Online series 'H+' goes deep inside

By Arienne Thompson, USA TODAY

Posted August 7, 2012

Would you voluntarily have a computer chip that lets you search the Web implanted into your brain?

That's the question director/producer Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) poses in his debut Web series, H+, which premiered its first two episodes early today on YouTube. And that's not the only question Singer raises with the live-action series that follows a group of survivors left on Earth after a virus fatally corrupts H+, the revolutionary computer chip in question.

Singer calls digital implants like the fictional H+ "the next stage of Web evolution." But, at present, the most notable evolutionary shift is in the way people are consuming media.

"More and more, people are spending time on their computers instead of in front of a television. I think people are realizing that at some point there's going to be a kind of merger between the different ways we view media: on our phones, on our computers, on our televisions.

"At some point, they're going to merge together, and people want to experiment in that space."

Singer, who produces H+, likens the "experiment" to the advent of televised programming and entertainment nearly 60 years ago.

"In the early days of television, television was primarily variety shows and sketch comedy, and eventually it evolved into the one-hour drama and the television movie and the miniseries," Singer says. "Now, there's extremely elegant programming, especially on cable. There's a lot of comedy on the Internet and a lot of cheap kind of videos, but there really hasn't been any elegant kind of cinematic programming."

Two new episodes of H+ will debut each Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET with 48 episodes total. (Viewers who subscribe to the HplusDigitalSeries channel on YouTube by 3 p.m. ET today will be sent a link that allows them to view the first six episodes.)

Singer says that at this point, Web series are more about sending a message than making money. "If I'm trying to spark something, it'd be people elevating their expectation of what they can see in Web programming. The way to monetize these things hasn't been completely figured out yet. … We were good at keeping our costs down but our scope high."