"Throughout his career, Burns has developed and perfected the tricks of his particular trade: the evocative use of music and quotations from speeches and correspondence; the use of actors to read the words of historical participants; the zooming in and out to reveal key details in period photos; and the painstaking attention to sound effects, from birds to bullets, to help bring those images to life."
"To compensate, Burns and company use war re-enactors and place them in the actual historical locations. On many let's say most documentaries using a similar technique, the effect can be cheesy. But in The American Revolution, the directors avoid showing the faces of the actors re-enacting battle movements. Instead, parts of their bodies are shown in intense close-up: a bandaged hand here, a muddy boot there. Elsewhere, in an approach that borders on pure art, the directors use drones to capture the action from high, high above."
Ken Burns came to prominence 35 years ago with The Civil War and now presents a six-part series called The American Revolution focused on the Revolutionary War. The filmography includes histories of Congress and biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, plus deep examinations of World War II and the Vietnam War. The series deploys evocative music, quotations, actors reading historical words, photo zooms, and meticulous sound effects. Geoffrey C. Ward wrote the series, and Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt co-directed. Lack of period photographs prompted use of reenactors in historical locations, close-up body-detail shots, and high drone imagery to create an immersive experience.
Read at www.npr.org
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