Joe Posner, National Fellow, is a filmmaker, motion designer, musician, and creative leader. He co-founded Vox Video in 2014, building their award-winning YouTube channel and creating Emmy-nominated streaming series like Level Playing Field on HBO, and Explained on Netflix, which has now published 70 episodes. Posner previously created the National Magazine Award-nominated series Op-Video, and the animation for documentary films such as Freakonomics, the Oscar-nominated If a Tree Falls, and Point and Shoot. He is currently helping launch Semafor as their founding head of video. His project, 2084, is a new approach to documentary filmmaking inspired by science fiction.
Selected Work
- The Racial Wealth Gap: An episode of the Netflix series Explained, made in partnership with Vox, examines how America's violently racist past continues into our present and future. Joe was a co-creator of the series.
- What Bill Gates Is Afraid of: A Vox illustrated interview with Bill Gates about the need for pandemic preparedness from 2015.
- It’s Not You. Bad Doors Are Everywhere: A short story for Vox about the tyranny of poorly designed doors inspired by a 25-year-old book.
- Misclassified: An episode of the HBO series Level Playing Field that looks at the NCAA's creation of the term "student-athlete" and how it connects to the widespread misclassification of workers today.
- Point and Shoot: A documentary telling the story of an American volunteer in the Libyan rebel army, featuring hand drawn and 3D animation.