Ken Burns - Biography

Last Editor: balbaughG				Ken Burns Biography -   Name : Ken Burns Profession : Director Birth Details : born July 29, 1953 Birth name : Kenneth Lauren Burns Spouse : Julie Deborah Brown (18 October 2003 - present) Amy Stechler Burns (1982 - ?) (divorced) 2 children Trade mark : Takes a single photograph or painting, and utilizes close ups, music, voice overs and sound effects to make it seem like a lengthy action sequence.

Ken Burns Trivia -

Brother of fellow producer/director Ric Burns. Graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, MA Father, Robert Burns, was a cultural anthropologist

Ken Burns Detailed Biography -

Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American documentary filmmaker. Burns is particularly well known for his style in documentary material, making use of original prints and photographs, and has produced several acclaimed historical and biographical documentaries for television and film. Among his most notable productions were miniseries on the American Civil War (The Civil War, 1990), baseball (Baseball, 1994), and jazz (JAZZ, 2001). Burns's documentaries have been nominated for two Academy Awards and six of his documentaries have been nominated for one or more Emmy Awards. He won three Emmy Awards for The Civil War, for Baseball and for Unforgivable Blackness. Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 29, 1953. 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. Burns received a L.H.D. from Bates College in 2002. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire with his wife Julie. He has three daughters. Burns's brother, Ric, is also a noted documentary filmmaker, whose work has appeared on national public television for nearly two decades, earning significant recognition. Ric Burns is perhaps best known for his epic PBS series, New York: A Documentary Film. In his documentaries, 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 a rest on the player the narrator is discussing. The effect can be used as a transition between clips as well. For example, to segue from one person in the story to another, he might open a clip with a close-up of one person in a photo, then zoom out so that another person in the photo becomes visible. This technique came to be known as the Ken Burns Effect, even though he did not originate the technique, and has become a staple of documentaries, slide shows, presentations, and even screen savers. In film editing, non-linear editing systems such as iMovie and iPhoto (from Apple Computer) often include an effect or transition called Ken Burns Effect, with which a still image may be incorporated into a film using this kind of slow pan and zoom. It is also seen in screensavers that slowly pan and zoom through a slide show of digital photographs on a computer's hard disk.