Fraser Cain of universetoday.com talks with writer/creator Cosimo De Tommaso, writer/creator John Cabrera, producers Bryan Singer and Jason Taylor, and director Stewart Hendler.The idea for H+ began in 2006, and it took many months to craft the story and its characters. Six months into brainstorming, De Tommaso and Cabrera took the idea to Singer and his team. They weren't thinking so much about the medium for showing it, at that point.
The creators wondered whether to hand over the information to the audience or maybe hide it and let them find out. They often opted for the latter, thus trusting that the audience would figure it out or investigate it. The latter being quite possible, given the web format of the series, where we can go back and look for more information. In other words, as Cain points out, the creators decided not to dumb down the technology.
Speaking of which, the H+ world had to be relatable to our current world, yet also had to comprise a future that was as very plausible. Given the pace of technology advancement, the creators wanted to impress the audience on a world that was fast becoming a reality. So from devices, to gestures and language, they sought to strike that balance. I even noted in a Google+ comment, that we're moving from mobile to wearable devices, and onto embedded devices. So transhumanism, that is, the merging of human and technology, is an emerging reality already. Biotechnology, as it is now, can make H+ a reality in our lifetime.
I thought the overall theme and slant of H+, certainly as I was humming along with each episode, was to warn again rampant science and technology and to seek a more religious or spiritual anchor in a dire, worldwide event. But according to Cabrera, they wanted to have a diversity of characters, some of which were keen on one than the other. The diversity sought to mirror what we in the audience may gravitate to.
Everything was shot in 29 days, across 13 geographies. That's quite an intense production schedule. The creators demure, that is, they didn't know enough about what they were doing to question whether they could even do it at all. They just did it. The actors tolerated less than favorable sets, such as no trailers, and felt really engaged in the vision, the concept, and the script of H+.
Even in post-production and post-launch, Cabrera said they want to keep learning from others' reactions, comments and experiences about working in this format. That is, by the way, the essence of Theory of Algorithms and The Core Algorithm. I dispense with the need for a pilot, or a test case, because I can optimize effort from the get-go, monitor and assess how things go, then learn and adjust on-the-go.
Interestingly, YouTube as a medium didn't quite crystallize for the creators until recently. My impression is that De Tommaso and Cabrera concentrated first on getting a really good story down, then the medium came in to put shape, and rhythm, and direction to it. I'm sure, too, that YouTube tools, such as playlist creation, influenced, perhaps even revised, the story line.
Taylor points out that they loved to create an H+ video game, but that it's a supply-and-demand thing. It already has a gaming quality to it, that is, with its futuristic theme and high technology tools. Plus, there are elements of interactivity between the show and the audience, at least in re-doing the chronology of the story and in a social media conversation.
I like what Cabrera says near the end, that H+ is more about the humanism, and perhaps less about trans, that is, the technology. The latter is intended to better the former. He reminds us that it's people who created the technology, so the story of H+ is very much about the human condition. In my episode-to-episode comments, that elemental humanity of it was evident. Whether it's romance and jealousy, manipulation and deception, aspiration and preference, this was human drama at its finest.
Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!
Ron Villejo, PhD
