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.
quote by Ken Burns
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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 Curt Flood.
quote by Ken Burns
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.
quote by Ken Burns
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on.
quote by Ken Burns
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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.
quote by Ken Burns
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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.
quote by Ken Burns
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that it's extremely predictable, it's a rock rhythm and the solos all play the same stuff and they play it over and over again and there's a certain musical virtuosity involved in it.
quote by Ken Burns
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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.
quote by Ken Burns
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities.
quote by Ken Burns
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can't really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance.
quote by Ken Burns
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!