“What Did You See?” – Here’s What I Saw

By now many people will have seen or heard the buzz surrounding ABC’s latest voyage into viral marketing, this time for their (soon to be) new show “Flash Forward” – “What Did You See?”. That’s the question being asked by the 5 teaser trailers that were aired during Wednesday night’s “Lost“. In case you missed the teasers or you’ve been without Internet for most of the week, here they are. In short they are short clips of a funeral, a wedding, a surfer, an ultrasound and a bunch of kids running out of school.

Considering “Flash Forward” is about everyone on earth losing consciousness for 2 minutes 17 seconds, in which they all see a flash of their on lives at the same point in the future, here’s what I saw (bearing in mind I haven’t yet read the novel): The clips shouldn’t be viewed a separate. They are all part of the general premise that the world shares a collective consciousness whereby everyone is interconnected and part of a larger puzzle. The clips are pieces of that puzzle..segments of ‘unwritten’ life – birth through to death. I believe the trailers are a simple way of tapping us into the ‘mindthought’ of the show. For now the question is “What Did You See?”. Soon it will be “Why Did I See THAT?”

Mild premise spoilers after the jump:

In essense, that will surely be one of the most topical questions of the first season – why did the world collectively see that particular moment of their futures? What is the message?..What can we learn from what we saw?..Who or what allowed us to all see the future?..How will this affect the way I live my life? And of course the ultimate question will perhaps be: Can I change my own destiny, or is the future set in stone?

Fans of “Lost” will be very familiar to these themes, indeed, this could be one of the reasons why Flash Forward will definitely be picked up by ABC in the next couple of weeks. Also, looking around on-line, there does seem to be a healthy amount of positive buzz about the show – Lost fans will be well aware that their darling show will be coming to an end this time next year, so perhaps Flash Forward will be a flash-forward for us all?

By the way, there’s a viral site on-line (themosaiccollective.com) which asks you to input ‘what you saw’ along with your email address. I answered “Collective Consciousness”. I’ll let you know if and when I get a reply. You might wanna leave your answer too.

Here are some more of the stills posted by nymag (be sure to check out the link for a nice article on the “What Did You See” teaser):