Circle of the Sun is a 1960 short documentary film on Kainai Nation , or Blood Tribe, of Southern Alberta , which captured their Sun Dance ritual on film for the first time. Tribal leaders, who worried the traditional ceremony might be dying out, had permitted filming as a visual record.
31-623: The film was directed by Colin Low , who was from the area. Low's father had been a foreman of the Cochrane Church Ranch in the area, southern Alberta and had known many Blood Tribe people since childhood. Colin Low had first witnessed the Sun Dance in 1953, the year he shot Corral . Footage of the Sun Dance was shot in 1956 and 1957, with the film completed in 1959. The film also included modern aspects of Blood Tribe life by shooting on an oil well on
62-570: A cel that is meant to be held and panned is called a "hold cel" and marked in production with the word " tome " ( 止メ ). For example, the American studio Filmation frequently used panning as a way to cut costs and fill time. Burns has credited documentary filmmaker Jerome Liebling for teaching him how still photographs could be incorporated into documentary films. He has also cited the 1957 National Film Board of Canada documentary City of Gold , co-directed by Colin Low and Wolf Koenig , as
93-426: A call for student submissions; one of Low's teachers suggested that he send in his portfolio and, a week later, he was hired by the prominent NFB filmmaker Norman McLaren . McLaren placed Low under the tutelage of George Dunning , who would act as his mentor for five years. To hone his animation skills, he was also put to work with NFB animator Evelyn Lambart . Low was recognized as a filmmaker in 1949. In 1950, he
124-513: A key inspiration for the so-called ' Ken Burns effect '. In 1960, Low and Roman Kroitor co-directed Universe , capturing the attention of Stanley Kubrick , who was preparing to make 2001: A Space Odyssey . Low was invited to work on 2001: A Space Odyssey but had to decline because he was making In the Labyrinth , a multi-screen production for Expo 67 . Some of his ideas and techniques were incorporated into Kubrick's film and Kubrick used
155-677: A photo slideshow option also labelled "Ken Burns Effect". On the Windows platform, AVS Video Editor , Windows Movie Maker , Pinnacle Studio , Serif MoviePlus , Avid Media Composer , Sony Vegas Studio (and Movie), Ulead VideoStudio , Adobe Premiere , and PicturesToExe also have pan and zoom features built-in; otherwise, it is still available through third-party extensions. Microsoft Photo Story creates videos with both random and customisable Ken Burns Effects automatically from selected images. ProShow Gold/Producer from Photodex and PhotoFilmStrip (free applications) also come with this effect. On
186-410: 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. By employing simulated parallax , a two-dimensional image can appear as 3D , with the viewpoint seeming to enter the picture and move among the figures. The effect can be used as a transition between clips as well. For example, to segue from one person in
217-692: A prior example of the technique. Winner of the Palme d'or at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for an Academy Award , City of Gold used animation camera techniques to slowly pan and zoom across archival still pictures of Canada's Klondike Gold Rush . America's television audience had seen extensive use of the technique in NBC's Meet Mr. Lincoln , first telecast 11 February 1959. This one-hour Abraham Lincoln documentary used period photographs, illustrations, artwork, newspapers and documents "animated" by
248-532: A story-telling sequence for Arch Oboler's 1950 Columbia feature Five , and have for more than a decade continued development of this form—in my independent feature The Naked Eye (1956), the featurette The True Story of the Civil War (an Academy Award winner, 1956 ), Warner Brothers' The James Dean Story (1957), and most recently [...] for [...] ABC-TV's Winston Churchill, the Valiant Years . In film editing ,
279-453: Is Canada (1972) The Question of TV Violence (1972) Coming Home (1973) Sub-Igloo (1973) The Man Who Can't Stop (1973) Child, Part 1: Jamie, Ethan and Marlon: The First Two Months (1973) Cree Hunters of Mistassini (1974) Sananguagat: Inuit Masterworks (1974) Another Side of the Forest (1974) Ken Burns effect The Ken Burns effect
310-423: Is a type of panning and zooming effect used in film and video production from non-consecutive still images. 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
