Ric Burns

On Wednesday, March 17, Aurora University got the pleasure of having Ric Burns come to speak to us. Ric Burns is a well-known documentary filmmaker that has received many awards and honors for his work. He came to visit Aurora at a great time because he had just finished up a documentary about whales that he has been working on two days earlier on Monday, March 15. Ric Burns was very excited to get to talk with us. We even got the privilege of seeing the first fifteen minutes of his new production which is not scheduled to air until May on PBS.

Based on the brief fifteen minutes which were shown, the documentary was very interesting. It seemed to really engage the audience. The documentary talked about how whales were a good source of oil. However, whale hunters killed so many of them in the past years to the point of almost extinction. In this documentary, Ric Burns uses the "voice of God" type narration.

In addition to talking about his new documentary, Burns also talked about what it takes to make a good documentary and be a documentary filmmaker. He said that when choosing a topic to do a documentary on, you must choose something that is interesting to you. A filmmaker has to work with this topic for a long time so you want to make sure that you do not get bored with it. After picking a topic, you as a documentary filmmaker have to research that topic immensely. Burns said that you end up becoming an expert on the topic and that it is your job to educate your audience. They are trusting you to inform them since you know all about the subject. One last important point that Burns mentions is that you must keep your audience interested throughout the entire film.