Ken Burns on Story

Sarah Klein 

Tom Mason

Okay, you're a filmmaking team and you have this really cool idea. Do a passion project and make a video about a subject you really care about. Story-telling. It's a lot harder than it looks - we're talking non-fiction here - and something you and a lot of other creatives struggle with all the time.  So who do you know who's a good storyteller? How about Ken Burns?  Okay, you do an interview and ask him to tell you all about it.  

So you get it done. Then back home and look at what you have. It's 90 minutes of Ken Burns talking. Well, he may be a documentary superstar, but it's not a film and it's certainly not a story. So now what? Make it happen in post. And you do. Here's the very effective result:

If the video doesn't play, click here.  

The production is the work of cameraman/editor Tom Mason and producer Sarah Klein, aka Redglass Pictures. Their piece is graceful, spare and intimate. I like how the music draws you in and creates flow. And the pacing - the pauses help you connect with what's being said and also build a quiet tension. The Tom and Sarah introduce a film projector metaphor to help bridge the ideas and treat the stills to give them more depth literally and figuratively.    

The length feels right - long enough to explore a few ideas, delve into the personal side, leave an impact and be done.  It helps you see the creative challenges we all face as we bring shape and meaning to our work. And a little insight into what motivates Ken Burns, too.

Atlantic Magazine has a short interview with the filmmakers here.  If you want to know more about them you can visit their website. If you do, check out their video "Miracle on 22nd Street." And if you want to learn how this project came to be, there's a podcast interview that's very informative here.

Tom Mason described their creative process as "stumbling in the dark."  Perhaps.  But as their work reveals, with enough care and time you'll find a way to let your light shine.

The Power of Pictures

Recently one of our clients, Booz Allen Hamilton, asked us to create a video series to show some of the cool things their people are doing that sets them apart.  "They call it Missions That Matter."  


The first one features Sandra Davis, who volunteers at The Children's Inn, where families stay for free while their seriously-ill children are treated at a NIH Medical Center.  We approached the story in classic documentary fashion, with an in-depth interview and filming Sandra as a volunteer, interacting with children, staff and parents.  I didn't work on the piece, but it shows Sandra in action and has a lot of heart.    

The next piece is about John Cobb, who is helping develop a special program with the Department of Defense.  We planned to approach it in the same way, do the interview and then shoot him working on the program.  But after we did the interview, we were only allowed to show him in a neutral setting talking with colleagues.  Couldn't show the program, couldn't show the room where he works, couldn't show anything that depicts what he actually does.  Leaving a huge visual vacuum.


Big trouble, and this is why:  the words you hear in a video are always edited.  So, I typically join several phrases to make a complete thought, chop out extraneous comments, add pauses, delete false starts, ahs and ums, and shape the material to build a flow of words and ideas to tell a story.


But every time you make an edit in the interview, the picture jumps.  And cutting down a 30-40 minute interview into two and a half minutes means lots of edits.


So the visuals serve a dual purpose.  They help move the story along and they make all those edits invisible.  So what to do?  I needed visuals.

As you might say "necessity is the mother of invention."  I was told about a DoD photo site and searched through about a thousand images to find some I could use to tell John Cobb's story.  I looked for photographs that were more symbolic or abstract, so the viewer could read into them.  And I looked for ones that could show why what John was doing was so important. 


I think the final piece turned out pretty well and clearly shows the power of pictures.
  

Photojournalism: Something Old, Something New

Both photos by Todd Heisler

It all started with a blog in the NYT about the death of photojournalism.  Quoting Neil Burgess, former UK Bureau Chief of Magnum:  "Magazines and newspapers are no longer putting any money into photojournalism. They will commission a portrait or two. They might send a photographer off with a writer to illustrate the writer’s story, but they no longer fund photojournalism. They no longer fund photo-reportage. They only fund photo illustration."  


His comments remind me of one of the great examples of modern photojournalism that originated in the NYT photography blog, Lens.   One in Eight Million was groundbreaking, based on the simple concept that NY is a city of interesting characters.  Each piece (running about three minutes) plucked a New Yorker out of their every day life and told their story with a sound montage of their voice and evocative B&W photography by a NYT photographer.  The people came from all walks of life and the series described as an "ode to the city," won an Emmy for "new approaches to documentary."  I found "One in Eight Million" fascinating, posted several blog entries about it, "One in Eight Million" "Letter to Michelle McNally" , told friends and colleagues.   It takes empathy and considerable skill to create a compelling story arc in three minutes.  You can still see the pieces by following the link above.  


But that was that.  For whatever reason, the NYT decided to end it.  I'm sure that Emmy was a bittersweet moment for the series producers and photographers.

I see other examples, too.  Here's a link to NYT Photographer Chang Lee's innovative "Second Chance" series that also died on the vine.  It launched in the NYT website in June, 2009 and I believe ended later that year.  I wrote several blog posts "A New Way of Seeing" and "Capturing the Stillness" about his work, too.   Chang was incorporating video and photography to frame a person's story in key "moments."  He created those moments to allow the viewer time to pause and reflect, and gain a deeper insight into the story he was telling.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Chang Lee helped show the truth behind the cliche.

So, for about a year or two, the NYT was one of the most innovative sites on the web for using video and photography to tell stories.  And yes, I still see the names of their great photographers in picture credits, but now it's news photography, not explorations of ideas, issues, people, environments, etc. that seemed to offer such promise in the early days of Lens.

Well, I can't end this post with such a downer, so I want to point you towards something new.  New to me, anyway.  And that's a new site devoted to photojournalism.  It's called Fraction Magazine and it features a wide variety of work, much of it devoted to telling stories with pictures.  And reviews.  And sometimes wonderful surprises, like the work below, created in the 40s by Gita Lenz.  Her work, recently rediscovered and published, was featured in the Edward Steichen-curated exhibit "Abstraction in Photography" at the Museum of Modern Art and calls to mind some of the great work of that era.

And these days, Fraction is a great place for those interested in new ways of using images to capture character and exploring the art and ambiance of storytelling.  And, hopefully, it will be around for a long time as a source of inspiration for all of those involved in the visual arts.