What is the magic that allows us to connect across any span of time, distance or imagination to experience the lives and lessons of others? Of course, it’s what we simply call the story. For me personally, some of the most riveting and impactful storytelling of my lifetime has been courtesy of filmmaker Ken Burns. Like legions of other Americans and fans of quality historical entertainment all around the world, Mr. Burns’ epic works have reached me thanks to television and the internet. And while his past projects have helped shape my world view and my aims for living, beyond his work, he is mostly a mystery to me. For all of these reasons, I’m very thankful to the filmmakers Tom Mason and Sarah Klein of Redglass Pictures who created the powerful short film embedded here… to offer us all more insights into Ken Burns himself and his unique perspective on story.
“We live in a rational world where absolutely we’re certain that one and one equals two, and it does,” Burns says in the short film, “Ken Burns: On Story.” “But the things that matter most to us, some people call it love, some people call it God, some people call it reason, is that other thing where the whole is greater than the some of its parts, and that’s the three.”
The full transcript appears with the Redglass Pictures posting of the film on Vimeo, which first appeared in an exclusive feature from Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg, the executive producer for video at The Atlantic. Be sure to check-out the full story for a fascinating interview with Mason and Klein that includes these insights among many others.
“We both have seen a really big evolution in online documentaries in the past five years. We come from a feature documentary background, but a few years ago we started making shorter pieces for a series of museum installations and loved the cut-to-the-chase feel of them. It wasn’t until we had our short ‘Miracle on 22nd Street’ up on the front page of The New York Times that we realized the real power that documentaries can have online and the desire the public has to watch them. The short reached millions of people, and in some cases actually seemed to inspire people to be kinder and more thoughtful. It was a wonderful payoff.”
