Economist Films unveils two new pilots

The Economist’s new video initiative debuted the pilots of two digital video series today, with the intention of bringing the 171-year-old global-affairs magazine’s mindset to documentary form and a broader audience, reports Nicole Levy of Capital New York.

Levy writes, “Drugs were the subject of the first series pilot shown Tuesday, a roughly 12-minute-long video documenting the worldwide shift in goverment drug policy from prohibition to regulation. ‘Drugs: War or Store?’ is the first episode in a series called ‘Global Compass,’ which will address such international issues as prison reform and the right to die. The second series, ‘Future Work,’ examines the impact of technology on human labor. Other series in the pipeline include ‘Startup Jungle,’ a show about entrepreneurship; ‘Passport,’ a travel show; and ‘Rise of the Supercities,’ a look at urbanization and innovation in metropolises.

“‘Drugs: War or Store?’ captures the Economist aesthetic in that its British narrator stays off camera (the articles in the magazine are famously un-bylined); its scope is international, spanning Portugal, Colombia and the U.S.; and its mood and tone range from austere to playful—on Tuesday, the audience laughed at a scene depicting a joint-rolling class in Colorado.

“‘What this is not is an add-on to the print edition,’ Economist editor in chief Zanny Minton Beddoes said Tuesday of the initiative announced in March. ‘We have a very good multimedia component already that provides complementary audio and video to go with our print pieces. This is different. This is re-interpreting the ethos of what we do in documentaries.’ Or ‘mini-documentaries,’ as Green described the videos of 10 to 15 minutes in length.”

Read more here.