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Ken Burns (born July 29, 1953Ken Burns is an American documentary filmmaker.

Burns is particularly well known for his in documentary material, making use of original prints and photographs, and has produced several acclaimed historical and biographical documentaries for television and film. Among his most notable productions were miniseries on the American Civil War (, 2001).

Burns's documentaries have been nominated for two Academy Awards and six of his documentaries have been nominated for one or more Emmy Awards. He won three Emmy Awards for

Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 29, 1953. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1975, and went on to be one of the co-founders of Florentine Films. Burns received a L.H.D. from Bates College in 2002. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire with his wife Julie. He has three daughters.

Burns's brother, Ric, is also a noted documentary filmmaker, whose work has appeared on national public television for nearly two decades, earning significant recognition. Ric Burns is perhaps best known for his epic PBS series,

In his documentaries, Burns often gives life to still photographs by slowly zooming-in on subjects of interest and panning from one subject to another. For example, in a photograph of a baseball team, he might slowly pan across the faces of the players and come to a rest on the player the narrator is discussing.

The effect can be used as a transition between clips as well. For example, to segue from one person in the story to another, he might open a clip with a close-up of one person in a photo, then zoom out so that another person in the photo becomes visible.

This technique came to be known as the Ken Burns Effect and has become a staple of documentaries, slide shows, presentations, and even screen savers. In film editing, non-linear editing systems such as iMovie and iPhoto (from Apple Computer) often include an effect or transition called , with which a still image may be incorporated into a film using this kind of slow pan and zoom. It is also seen in screensavers that slowly pan and zoom through a slide show of digital photographs on a computer's hard disk.

is generally considered to be his masterpiece. Burns was the director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director and executive producer of . The series has been honored with more than 40 major film and television awards, including two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, Producer of the Year Award from the Producer's Guild, People's Choice Award, Pea Award, duPont-Columbia Award, D.W. Griffiths Award, and the $50,000 Lincoln Prize, among dozens of others. The nine episodes explore the Civil War through personal stories and photos that create a very different kind of experience from watching nearly any other modern movie today. During the creation of the movie Burns filmed thousands of archived photographs. This resulted in the coining of the aforementioned term the “Ken-Burns Effect”.