341-452: Is an acknowledged classic. Paul Haesaerts made Rubens in 1948. Americans Paul Falkenberg and Lewis Jacobs made Lincoln Speaks at Gettysburg entirely out of nineteenth-century engravings, 1950. Ben Berg and Herbert Block of Hollywood have for years been making a series of story-telling dramas out of paintings and prints, including a life story of Goya. I myself pioneered the dramatic use of still photographs (rather than paintings or prints) in
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#1732844772837372-444: Is associated with the dolly zoom . 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. The technique is principally used when 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
403-596: Is for Architecture (1960) Circle of the Sun (1960) Universe (1960) Hors-d'oeuvre (1960) Do You Know the Milky Way? (1961) Very Nice, Very Nice (1961) The Days of Whiskey Gap (1961) Pot-pourri (1962) My Financial Career (1962) 21-87 (1963) I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (1963) Free Fall (1964) The Hutterites (1964) The Children of Fogo Island (1967) The Sea (1971) Here
434-649: The Kainai Nation (Blood Tribe), which later became the subject of two of his films; his 1960 film Circle of the Sun marked the first time the Kainai Nation 's sacred Sun Dance was filmed. Low studied graphic design and animation at the Banff School of Fine Arts and then the Calgary Institute of Technology . In 1946, while he was at the latter, the National Film Board of Canada was hiring and put out
465-593: The National Film Board of Canada As Director, Executive Producer or Producer Cadet Rousselle (1946) The Romance of Transportation in Canada (1952) Age of the Beaver (1952) Corral (1954) Riches of the Earth (1954) A Thousand Million Years (1954) One Little Indian (1954) The Jolifou Inn (1955) Gold (1955) City of Gold (1957) City Out of Time (1959) A
496-573: The Labyrinth helped lead to the creation of the IMAX format. Low co-directed the first IMAX 3D production Transitions for Expo 86 in Vancouver , and co-directed Momentum , the first film in 48 frames per-second IMAX HD for Expo 92 in Seville , Spain . In 1972, at the 24th Canadian Film Awards , Low received the inaugural Grierson Award for "an outstanding contribution to Canadian cinema." In 2002,
527-775: The Large Format Cinema Association presented Low and the NFB with its Abel Gance Award for outstanding work in large format filmmaking. In 1997, Low was awarded the Prix Albert-Tessier , given to individuals for an outstanding career in Québec cinema. In 2013, the DOXA Documentary Film Festival created the annual Colin Low Award , presented to the best Canadian documentary film in the festival program. Low
558-504: The Mac platform, programs such as Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, iMovie, Adobe Premiere also have the ability. Adobe and Apple products (excluding iMovie) allow the user to set keyframes to further customize the process. The mobile video-editing app KineMaster (for Android and iPhone) has "Ken Burns/Crop and Pan" as the default setting for photo cropping. The effect is found in various screensavers and slideshows, such as Apple. Windows PCs have
589-628: The camera on an elaborate flatbed motion picture apparatus, and the descriptive term "stills in motion" for the technique was used in NBC's publicity and in the trade by the early 1960s. In a 1961 letter to The New York Times , photographer and filmmaker Louis Clyde Stoumen surveyed earlier uses of the technique by himself and others: Curt Oertel made his Michaelangelo , with important storytelling use of still material, in 1940 (released as Robert Flaherty's The Titan around 1949). Belgium's Henri Starc began imparting dramatic film form to still images in 1936, and his lyric World of Paul Delvaux (1947)
620-599: The film ended up being quite extensive, at a time when genuine Aboriginal voices were not often heard on the screen. In 1982, Low directed the NFB documentary Standing Alone , which was broadcast nationally on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation . The hour-long film follows 25 years in Standing Alone's life, beginning with his youth as an oil-rig roughneck, rodeo rider and cowboy, and explores his concerns about preserving his tribe's spiritual heritage in
651-452: The filmmaker's permission to create the term "Ken Burns Effect" for Apple's iMovie video production software zoom and pan effect (the description had been Apple's internal working title while the feature was in development). Burns initially declined, saying that he did not allow his name to be used for commercial purposes, but finally he had Jobs give him some equipment (which he later donated for nonprofit use) in exchange for permission to use
