Tim Smith as Andre
Eric Henninger as Nash Fitch
David Haney as James Rockland
Additionally, we now have a few new folks that are bringing their abilities to the film franchise. Graphic designer Craig McDaniel brings his excellent skills to the table for poster, website, and other forms of graphic design while photographer and DP Nate Eckelbarger is bringing his talents to the table both for the publicity photos and cinematography of Depleted: Day 419. (Both contributed their skills for the included poster, starring Kat Carney.)
Paul Battista from Mind Fusion Law is coming up to provide legal representation for the Depleted project, as their firm has extra specialization in low budget Independent films. In addition to being a talented lawyer, he’s also an accomplished filmmaker. In fact, MFM reviewed his great book on low-budget film producing before choosing to retain his services. Gabe Kinderknecht will be providing brand new highly useful YouTube videos on how to survive an apocalypse like the Fall by showing you how to hunt for food, find water, get edible plants, make knives, make bows and arrows, and what to acquire for guns! Look for those in the near future on the World of Depleted YouTube page.
Additional news includes the fact that survivalists Jay Kerr and
