KEN BURNS*: Characters & Complexity
*(or at least, MY Loose EVENT NOTES on a Talk by...)
I got to listen in & draw along this week @ the Capitol Center for the Arts while Laura Knoy interviewed Ken Burns [Substacking here: Ken Burns UNUM] -- Burns spoke about his 47+ years of experience making films, but SO MANY of his lessons apply equally well to making comics (or I suppose any creative projects like Art or Democracy... Or REVOLUTIONS, for that matter)!
Since I don’t have a transcript (or audio/video) of the event, these are just MY loose EVENT NOTES on a much longer conversation (& not direct verbatim quotes)...
The first question was:
“Why all these documentaries about WARS?”
So we’ll start there:
Ken talked about filmmaking specifically, & creative work more generally:
SOURCE NOTES:
My “messy notes in the dark” (pages 1-2):
That’s all I have for actual quotes here -- I’ve rearranged ideas & added some connecting text to help the comics read clearly.
//
Here’s my loose sketch of the CCA’s Egyptian proscenium before the house lights went out (+ blue ink added in the dark):
Thanks to NH Humanities for making this work possible!










"Complexity animates human stories", ain't that true?