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 BurnsRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of using real instruments and organic music in the filmmaking process to create a genuine connection between the music and the film's content.
In this quote, Ken Burns highlights the significance of authenticity in music production for films. He believes that recording music with real instruments rather than relying solely on digital editing brings an organic quality that enhances the storytelling. This approach allows the music to evolve in harmony with the film during the editing process, ultimately enriching the viewer's experience and making the content feel more genuine and emotionally resonant.
Themes
MusicAuthenticityFilmmakingEditingArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the creative process in filmmaking.
More from Ken Burns
All quotes →Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.
Ken BurnsRead
It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past
Ken BurnsRead
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 BurnsRead
Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.
Ken BurnsRead
You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.
Ken BurnsRead
Similar quotes
My apartment reflects my views as an architect. It is minimal, austere. The architecture doesn't impose itself upon you. The apartment is a stage for other things to take place.
Bernard TschumiRead
MORE CONSISTENTLY THAN EVER I WAS TRYING TO MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT CINEMA AS AN INSTRUMENT OF ART HAS ITS OWN POSSIBILITIES WHICH ARE EQUAL TO THOSE OF PROSE. I WANTED TO DEMONSTRATE HOW CINEMA IS ABLE TO OBSERVE LIFE, WITHOUT INTERFERING, CRUDELY OR OBVIOUSLY, WITH ITS CONTINUITY. FOR THAT IS WHERE I SEE THE POETIC ESSENCE OF CINEMA.
Andrei TarkovskyRead
If music sounds dated, it means it wasn't very good in the first place.
Tony BennettRead
The artistic life is a long, lovely suicide.
Oscar WildeRead
Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
Duke EllingtonRead
Cubism was an attack on the perspective that had been known and used for 500 years. It was the first big, big change. It confused people: they said, 'Things don't look like that!'
David HockneyRead