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#1732844772837682-632: The industrial age. On National Aboriginal Day in 2011, the NFB released the Pete Standing Alone trilogy, which includes Circle of the Sun , Standing Alone and a 2010 film, Round Up . The trilogy documents 50 years in the life of the Kainai Nation, as well as Standing Alone's personal development from a youth to a tribal elder. Colin Low (filmmaker) Colin Archibald Low CM RCA (July 24, 1926 – February 24, 2016)
713-417: The narrator from Universe ( Douglas Rain ) as the voice of his HAL 9000 computer. From 1966 to 1968, Low worked with the people of Fogo Island, Newfoundland to shoot 27 films for the NFB's Challenge for Change program, using media as a tool to bring about social change and combat poverty. Low was involved in a series of firsts in the wide-screen genre. The experimental multi-screen production In
744-560: The option of Greg Stitt's "MotionPicture" and Gregg Tavares's "Nostalgic", among others. The effect can also be seen in the N73 smartphone by Nokia , applied to the slideshows the phone creates from the pictures stored in it. Specific seventh-generation video game consoles also feature versions of this effect, including Nintendo's Wii Photo Channel , Sony's PlayStation 3 and within the Last.fm app for Xbox 360 . Steve Jobs contacted Burns to obtain
775-511: The reserve. Circle of the Sun features narration from Pete Standing Alone, a young member of the Blood Tribe who worked on oil rigs . When Low had finished editing in 1959, he played a recorded conversation with Standing Alone for Stanley Jackson. Jackson was so impressed that Standing Alone was flown to the NFB's headquarters in Montreal to work on the narration. Standing Alone's participation in
806-421: 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 engaged. Many styles of limited animation , such as Japanese anime , also use still-image panning to compensate for a lack of movement on-screen. In anime production,
837-462: The technique may be achieved through the use of a rostrum camera , although today it is more common to use digital editing. Virtually all non-linear editing systems provide a tool to implement the simplistic effect, although only some software, such as iMovie and Openshot for Linux , specifically call it a Ken Burns Effect; it is usually simply referred to as pan and zoom. Final Cut Pro , Apple TV and Apple's iMovie video editing program include
868-533: The term in Apple products. In February 2014, Burns stated in his AMA ("Ask Me Anything", a question-and-answer interactive interview) on Reddit that Steve Jobs "asked my permission. I said yes. And six billion saved wedding, bar mitzvahs, vacation slideshows later, it's still going. But our attempt to 'wake the dead' relies on a much more nuanced and complicated relationship to the photograph (the DNA of storytelling), as well as
899-575: Was a Canadian animation and documentary filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was known as a pioneer, one of Canada's most important filmmakers, and was regularly referred to as "the gentleman genius". His numerous honors include five BAFTA awards, eight Cannes Film Festival awards, and six Academy Award nominations. Low was born and raised in Cardston , Alberta , to Gerald and Marion Low, ranchers who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . The town borders
930-536: Was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and, in 1996, in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to cinema in Canada and around the world, was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada . Shortly after joining the NFB, Low met Eugénie (Jean) St. Germain in Montreal. They married in 1947 and had three sons. He was survived by his wife and sons when he died in Montreal on February 24, 2016. All for
961-604: Was appointed Head of the Animation Unit. From 1972 to 1976, he was an executive producer for the NFB's Studio C; in 1976, he became Director of Regional Production. He would stay with the NFB for the rest of his life, making 203 films and acting as a researcher and advisor on many others. He officially retired in 1997, but continued to write about animation and large-format film, and to work on film projects. Low's 1957 documentary City of Gold made use of slow pans and zooms across archival photos and has been cited by Ken Burns as