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!