Like a layer on a pearl, you can't specifically identify the irritant, the moment of the irritant, but at the end of the day, you know you have a pearl. Ken Burns More Quotes by Ken Burns More Quotes From Ken Burns I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style. Ken Burns photography drama people I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films. Ken Burns drama past interesting It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn. Ken Burns autumn facts years Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality. Ken Burns letters writing children I grew up certain for a while that I was going to be an anthropologist, until film turned my head. Ken Burns certain film grew-up I wake the dead. I bring Jackie Robinson and the Roosevelts to life. Who do you think Im trying to wake up? Ken Burns wake-up trying thinking I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever. Ken Burns violent enjoy creative Nothing in our daily life offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a vast and complicated American family, the powerful sense of home, the freedom from time's constraints, and the great gift of accumulated memory than does our National Pastime. Ken Burns powerful home memories The reason why you do history, and particularly why you do war, is that you want to make sure that in the next war, some lessons were learned. There's a saying: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Or Ecclesiastes: "What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again." Human nature always superimposes itself - its strength and its frailty over the rush of chaos of ongoing events - and we can perceive patterns and themes and motifs. Ken Burns chaos done war World War II is smothered in sentimentality and nostalgia. What's interesting about Vietnam is that sentimentality is just not there, so you're given kind of a clean access to it in one way. It's also a war that represents a failure for the United States. Many people came back feeling like they never wanted to talk about it again. And so we developed a national amnesia. Ken Burns war people interesting I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with all of their equipment and the incredible amount of technique they have. But there's very little that I think satisfies you intellectually or emotionally. Ken Burns technique player thinking In most films music is brought in at the end, after the picture is more or less locked, to amplify the emotions the filmmaker wants you to feel. Ken Burns amplify film-music want The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice. Ken Burns stories justice years The way I work, the interview never becomes larger than the person being interviewed. Ken Burns interviews persons way When you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have a terrific episode, but if people are falling out because there are just too many elements in it, you have to begin to get rid of things. Ken Burns editing people fall You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time. Ken Burns essentials way needs When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad. Ken Burns documentaries style mean No one was more important to the game of baseball in the last half of the 20th century than Henry Aaron and no one writes about that supremely talented man, that tumultuous time and this treasure of a game better than Howard Bryant. Together, they are an extraordinary combination, and the book Bryant has written gets to the heart of the complicated and dignified, patient and consistent genuine hero that is Henry Aaron. Ken Burns baseball hero book You know, you meet some people, and do a lot of interviews, and you come across a Buck O'Neill and you know you are going to know him for the rest of your life. The same thing happened with. Ken Burns rest-of-your-life bucks people Wynton told us that Miles sold out, just wanted to make more money, just wanted to sell more records. I don't believe that Miles sold out but I'm not in a position to say. Ken Burns miles records believe
