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.
Ken BurnsRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that the process of filmmaking involves extensive effort and time, and not every moment captured is inferior; rather, it's part of the creative journey.
Ken Burns highlights the extensive labor and material that goes into documentary filmmaking, suggesting that the disparity between shooting and finished footage reflects the complexity of storytelling rather than a qualitative judgment of the unedited content. He reassures that the hours not included in the final edit are still valuable and contribute to the overall narrative, indicating that significant work often goes unnoticed in the final product.
Themes
FilmmakingDocumentaryCreative ProcessTimeEffort
In practice
Example use cases
In a talk about creativity, one might cite this quote to illustrate the importance of patience and persistence.
More from Ken Burns
All quotes βGood 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
It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to Him.
Patti SmithRead
We don't experience our lives as plots. If I asked you to tell me what your last week was like, you're not really gonna give me plot. You're gonna give me sort of linked narrative. And I wanted to see how do we bring that into fiction without losing the reader.
Teju ColeRead
Music is not a profession. Music is a way of life - one that requires much professionalism.
Daniel BarenboimRead
What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language.
Miuccia PradaRead
People always ask what a book is about, as if it has to be about something. I don't want to write books that lend themselves to that sort of description. My books are more a kind of breaking-down.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
I love performing outside because it's as if the heavens are open and the elements become part of the stage show as well - you know, the wind and the rain and the thunder. It's almost as if there's a sense of invocation in performance.
Florence WelchRead