“The Art of The Documentary” by Megan Cunningham, was a book I received as a gift last Christmas. It got ruined when our apartment had water damage from the apartment above us in July of this year. So my beautiful wife bought me another copy as a gift. I’m now only getting the sweet time to sit down and read it. The book was put together on ten conversations with Documentary filmmakers, editors, cinematographers and producers.

The first director the author has a conversation with is Ken Burns. The king of PBS, Ken Burns created series of documentaries on The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz and Brooklyn Bridge. These documentaries ran from 8 to 16 hours in length. Ken Burns even has a digital effect named after him called the Ken Burns effect. That is when a photo is used in film and the photo pans and zooms to give the still a life of it’s own.

I found this excerpt from the book to be really intriguing.

The Question:
Music seems to be central to your films. Is that part of the research process?

The Answer:
We don’t do music at the end. We do the music at the beginning. We record, we identify many tunes before editing starts, or early in the editing, go into the studio and record dozens of versions of that tune. And then the rhythm and pacing of the music is organic to the editing process. It is, in fact, dictating the rhythm and pacing of our writing, sometimes. So, we’re finding ourselves shortening a sentence or lengthening it to reach the end of a musical phrase. Rather than lock the picture, hand it over to somebody who’s providing us not with jewels of tapestry, but wall-to-wall carpeting, which is merely attempting to amplify emotions we hope, we pray, are there. We know if they’re there, because it’s an organic process.

I couldn’t agree more with him. Music helps mold the piece together, the words can be shortened or lengthened to bring the piece alive. The music is what drives the emotion to a film. I can’t wait to read more.