Ken Burns Effect
Encyclopedia
Panning (camera)
In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device...
and zooming
Zoom lens
A zoom lens is a mechanical assembly of lens elements for which the focal length can be varied, as opposed to a fixed focal length lens...
effect used in video production from still imagery.
The name derives from extensive use of the technique by American documentarian Ken Burns
Ken Burns
Kenneth Lauren "Ken" Burns is an American director and producer of documentary films, known for his style of using archival footage and photographs...
. The technique predates his use of it, but his name has become associated with the effect in much the same way as Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
is associated with the Hitchcock zoom.
The name The Ken Burns Effect was used by Apple in 2003 for a feature in its iMovie
IMovie
iMovie is a proprietary video editing software application which allows Mac, iPod Touch 4th generation, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and iPad 2 users to edit their own home movies. It was originally released by Apple in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-enabled consumer Apple...
3 software. 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.
Usage
The technique is principally used in historical documentaries where 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.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 entertained.
Secondary meaning
The term has also been used less formally to refer to a person who gains an increased degree of celebrity after appearing in a Burns documentary. Such people include Shelby FooteShelby Foote
Shelby Dade Foote, Jr. was an American historian and novelist who wrote The Civil War: A Narrative, a massive, three-volume history of the war. With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the...
and Buck O'Neil
Buck O'Neil
John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil was a first baseman and manager in the Negro American League, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. After his playing days, he worked as a scout, and became the first African American coach in Major League Baseball...
.
Origins of the technique
Burns has credited documentary filmmaker Jerome LieblingJerome Liebling
Jerome Liebling was an American photographer, filmmaker, and teacher.He studied photography under Walter Rosenblum and Paul Strand, and joined New York's famed Photo League...
for teaching him how still photographs could be incorporated into documentary films. He has also cited the 1957 National Film Board of Canada
National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...
documentary City of Gold, co-directed by Colin Low
Colin Low (filmmaker)
Colin Archibald Low, CM, RCA is a Canadian animation and documentary filmmaker.Born in Cardston, Alberta, Low attended the Banff School of Fine Arts and the Calgary Institute of Technology, now known as the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology...
and Wolf Koenig, as a source of inspiration for this technique. Winner of the Palme d'or
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and is presented to the director of the best feature film of the official competition. It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du...
at the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
and nominated for an Academy Award, City of Gold used animation camera
Animation camera
An animation camera, a type of rostrum camera, is a movie camera specially adapted for frame-by-frame shooting animation or stop motion. It consists of a camera body with lens and film magazines, a stand that allows the camera to be raised and lowered, and a table, often with both top and...
techniques to slowly pan and zoom across archival still pictures of Canada's Klondike Gold Rush
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
.
The British Broadcasting Corporation's documentary series The Great War
The Great War (documentary)
The Great War is a 26-episode documentary series from 1964 on the First World War. It was a co-production involving the resources of the Imperial War Museum, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
, first shown in 1964, used both extensively.
Implementation
In film editingFilm editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
, the technique may be achieved through the use of a rostrum camera
Rostrum camera
A rostrum camera is a specially designed camera used in television production and filmmaking to animate a still picture or object. It consists of a moving lower platform on which the article to be filmed is placed, while the camera is placed above on a column. Many visual effects can be created...
, although today it is more common to use software. Non-linear editing system
Non-linear editing system
In video, a non-linear editing system is a video editing or audio editing digital audio workstation system which can perform random access non-destructive editing on the source material...
s such as iMovie
IMovie
iMovie is a proprietary video editing software application which allows Mac, iPod Touch 4th generation, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and iPad 2 users to edit their own home movies. It was originally released by Apple in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-enabled consumer Apple...
and Openshot for Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
include an effect or transition called Ken Burns Effect, with which a still image may be incorporated into a film using this kind of slow pan and zoom. Final Cut Pro
Final Cut Pro
Final Cut Pro is a non-linear video editing software developed by Macromedia Inc. and then Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro X, runs on Mac personal computers powered by Mac OS X version 10.6.7 or later and using Intel processors...
, Apple TV and Apple's iPhoto photo editing program include a photo slideshow
Slideshow
A slide show is a display of a series of chosen information or pictures, done for artistic or instructional purposes. Slide shows are conducted by a presenter using an apparatus, such as a carousel slide projector, an overhead projector or in more recent years, a computer running presentation...
option labeled "Ken Burns Effect".
