Ken Burns

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Ken Burns (2007)

Kenneth Lauren "Ken" Burns (born July 29, 1953 in Brooklyn , New York City , NY , USA ) is an American documentary filmmaker .

Two of his documentaries have been nominated for an Academy Award ( Oscar ) and six of his works have been nominated for one or more Emmy Awards . He won a total of three Emmy Awards for The Civil War , for baseball and for Unforgivable Blackness . The Real Screen Magazine called Ken Burns alongside Robert Flaherty of the most influential documentary maker of all time . Renowned historian Stephen Ambrose ( Band of Brothers ) says about Ken Burns More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source (" More Americans get their history through Ken Burns than from any other source").

Life

Ken Burns graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst , Massachusetts in 1975 with a BA ( Bachelor of Arts) in film studies and design . His teachers included the renowned photographers Jerome Liebling and Elaine Mayes.

After graduation, Burns started his production company Florentine Films with two college friends in 1976 . For several years the small company kept afloat with odd jobs. Ken Burns only made his breakthrough in 1981 with the documentary Brooklyn Bridge , which is based on the 1972 book The Great Bridge by David McCullough . For this work he is nominated for an Academy Award ( Oscar ) for the first time , but loses to the documentary Genocide by Arnold Schwartzman with Orson Welles and Elizabeth Taylor as narrators.

While working on The Brooklyn Bridge , Ken Burns relocated his company to the small New English community of Walpole , New Hampshire , several hours' drive north of New York.

In 2011 Burns was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society .

Working method

Ken Burn's works are shaped by his view of history, which can best be described by a quote: The big mistake is that history is back down and the past is gone. History is right now, history is is, not what. And further: For most people history is just another subject in a curriculum. History is everything that has gone before this moment ... this moment . With this approach, Burns can bring history to life and make it understandable.

Visually, Ken Burns' works are mainly a calmly flowing sequence of photographs or other images that are brought to life with the so-called Ken Burns Effect (see below). The sequence of images is loosened up by real film scenes from the original locations, possibly interviews with contemporary witnesses and interspersed comments from historians and experts.

The visual material is held together by carefully selected contemporary music, whereby the music is not just a mere setting, but is an integral part of the narrative due to its intended effect. With Ken Burns, voice-over texts are not spoken by a single narrator, but by a large number of top actors, with each historical figure usually being assigned a separate actor in addition to the classic narrator.

Famous voice-overs include: Tom Hanks , David McCullough , Jason Robards , Alan Rickman , Laurence Fishburne , Morgan Freeman , Jeremy Irons , Matthew Broderick , Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio , Gary Sinise , Eli Wallach , Amy Madigan , Samuel L. Jackson .

Burns and his team work on each project for several years, so the projects overlap. In the summer of 2017, his ten-part, 18-hour Vietnam film will be ready for broadcast and he is working on the completion of a long-term project on country music that will be broadcast in 2019. In various stages of development, the topics are: Mayo Clinic, Muhammad Ali, Ernest Hemingway, the American Revolution, Lyndon B. Johnson, Barack Obama, Winston Churchill, Crime and Punishment in America and The African-American experience from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Great migration .

Ken Burns Effect

Demonstration of the Ken Burns Effect (video not by Ken Burns)

The technique made famous by Ken Burns, using slow panning and zoom effects (pan and zooming) and cross-fades to make a video or slide show from still images, is called the Ken Burns effect. It is suitable for historical documentation where no moving images are available. For example, if a group photo is available, the speaker can first say something about the whole group, then an interesting individual is zoomed in to the center of the screen, and finally there is a pan to another person before the next photo is faded in. Natural history documentation and presentations, for example from the field of astronomy, can also be made more lively in the same way.

Traditionally one would show a sequence of still images or image details. The advantage of the Ken Burns effect is that the movement captivates the viewer's attention and thus increases the entertainment value, which is why what is seen is better remembered.

Originally, the effect named after Ken Burns was achieved mechanically using special film cameras (rostrum camera). Today it is usually simulated using compositing or video editing software . In addition, it is used in various image viewer and image management programs for z. Sometimes random real-time playback of digital slide shows is used and is also found in screen savers .

Works

Ken Burns always produces his documentaries for the American television station PBS , which broadcasts quality programs for the American market on a non-profit basis.

The most important works include:

  • 1981: Brooklyn Bridge - Oscar nomination
  • 1984: The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God
  • 1985: The Statue of Liberty - Oscar Nomination and Emmy Nomination
  • 1985: Huey Long
  • 1988: Thomas Hart Benton
  • 1988: The Congress
  • 1990: The Civil War - Emmy Award
  • 1991: Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio - Emmy Nomination
  • 1994: Baseball Emmy Award
  • 1996: The West
  • 1997: Thomas Jefferson
  • 1997: Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery
  • 1998: Frank Lloyd Wright
  • 1999: Not for Ourselves Alone: ​​The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony
  • 2001: Jazz - Emmy Nomination
  • 2001: Mark Twain
  • 2003: Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip
  • 2004: Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson - Emmy Award
  • 2006: The War
  • 2009: America's best Idea: Our National Parks
  • 2010: The Tenth Inning (revisits his 1994 baseball series )
  • 2011: Prohibition (on the 20th century alcohol ban in the United States)
  • 2012: The Dust Bowl (Via the Dust Bowl , the Great Plains , in the 1930s)
  • 2014: The Roosevelts (About Theodore Roosevelt , Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt in their day)
  • 2016 Jackie Robinson (About the first black baseball player in the top division: Jackie Robinson )
  • 2016 Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War (Via Waitstill and Martha Sharp )
  • 2017 Vietnam
  • 2019 Country Music
  • 2020 The Gene: An Intimate History

Web links

Commons : Ken Burns  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Ken Burns. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 26, 2018 (English, with short biography).
  2. ^ A b Ian Parker: Ken Burns's American Canon . In: The New Yorker, September 4, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Burns, Ken
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burns, Kenneth Lauren (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American director
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York , NY , USA