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The Civil War
1990 · TV series · documentary · 76 min episodes · 1 season
A documentary on the American Civil War narrated by Ken Burns, covering the secession of the Confederacy to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
14 positivefrom 14 commenters
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17 comments on Hacker News
A side story on the techniques for restoration:
I'm guessing about 10-15 years ago I was watching a documentary on the re-release of Ken Burns Civil War.
They were highlighting the digital tools they were using to restore and enhance the original film capture for new streaming services etc.
They showed one of the restorers using a fascinating tool where one window was a video feed of the original film's "first pass" to digital. One of the landscape scenes had a small smudge in the upper right hand corner so the restorer pauses the feed, goes back frame by frame and then was able to drag and drop the frame into another window where he used Photoshop like tools to fix everything and then drag and drop it back into the "feed". Seemed VERY efficient and shows how good tools can really accelerate a workflow.
I'm not sure if the above scene is in the below quick documentary but there are a lot of other cool "behind the scenes of restoration" moments: https://www.pbs.org/video/civil-war-restoring-civil-war/
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That's interesting.
I had watched Ken Burns' "The Civil War" documentary and came to this conclusion, it seemed balanced and thorough but I guess I would need more digging.
The Ken Burns effect is a type of panning and zooming effect used in film and video production from still imagery. 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.
Documentaries relying heavily on photographs were boring, and Ken discovered that by slowly zooming in, out, or panning sideways it gives the illusion of motion and makes it seem more interesting.
He made a documentary about the civil war that became such a phenom (shown over five nights in 5 parts, 10 hours in all) that by Wednesday everyone in America was rushing home to watch it.
Ken Burns's documentaries on America's National Parks, The Civil War, The Vietnam War, and The War
Herzog's "Lo and Behold"
Hang Up Your Brightest Colours - by Kenneth Griffith, a great documentary about the Irish rebellion against British rule - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwNJ3aFZg44
The Civil War - by Ken Burns. One of his best and thoroughly well paced - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7HmBmWz9mI
Looking for Fidel - by Oliver Stone. Well worth watching - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTObNESnogQ
Into the Inferno - Werner Herzog. Documentary on volcanoes where the director allows the filming locations to bring other topics to the forefront.
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World - Werner Herzog. Film about the internet.
The Thin Blue Line - Erol Morris. Film about a murder of a police officer that comes to a different conclusion than the court did about who the murderer is and led to the release of an innocent man and the incarceration of the guilty one.
The Civil War - Ken Burns. There's a reason it's a classic!
Good Intentions - Walter Williams. Film about how economic policies that sound good often have the reverse effects that they intend to have.
Any of Ken Burns' documentaries are good, The Civil War and Vietnam being two of the best. Even his take on Prohibition and Baseball are very watchable.
"The Civil War" by Ken Burns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Civil_War_(miniseries)
Detailed. Unagitated text. No reenactment. Based on contemporary documents only (almost). Competent experts, some quite characters. Reserved but impressive music.
Can you explain how and why you think a documentary such as Ken Burns' Civil War series, a seminal example of American documentaries, is filled with action and conspiracies?
I've been watching Ken Burns' "The Civil War". There was a bit that got me thinking about something which I've had trouble fully defining.
In one of the episodes, a historian talks about the simplicity of the values of the soldiers in that war. He marvels at how they were willing to march a mile and a half across an open field against a fortified enemy position. Think of the Union soldiers at Fredericksburg or the Confederate soldiers under Hood at Franklin. The historian also talks about how, were he in that situation, he feels like his response might have been "Sir, I don't believe that's a good idea sir" but how they bore it year after year and slaughter after slaughter.
Someone misgendering another person is a cruelty, just like any bully teasing a vulnerable person. There have always been cruel people though.
Juxtaposing that example of historical resilience against the increasingly baroque etiquette we require to insulate ourselves from experiencing garden variety cruelty, there's an incongruency that bothers me. Why could they bear that but we cannot bear this?
Perhaps it would also be worth mentioning Ken Burns and his documentaries.
They're absolutely worth watching and gives BBC a run for its money.
Perhaps start with The West and then move on to Civil War. My personal favorite was perhaps the one on Jazz, made in 2001.
re: issues with the Ken Burns documentary: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-we-need-new-civil-war-documentary-180971996/
Having just finished re-watching Ken Burns' Civil War for the first time in 20 years or so, like a freshman psychology student who now understands the motivations of the entire world, there is a line in the documentary, stated I believe by Shelby Foote, that stuck with me
> Before the war, it was said, "The United States are." Grammatically, it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states. After the war, it was always "the United States is," as we say today without being self-conscious. That sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an "is." *
I certainly, today, think of the U.S. as a whole, not as a collection of independent states, and consider the issue of states' rights to be a generally pointless debate.
* Ignore the issues for a moment with the documentary itself and with Shelby Foote, who has stated Nathan Bedford Forrest is "one of the most attractive men who ever walked through the pages of history" -- seriously, I don't even know what to do with that. And I don't know if they did their footwork -- a textual analysis of, say, newspapers prior and subsequent to the Civil War saying "the United States are" compared to "the United States is." From what I've seen regarding issues with the documentary, I would question it, but I don't know for certain. Some things they seem to have done good scholarly work on; others, not as much.
Gettysburg by Ken Burns. The best thing I've ever seen on TV.
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/civil-war/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Civil_War_(miniseries)
A great documentary on par with his Civil War documentary.
Binged watched the entire series in 2 days.
I was late to discover Ken Burn's Civil War, as I only started watching the series a month ago. It is a profoundly educative series and I would recommend it to anyone. The episodes are lengthy - which they should be, because there is just so much material. I also finally understood where Ken Burns panning (in e.g. iMovie) has its name from.