Chapter DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus
Pennebaker began in film over forty years ago. With a background in engineering from Yale, M.I.T., and the Navy, his expertise made him extremely instrumental in developing equipment for recording sound synced to the pictures captured by a film camera. Together with Albert and David Maysles, Richard Leacock, and Robert Drew, Pennebaker developed the first fully portable 16mm synchronized camera-and-sound system, revolutionizing the way films could be shot. Now they didn't have to rely on...
Emotional Archaeologist
Perhaps one of the most recognized names in documentaries, Ken Burns's prolific filmmaking specializes in making the history of our country come alive in a notable string of PBS series. His first film, Brooklyn Bridge 1981 , made with two college friends who started Florentine Films with Burns, earned an Academy Award nomination, paving the way for the litany of films that followed. He has traversed such complex and controversial subjects as The Shakers 1984 , Huey Long 1985 , Congress 1988 ,...
How do you find the time
I have the best job in the country. It's so exciting. I love it. I live in this little village where any kind of notoriety that I have plus fifty cents gets me a cup of coffee. So you can't take yourself too seriously. It's like having a big sore thumb. When you start feeling like you're somebody, you sort of look and the thing is throbbing and you go, oh, yeah, you're just the same. There is a thing out there called a Ken Burns film, but a Ken Burns film is really just acknowledging an...
Chapter Susan Froemke
Longtime filmmaker with Maysles Films, Susan Froemke has been Albert's primary collaborator since his brother David died in 1987. Froemke came to Maysles after a brief stint with WNET in New York. Over two decades, and four Emmy Awards later, she is one of the most respected nonfiction filmmakers in the field. With Maysles, she has crafted close to twenty nonfiction films, including Christo in Paris 1990 , Soldiers of Music Rostropovich Returns to Russia 1991 , Letting Go A Hospice Journey 1996...
What do you think your shooting ratio is
I think we shot somewhere around forty hours for The War Room. D.A. There's sort of a point where you get bored, and it's usually about forty hours. I think the film Don't Look Back was forty hours, but some films where they have a little repeat built into them that you didn't expect, like Moon Over Broadway 1998 , they kept changing the script so we'd have to reshoot all the rehearsals because we'd never see the old ones again. Moon Over Broadway is a film chronicling the opening of the...