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Ken Burns effect
The Ken Burns effect is a type of panning and zooming effect used in film and video production from non-consecutive still images. The name derives from extensive use of the technique by American documentarian Ken Burns. This technique had also been used to produce animatics, simple animated mockups used to previsualize motion pictures, but Burns's name has become associated with the effect in much the same way as Alfred Hitchcock is associated with the dolly zoom.
The feature enables a widely used technique of embedding still photographs in motion pictures, displayed with slow zooming and panning effects, and fading transitions between frames.
The technique is principally used when film or video material is not available. Action is given to still photographs by slowly zooming in on subjects of interest and panning from one subject to another. For example, in a photograph of a baseball team, one might slowly pan across the faces of the players and come to a rest on the player the narrator is discussing. By employing simulated parallax, a two-dimensional image can appear as 3D, with the viewpoint seeming to enter the picture and move among the figures.
The effect can be used as a transition between clips as well. For example, to segue from one person in the story to another, a clip might open with a close-up of one person in a photo, then zoom out so that another person in the photo becomes visible. The zooming and panning across photographs gives the feeling of motion, and keeps the viewer visually engaged.
Many styles of limited animation also use still-image panning to compensate for a lack of movement on-screen: one example is the American animation studio Filmation, which frequently used panning as a way to cut costs and fill time. In Japanese anime production, a cel that is meant to be held and panned is called a "hold cel" and marked in production with the word "tome" (止メ).
Burns has credited documentary filmmaker Jerome Liebling for teaching him how still photographs could be incorporated into documentary films. He has also cited the 1957 National Film Board of Canada documentary City of Gold, co-directed by Colin Low and Wolf Koenig, as a prior example of the technique. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for an Academy Award, City of Gold used animation camera techniques to slowly pan and zoom across archival still pictures of Canada's Klondike Gold Rush.
America's television audience had seen extensive use of the technique in NBC's Meet Mr. Lincoln, first telecast 11 February 1959. This one-hour Abraham Lincoln documentary used period photographs, illustrations, artwork, newspapers and documents "animated" by the camera on an elaborate flatbed motion picture apparatus, and the descriptive term "stills in motion" for the technique was used in NBC's publicity and in the trade by the early 1960s.
In a 1961 letter to The New York Times, photographer and filmmaker Louis Clyde Stoumen surveyed earlier uses of the technique by himself and others:
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Ken Burns effect
The Ken Burns effect is a type of panning and zooming effect used in film and video production from non-consecutive still images. The name derives from extensive use of the technique by American documentarian Ken Burns. This technique had also been used to produce animatics, simple animated mockups used to previsualize motion pictures, but Burns's name has become associated with the effect in much the same way as Alfred Hitchcock is associated with the dolly zoom.
The feature enables a widely used technique of embedding still photographs in motion pictures, displayed with slow zooming and panning effects, and fading transitions between frames.
The technique is principally used when film or video material is not available. Action is given to still photographs by slowly zooming in on subjects of interest and panning from one subject to another. For example, in a photograph of a baseball team, one might slowly pan across the faces of the players and come to a rest on the player the narrator is discussing. By employing simulated parallax, a two-dimensional image can appear as 3D, with the viewpoint seeming to enter the picture and move among the figures.
The effect can be used as a transition between clips as well. For example, to segue from one person in the story to another, a clip might open with a close-up of one person in a photo, then zoom out so that another person in the photo becomes visible. The zooming and panning across photographs gives the feeling of motion, and keeps the viewer visually engaged.
Many styles of limited animation also use still-image panning to compensate for a lack of movement on-screen: one example is the American animation studio Filmation, which frequently used panning as a way to cut costs and fill time. In Japanese anime production, a cel that is meant to be held and panned is called a "hold cel" and marked in production with the word "tome" (止メ).
Burns has credited documentary filmmaker Jerome Liebling for teaching him how still photographs could be incorporated into documentary films. He has also cited the 1957 National Film Board of Canada documentary City of Gold, co-directed by Colin Low and Wolf Koenig, as a prior example of the technique. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for an Academy Award, City of Gold used animation camera techniques to slowly pan and zoom across archival still pictures of Canada's Klondike Gold Rush.
America's television audience had seen extensive use of the technique in NBC's Meet Mr. Lincoln, first telecast 11 February 1959. This one-hour Abraham Lincoln documentary used period photographs, illustrations, artwork, newspapers and documents "animated" by the camera on an elaborate flatbed motion picture apparatus, and the descriptive term "stills in motion" for the technique was used in NBC's publicity and in the trade by the early 1960s.
In a 1961 letter to The New York Times, photographer and filmmaker Louis Clyde Stoumen surveyed earlier uses of the technique by himself and others: