After weeks of hard work, the color grading for Depleted: Day 419 is now complete. Normally, color grading is performed after final special effects have been laid in. However, with DP Nate Eckelbarger about to move to Austin, TX, we proceeded on to the color grading as soon as picture was locked. (Despite the relocation, we are happy to report that Eckelbarger is slated to return as the DP for the Depleted feature in 2011.)
As I really like to give my visual department the reins in the final look of the film and only get in the way if things are diverging from my overall vision, I was happy to let Nate’s keen eye take lead on this journey. (Interestingly, despite our access to a number of different plugins, we ended up using Magic Bullet Looks almost exclusively, as we continued to discover more and more ways to tweak our image in the most organic and believable way possible.) The final look is gritty, stylized, and tight, bringing up memories of films like The Terminator and The Thing. From here, we move hard into final audio, score composing, and effects!
Director Jeremy Hanke and DP Nate Eckelbarger Figure Out Final Coloration on Depleted: Day 419.
After working for weeks with DP Nate Eckelbarger to come up with a color grading look for Depleted: Day 419,we’re nearly complete with this element of the filmmaking process. To reflect some of the bleakness of humanity over a year into the Fall, we chose to use some subtle desaturation and curves generally. To replicate older lenses, we used anamorphic lens flares when characters are outside, while, indoors, a higher contrast look with more subdued flares conveys the look we’re going for.
Initially done with a variety of different plugins, we eventually chose to go with a straightforward combination of AE/Premiere Pro’s Unsharp Mask plugin and the Magic Bullet Looks suite (with a few uses of Colorista for certain scenes). The power of Magic Bullet Looks is really impressive when you delve past the presets and start using real world camera knowledge. Coming from a digital world, I’ve really enjoyed learning about traditional film recording from my DP, as he’s much more comfortable with film based recording. His knowledge of cameras, lenses, and film helped insure that the looks we came up with are authentic to what real film could capture with specially chosen lenses and glass filters!
To get some previews, you can check them out below.
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).
Depleted: Day 419 Poster Rough Mockup #1 created by Craig McDaniel. (Photos by Nate Eckelbarger.)
Depleted: Day 419 Poster Rough Mockup #2 created by Craig McDaniel. (Photos by Nate Eckelbarger.)
The following scene was from the final day of shooting Depleted: Day 419. (DP Nate Eckelbarger.)
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!
Unable to get enough traction to reverse out of its parking place, members of the crew attempted to assist the traction with added weight.
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.
Staring down the barrel of HVX200 with Redrock Micro M2Encore rig.
The Depleted Day 419 shoot went very well despite a number of setbacks related to locations at the last minute. The complex shoot involved a large fight sequence that required a lot of creativity from fight choreographer Jay Kerr and DP Nate Eckelbarger. The film was shot with an HVX200 (kindly loaned to us by tech writer, Tom Stern) and the Redrock Micro M2Encore 35mm lens adapter system, as well as Eckelbarger’s impressive collection of glass. The fights were filmed at 60 fps, further increasing the light demands for gaffer Steven Mathews in the depleted space which was sculpted by Production Designer and Art Director, Sarah Jane Gray. Frankfort’s Dave’s Airsoft helped by providing a lot of the necessary green gas for the elaborate gunfight!
As an army marches on its stomach, Chicago-style stuffed pizzas were provided by the Nicholasville, KY branch of Papa Murphy’s pizza. This delicious food helped everyone keep trucking throughout the shoot!
