Ken Burns Joins MasterClass to Offer New Lessons on Documentary Filmmaking

Ken Burns is a famous American documentary filmmaker. He is working with MasterClass, a startup online education company, to offer a series of new lessons and courses on documentary filmmaking.

Burns has created a large body of celebrated work, including “The Civil War,” “Baseball,” “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” “Jackie Robinson,” “Brooklyn Bridge,” “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,” among others. The 65-year-old filmmaker has won 2 Grammy Awards, 15 Emmy Awards, and has received two Oscar nominations.

In these courses for MasterClass, Burns plans to deconstruct clips from his films to show how he unearths the human story in real events. Burns says that the rules of storytelling apply to documentaries too, so a good documentary uses storytelling to stimulate the audience’s imagination.  

Pre-registration is open now and his class is accessible for $90 on the MasterClass website. MasterClass is an online educational platform based in San Francisco. Participants view pre-recorded lectures and tutorials featuring specialists in their fields. The company has raised more than $56 million from investors and includes videos featuring experts like Helen Mirren on acting, Spike Lee on filmmaking, Samuel L. Jackson on acting, Werner Herzog on filmmaking, Shonda Rhimes on writing for television, Hans Zimmer on film scoring, Aaron Sorkin on screenwriting, Martin Scorsese on filmmaking, Ron Howard on directing, and many more experts on various subject matter.

To learn more about Ken Burns teaching documentary filmmaking on MasterClass, click here!