On the Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
platform, AVS Video Editor
AVS Video Editor
AVS Video Editor is a shareware video editing software tool produced by Online Media Technologies Ltd., the direct vendor of multimedia video and audio solutions, UK. The program is intended for those who are new to video editing, it also is a real-time, timeline-based video editing software...
, Windows Movie Maker
Windows Movie Maker
Windows Movie Maker is a video creating/editing software application, included in Microsoft Windows Me, XP, and Vista. It contains features such as effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie. New effects and transitions can be made and existing ones can be...
, Pinnacle Studio
Pinnacle Studio
Pinnacle Studio is a non-linear video editing software application manufactured by Pinnacle Systems, a division of Avid Technology. It is the consumer-level counterpart to Pinnacle's former professional-level software, Liquid Edition . It also inherits from VOB Computersysteme's Instant CD/DVD...
, Sony Vegas
Sony Vegas
Sony Vegas is a professional video editing software package for non-linear editing systems originally published by Sonic Foundry, now owned and run by Sony Creative Software. Originally developed as an audio editor, it eventually developed into an NLE for video and audio from version 2.0...
Studio (and Movie), Ulead VideoStudio
Ulead VideoStudio
Corel VideoStudio is a video editing software package for Microsoft Windows distributed by Ulead Systems . The latest version of the software is X4 released on February 24, 2011.-Basic editing:...
, PicturesToExe
PicturesToExe
-PicturesToExe:PicturesToExe is a photo slideshow software application developed by WnSoft Ltd., and available for Microsoft Windows.-Overview:...
also have pan and zoom features built in or available through third party extensions which may be used to achieve the effect.
Microsoft Photo Story
Photo Story
Microsoft Photo Story is a free application that allows users to create a visual story from their digital photos. The software uses the Ken Burns Effect on digital photos and allows adding narration, effects, transitions and background music to create a Windows Media Video movie file with pan and...
is a free application that creates videos with both random and customiseable Ken Burns Effects automatically from selected images. Another free multiplatform Ken Burns effect application is PhotoFilmStrip
On the Mac platform, Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, iMovie, Adobe Premiere, and others also have the ability. Particularly, Adobe and Apple products (excluding iMovie) allow the user to set keyframes to further customize the process.
The effect is found in a great number of screensavers and slideshows. Apple uses it in their screensavers. Windows PCs can use Greg Stitt's "MotionPicture" and Gregg Tavares's "Nostalgic", among others. The effect can also be seen in the N73
Nokia N73
The Nokia N73 is a smartphone by Nokia officially described as a "multimedia computer". In common with other Nokia 'Nseries' and 'Eseries' phones of its time , the N73 comes loaded with many software applications, including contacts, messaging, picture and video galleries, a music player, a Visual...
smartphone by Nokia
Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
, applied to the slideshows the phone creates from the pictures stored in it. Many seventh-generation video game consoles also feature versions of this effect, including Nintendo's Wii Photo Channel, Sony's PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
and within the Last.fm
Last.fm
Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....
app for Xbox360.
Outside of screensavers and slide shows, the effect is also found in some video games.
Examples
- The Story about PingThe Story about PingThe Story About Ping is a popular children's book. First published in 1933, Ping is a colorfully illustrated story about a domesticated Chinese duck lost on the Yangtze River.-Publication information:...
, 1955, Weston Woods Prod Co. - Georgie, 1956
- Night of the Living DeadNight of the Living DeadNight of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
, 1968, Directed by George Romero - Comic Book ConfidentialComic Book ConfidentialComic Book Confidential is an American/Canadian documentary film, released in 1988. Directed by Ron Mann and written by Mann and Charles Lippincott, the film is a survey of the history of the comic book medium in the United States from the 1930s to the 1980s, as an art form and in social...
, 1988, Directed by Ron MannRon MannRonald "Ron" Mann is a Canadian documentary film director focusing primarily on aspects of Canadian and American popular culture. He does most of his work through his company Sphinx Productions, while also running a film distribution company on the side called 'FilmsWeLike'. Mann has also put... - The Old Negro Space Program, 2005
See also
- Motion control photographyMotion control photographyMotion control photography is a technique used in still and motion photography that enables precise control of, and optionally also allows repetition of, camera movements. It can be used to facilitate special effects photography. The process can involve filming several elements using the same...
- Pan and scanPan and scanPan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects...
- PhotoanimationPhotoanimationPhotoanimation is a technique as old as the motion picture industry, in which still photos, artwork, or other objects are filmed with the use of an animation stand...
- Photo slideshow softwarePhoto slideshow softwareA photo slideshow software is a computer software application used to display a range of digital photos, images and videos in a predefined order...