The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is once again rolling into Durham starting April 7, and this year it will be honoring two of documentary’s best, filmmakers Ken Burns and brother Ric Burns. recess film editor Corinne Low chatted with Ken Burns about his remarkable 30-year career in film that many credit with redefining the art of documentary. Here, the man who brought the Civil War, Jazz and Baseball to the small screen speaks about the medium he’s shaped and how it has shaped him. It all began at the Brooklyn Bridge...
Recess: How did you originally get into documentary?
KB: Well, I wanted to be a feature film director all of my childhood and went off to college thinking I was going to be the next John Ford or Alfred Hitchock, or Howard Hawks.
And in college, I found that all of my teachers were still photographers or documentary filmmakers and I had my head completely turned around.
You simply acknowledge that God is the greatest dramatist and so you combine this interest in filmmaking with an interest in what is, or in my case what was, because I have always had this... interest in history.
R: So then how did you get started making movies?
KB: I jumped right in, the world's the best teacher. We didn't have any capital, we were a film company just because we said were a company. And so we starved for a few years doing day work for the BBC and whoever would hire us, and finally built up enough money to start a film on the Brooklyn Bridge.
R: Why did you choose to tell that story?
KB: It's just one of the most heroic stories in American history, but it was also amply documented with photographs and newspaper clips and I thought I could make the story really come alive in that way.
R: What did you as a filmmaker do to help bring those elements to life?
KB: The problem with historical documentaries is that they sort of held the past at arm’s length, at the time, they didn't try to live in the past and get at what the people were feeling or how they were living then.
So I experimented with bringing together eight elements of filmmaking to really get at the past in the moment: four visual elements and four audio.
The four visual elements are first of all the rephotographing of photographs, and filming them as though they are live and are characters; the second is the collection of and working in of archival footage, news reels and old movie footage, the third element would be the live cinematography, and the fourth is on-camera interviews, which--quite the opposite of how we treat the still photographs--we want to be as innocuous as possible so we try to ensure the filming and the setting really is background to the story they're telling.
R: And the audio elements?
KB: That would be third-person narration, which is the familiar voice of God of the documentary, which we wanted to try to write with a little livelier tone, but we also wanted to complement that with the second element, which would be first-person voices read by actors off-camera, to give a sense of how people spoke and give character to our stories. The third is that we then wanted to have a very complicated musical soundtrack, played by musicians versed in the musical period of the time and played on instruments they were familiar with and were of the time. The fourth effect is a complicated sound effect soundtrack. The joke of the time was that for historical documentaries all you needed for a soundtrack was troops tramping and cannons in the background. But we would have soundtracks as complicated as anything. We wanted the sounds to bring the story to life; we would even have birds that were accurate to the time and location.
R: Is that what makes a signature Ken Burns documentary?
KB: Right. All those eight elements work in each of my films in differrent capacities.
Sometimes when you're doing a film on something before photography you have more live photography, such as the Lewis and Clark documentary or The Shakers. Sometimes you have dozens of talking heads, sometimes you have only a couple.
So it's an interesting interaction between those eight elements that hadn't been done before I got into documentary and is in part why I think the festival is honoring me.
R: So at the time did you think that you were doing something new?
KB: Despite 25 years of honors and good reviews and success, I feel the greatest compliment I have ever received was at the Brooklyn museum in 1982, where the Brooklyn Bridge premiered. and there a woman in the audience said, “Where did you get those newsreels of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge?” I said “I'm sorry ma’am, there are no newsreels.” Motion pictures weren't invented during the time the bridge was built.
And she said, “No you're wrong, I remember seeing the footage of them moving the granite blocks and putting up the bridge.”
And what she was referring was the way we filmed the old photographs, the way we made them came alive by the way we shot them, the way we tilted them, the sound effects that we added of the waves lapping against the scaw and the seagulls in the background, the construction shouts and hammering and the sounds of the steam generators, the winches and the rope tightening. And when she said that I thought, “Oh my goodness, we've done something.”
R: What has been your most satisfying project?
KB: Someone once asked Duke Ellington what his favorite project was and he said “the one I'm working on now.” And I guess your favorite thing is always the project you're putting the finishing touches on and working to make better at the time. For me, that has just passed from the film on Jack Johnson to a massive film on the history of World War II.
We're following the history of four men and women from four geographically separate towns, and using their story to tell the story of the war. It’s a kind of World War 101, but told from the bottom up from the men who fought in the European and Pacific theaters of the war, and came from these American towns.
R: I know you must be really excited to be getting the lifetime achievement award at Full Frame. Tell me, what do you think is special about this festival?
KB: I think that we're beginning to see a renaissance in documentary films and Full Frame is one of the reasons. It was the first festival devoted to documentary in all its forms. It's essentially the place where the tribe gets together and celebrates one another and trades tips and stories. To receive this honor is just a terrific experience.
Ken Burns on his award-winning brother Ric:
“He came to the Civil War series as my assstant...and he was just phenomenal, he brought an incredible energy and intelligence to the production and by the end of the film he was my number two, which had not been anticipated. After that he went off and worked on his own, but [working together] was terrific. He has a different way of seeing things, he brings a much more intellectual, essayistic approach to his work, and I think that compliments my more narrative and emotional response to stories.”
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