by J. Nathan Matias

Burns and a Multitude of Voices

In his 1981 film documentary Brooklyn Bridge, Ken Burns did something very new with nonfiction film. Burns pieced together huge amounts of material: photographs, footage, letters, engravings, expert opinions, poems, music, and paintings. Burns married quality, epic narration and quality audio production with an effective collage through time of visual historical sources. He calls this method the Multitude of Voices (Edgerton, 2).

Since that first documentary, Ken Burns has defined the standard for quality historical documentary for the last two decades. His documentaries always contain a strong story-line. His works are pluralistic, showing the opinions of people with differing views of a subject. But when the film is over, everything, even the opposing views come together in a nice single epic tale of American pluck, failure, dreams, and accomplishment (Edgerton, 3).

This artifactual approach combines with a strong sense of narrative. Burns's first documentary Brooklyn Bridge is based on the nonfiction writing of David McCullough, and the documentary draws from the structure and style of McCullough's writing.

The second half of Brooklyn Bridge is a poetic compilation of the comments and art of New York City residents through time. By including things that might be missed in a strictly-historical or educational work, Burns is able to convey through the small, flat screen the emotional impact of a massive work of archtecture. While many