So much of our lives are saved and shared online. But what if that information got into the wrong hands? We decided to turn science into science fiction by creating LifeAfter, a 10 episode podcast that explores how GE technology could come to save the world from a rogue computer program that’s reanimating the digital lives of the dead and using them to manipulate their loved ones left behind.

The “Messages from Beyond” film shows an example of how one man’s digital life could be used, edited, and reanimated to tell a singular message. The eerie message directs viewers to the podcast, where they can discover the full story, which centers around Ross, a low level FBI analyst who spends his days conversing online with his wife Charlie – who died eight months ago.

In an age where our digital lives are constantly growing and being saved online, it’s become unclear what all the potential consequences of that could be. We wanted to explore that theme by not only talking about it – but proving it. To do so, we decided to create a film that combined old, archival footage of a person’s life with modern filmed footage to create one singular message. It became clear that we needed to not only cast great actors that could handle a range of age changes, but someone that had also documented their lives from childhood on. We narrowed down our favorite live auditions and then painstakingly explored their individual film archives. We then used their past videos as our base and created new content to fit the actor we chose.