MasterClass Review: Ken Burns Teaches Documentary Filmmaking

Back in November, I watched and reviewed the documentary The American Revolution, which debuted on PBS and was produced by Florentine Films co-founded by Ken Burns. Having watched many of Burns’ documentaries and made short films of my own, I decided my next long video commitment was the 4 hour and 56 minute course Ken Burns Teaches Documentary Filmmaking on MasterClass. I have seen over a third of the MasterClass catalog so far, but I leave written reviews for those with a distinctly historical theme, including Doris Kearns Goodwin Teaches U.S. Presidential History and Leadership, Tracing Your Roots through Food with Michael W. Twitty, and Black History, Black Freedom, & Black Love. Like the other MasterClasses, this course was of high quality and gave advice offered nowhere else.

Throughout the course, Burns walked the viewer through the steps of creating a documentary: finding and telling a story, sourcing archival materials, writing a script, using cinematic techniques, conducting interviews, adding music and voiceover, and editing until everything falls into place. Burns interspersed this advice with stories from his own life. He was inspired to make films after seeing how movie affected his widowed father. He founded his company Florentine Films with recently graduated college classmates in 1976 at age twenty-three, and he produced Brooklyn Bridge in 1981 at age twenty-eight. The film was nominated for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards that year, launching his long and successful career. Other personal moments included his discussion of interviews with military veterans and historians, while the funniest moment came when Burns described his typical interview setup: himself and at most two other people, a stark contrast to the over twenty people milling around the studio during the MasterClass filming.

Burns focused the most on his ten-part series The Vietnam War, which originally aired on PBS in September 2017. He shared a color-coded storyboard that demonstrated how each of the episodes was meticulously crafted to show modern interviews, war footage, political figures, and concurrent events. This balance was carried across the over-seventeen-hour program. The introduction to the series balanced cleverness with meaning. Rapid cuts between archive footage moved backwards through time from the present day, with soldiers leaping in reverse and bombs un-exploding, while the rest of the series proceed steadily through time. Burns proved how he and his team could artistically portray an event while keeping the film grounded in reality, an ambitious task built on years of methodical work.

This thorough course covers a vast range of skills that modern filmmakers must consider. At times the information felt overwhelming even with my multidisciplinary background of writing, musical scoring, archival research, interviewing, sound design, and video editing. Fortunately, the MasterClass comes with a PDF packet, allowing viewers to review the information at their own speed as needed. This course is an excellent choice for anyone looking to expand upon their knowledge in this field, or those curious about what went on behind the scenes of their favorite documentary.