The Universe Surrounding the International Post-Apocalyptic Franchise, Depleted
Author: Jeremy Hanke
The editor of MicroFilmmaker Magazine, Jeremy Hanke helped spearhead the World of Depleted Creative Community to give creative personalities of all types the chance to explore a world they could help build together.
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.)
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).
As I’m working on the Depleted: Day 419 edit, we’re also working to get a teaser trailer set up. When it goes live, you’ll be able to get the first flavor of the World of Depleted. Additionally, filmmaker Ben Nash will be creating a teaser for his short set in the Depleted world in the near future as well!
Jeremy Hanke Demos the first rough cut of Depleted: Day 419 for the cast and crew at the cast party held at Oakwood Sound Design. (Photo by Nathan Eckelbarger.)
The rough cut wrap party of Depleted: Day 419 was a great success last night.
A good showing of the cast and crew enjoyed getting to chat with one another after the film wrapped, watched an ultra-sneak peak of the rough cut of Depleted: Day 419, and exchanging favorite stories from the filming for the behind-the-scenes camera.
New ideas for possible collectors’ editions of the DVD of the film were exchanged, including a severely limited edition that will feature some insane extras for the most devout fans. The showing helped clarify a lot of the next steps for the Depleted: Day 419 film as it gets closer to a locked cut!
One of the things that’s complex in working with a story that is as human as Depleted is finding different ways to show the world that exists. While filmmaker collaborators will help us flesh out the world of Depleted in this regard, I really wanted to have an additional perspective that we could show in the prologue, Depleted: Day 419, besides that of Jenna Whitmore, the main narrator. It was always my intent to have two versions of the film: one with narration and one without. While the narrated version would be the one I preferred, I wanted the film to work even if there was no narration. However, as I began to think more about it, I realized that I actually wanted three versions. The third one would allow a pirate radio station to be heard when Jenna is in her appartment and in vehicles.
Pirate radio stations are a major element in the world of Depleted, although their range is limited to small communities and enclaves for the most part. Because Jenna lives on the outskirts of a town, it makes sense that she’s close enough to hear the town’s pirate radio station. Once I started thinking about this, I realized that this wasn’t just a cool idea, but that this would give me a way to bring in gossip, insight, and story plot information that will become important in the feature film. As such, each of the three versions of the film will give viewers more information and alternate perspectives on the World of Depleted, as well as insights into the secrets of how the world collapsed and hints as to who may have seen it coming. (We might even have a fourth version with different news from the radio that will be hidden somewhere.)
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!
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.
The prayers and well-wishes of the entire Depleted team are with fight choreographer and producer, Jay Kerr, and his family, whose home and possessions were largely destroyed in the torrential flooding here in Central Kentucky.
