The Central Park Five

Kenneth Lauren “Ken” Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American director and producer of documentary films known for his style of using archival footage and photographs. Among his most notable productions are The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), and The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (2009).

Burns’s documentaries have been nominated for two Academy Awards (Brooklyn Bridge in 1982 and The Statue of Liberty in 1986) and have won seven Emmy Awards, mostly for The Civil War and Baseball. Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Lyla (née Tupper), a homemaker, and Robert Kyle Burns, an anthropology professor. His brother Ric Burns also has become a noted documentary filmmaker. Burns graduated from Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1971. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1975, and went on to be one of the co-founders of Florentine Films.

The recipient of more than 20 honorary degrees, Burns is a sought-after public speaker, appearing at colleges, civic organizations and business groups throughout the country. He resides in Walpole, New Hampshire with his wife Julie. Burns is a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, with almost $40,000 in political donations. In 2008, the Democratic National Committee chose Burns to produce the introductory video for Senator Edward Kennedy’s August 2008 speech to the Democratic National Convention.

As chief cinematographer on many of his documentaries, he has shaped the overall looks of the works. A key visual trait is the filming of live-action material (such as old houses, or battlefield locations) during the low sunlight of dawn or dusk. As a result, much of the original filmed material in a typical Ken Burns documentary contains a distinctive golden cast of low light.

Burns frequently incorporates simple musical leitmotifs or melodies. For example, his acclaimed The Civil War features a distinctive violin melody throughout, “Ashokan Farewell”, which was composed and performed for the film by the musician Jay Ungar. In a review of Burns’s work, the online journal Salon.com noted, “One of the most memorable things about The Civil War was its haunting, repeated violin melody, whose thin, yearning notes seemed somehow to sum up all the pathos of that great struggle.”

Burns often gives “life” to still photographs by slowly zooming in on subjects of interest and panning from one subject to another. For example, in a photograph of a baseball team, he might slowly pan across the faces of the players and come to rest on the player who is the subject of the narrator.

This technique, possible in many professional and home software applications, was affectionately named “The Ken Burns Effect” in Apple Inc.‘s iPhoto and iMovie software applications. It also figures in the 6th-generation iPod interface in the cover art of the main menu. Of Burns’s many film series, The Civil War is generally considered to be his masterpiece. He was director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director and executive producer of the series. It has been honored with more than 40 major film and television awards, including two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, the Producer of the Year Award from the Producers Guild of America, a People’s Choice Award, a Peabody Award, a duPont-Columbia Award, a D.W. Griffith Award, and the $50,000 Lincoln Prize, among dozens of others. The nine episodes explore the Civil War through personal stories and photos. During the creation of the movie Burns filmed thousands of archived photographs. The Civil War has been seen by more than 40 million people.

The War, 15 hours in length and seven years in the making, tells the story of the Second World War from the personal perspective of the men and women from four geographically distributed American towns: Waterbury, CT; Mobile, AL; Sacramento, CA; and Luverne, MN. Airing in the fall of 2007, it was the most watched series in the last ten years on PBS. 117 PBS stations across the nation participated in some form of community outreach (local documentaries, screenings, workshops, etc.) and nearly 30,000 educator guides went to every high school in the country. The National Parks: America’s Best Idea was a 2009 documentary broadcast on PBS that explored the history of America’s national parks, along with interviews with the people who helped create and influence the parks and park policies. Like his previous most prominent films, The National Parks was very well received.