Ken Burns: 'America's Storyteller' on His Creative Process

PODCAST January 24, 2020

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Stat: 22.73: Ken Burns’ documentary Civil War was created from 22.73 miles of film.

Story: Ken Burns is known for his expansive documentaries on American history and culture. With 33 documentary films to his name, what is the secret to his creative process? We travel to the New Hampshire barn where he works for a conversation about how he tells old stories in a new way and what inspires him to create.

Related resources:

A Conversation With Ken Burns

Ken Burns UNUM

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has worked in a New Hampshire studio surrounded by an orchard ever since making his first film, Brooklyn Bridge, in 1981. Since then, he has directed more than 30 documentaries for public broadcasting, drawing millions of viewers and earning the title “America’s Storyteller.”

The Pew Charitable Trusts

Ken Burns initially moved to Walpole, New Hampshire, because it was affordable, allowing him to pour his resources into his films. Four decades later he has come to embrace its isolation, which allows him to work without distraction. “I used to say that the best professional decision I ever made was to move to Walpole. It’s actually the second,” he says. “The first is deciding to stay here once Brooklyn Bridge was nominated for an Oscar.”

The Pew Charitable Trusts

Ken Burns discusses the “subtractive process” of what to leave out of his films with After the Fact host Dan LeDuc. “We live in New Hampshire. We make maple syrup here, and it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. And it's very much like our process of 40 to 50 to 60 to 75 to 1 shooting ratio,” he says. “It’s what doesn't fit. At the same time, you are also not trying to simplify it to the place where it no longer resonates with the complexities that the thing has.”

The Pew Charitable Trusts

Ken Burns’ multipart documentary "The Civil War" made use of photos similar to this image of Union soldiers resting after a drill in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1864. His focus on specific portions of an image and panning the camera across still photos to seemingly give them movement has become part of his signature style known as the “Ken Burns effect.”

NARA

The first installment of "The Civil War" ended with a reading of a letter from Union army officer Sullivan Ballou to his wife written only days before he was killed at the First Battle of Bull Run. “If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you,” he wrote, “in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights … always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath.” The letter captured the nation’s attention in 1990, when more than 14 million viewers tuned in each of the five nights the documentary was broadcast on public television. Ken Burns reads the letter during this episode of After the Fact, calling it “the greatest love letter ever written.”

U.S. Army Military History Institute/Wikipedia

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