SDCC 2011: H+ the Digital Series Panel

(Due to a lack of a photo of H+ here is a picture of Da Boss)

The panel for the new web series H+ began with Bryan Singer on video talking about the limited technology his father grew up with and how it has evolved and come to connect us and enhance nearly every part of our lives. H+ is about the day that technology turns against us. It is set in the near future, not dissimilar to today, when people, instead of using iPads and smartphones, opt to have a chip implanted that connects their central nervous system to the internet all the time everyday. Then a virus is sent out on the network, and 33% of the world's population dies in an instant.

So, a guy named Cossimo* and the nerdy guy from the band on Gilmore Girls started writing H+ in 2006. In 2007, they went to Warner Brothers, and Bryan Singer signed on to produce. Bryan and his partner Jason thought it was exactly the kind of character-centered project they liked to work on, and decided to build it for the web, giving the viewers a lot of control over their own experience. There are 48 3 to 6 minute episodes that follow 14 characters across 12 countries over the course of a decade. Viewers will be able to watch episodes in the order they are released, or in chronological order, or by character or geography. They hope the audience will be able to pick up new details and nuances as they watch the nearly 4 hours of content in various configurations.

I have to say, this project has the highest production values of any webseries I have ever seen. It looks like a lowish budget movie or a strong TV series. Part of me wonders if this is too familiar territory, especially since 48 episodes requires a fairly significant commitment from its audience. We've seen plenty of movies about the dangers of technology, even of this specific type of technology. And there are other survivor shows on the air right now. Here's what makes me think it might be really really good: one of the panelists was a transhumanist philosopher. Yeah. And the show looks to explore, not the dangers of technology so much as the relationship between humans and our tools.  The earliest "men" were found buried with their tools. Is our humanness defined by tools? Or does it exist as something apart?

There's no release date yet. They only said it's coming soon. You can find out more information at facebook.com/Hplusthedigitalseries. I'll be watching.

*I apologize, the sound cut out when they introduced the panel, and the camera angles they used didn't show the panelists' namecards, so I don't really know who a lot of the people on the panel were.