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Josh Lee
Head of Browser Co. Productions @ The Browser Company
Joshua Lee is the Head of Browser Co. Productions at The Browser Company, a position he has held since July 2024.1 He is a video director and editor with a particular focus on technology and digital life.2 Prior to his current role, Lee worked in Video Storytelling at The Browser Company from January 2023 to July 2024.1
Lee's professional background includes:
- Freelance filmmaker and product designer from February 2017 to January 20231
- Managing Partner at Dorm Room Fund from January 2015 to January 20171
- Design Intern at The White House from June to August 20161
- Product Design Intern at Facebook from May to August 20151
In terms of education, Lee attended the University of Pennsylvania from 2014 to 2016.1
Notable achievements in his career include:
- A short documentary he made for Rolling Stone was nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy in 20232
- His experimental film work has been featured in the Oberhausen Short Film Festival and the ECRA Experimental Film Festival2
Lee is based in Los Angeles, California, and can be contacted via email at lee94josh@gmail.com.2
Highlights
sad about timmy. never going to the ballet again
On: Narrative Prototyping
“The Shadow Boxer” was one the most ambitious (and expensive) video swings I took while at @browsercompany.
The brief was to make a brand commercial for a new browser that does work for you.
It never shipped. We flew in our lead actor from Michigan because we didn’t love any local options, shot 13 rolls of 16mm, cut out half of the story in a painful and controversial edit process. By most accounts the project was a failure; it was the only significant video I made at Browser that never saw the light of day.
But the project laid the groundwork for Dia’s eventual launch and points to an aggressive narrative prototyping culture embodied at Browser few others embrace. Even the companies who think they are taking narrative “seriously” today often, in practice, aren’t.
On product, startups understand the value of prototyping. There is no expectation that the first wireframe will be the best idea. Iteration is the real work. Founders know that trajectory-changing initiatives can be born from nurturing an IC side project that will likely lead nowhere, but if it works, could be hugely meaningful.
Fewer companies extend this mindset to their narrative work: aggressively spinning up and down projects, breaking style guides in pursuit of finding the edges, nurturing seeds of new hypotheses & trying to prove/disprove them as fast as possible. There is a sense that this is how you build a great product, but that great narrative work takes a different path.
“The Shadow Boxer” was a failure, in the same way discarded internal product prototypes that never ship are failures. The production mechanics of the project set up how we’d make Dia’s eventual launch video and the style provided a concrete touchpoint for us and the team to work from, and push against, as Dia’s brand feeling developed.
