Rick Burns

Last week, renowned documentary film maker Rick Burns came to the Aurora University campus to discuss his new work with the students. He began with an introduction of himself and his many awards. These ranged from things like his writing ability to his filming ability. He then left a little opportunity for us, the audience, to ask questions. He was a very educated man and had superb speaking ability. He then gave us a little treat, we would be the first people to see the preview to his new documentary. This film was going to cover the voyage of one of the only boats in history to be attacked and sunken by a whale. The film was very interesting and held my attention for all of it, which is something to say for a documentary. He told us that everything he used for the film, ships, clothing, and other voyaging supplies, were made from scratch. This is a monumental amount of work for a two hour film. This film also took a great amount of coordination to make because he didn't use any arch-able footage. All of his footage was from actors or extras on the boats doing actions that he directed. The story itself I have never heard of. The crew of a whaling ship set forth to go hunt whales, obviously. They were on the water for quite some time when a large sperm whale began to ram the hull of the ship. It broke the ship with little effort and left the crew stranded amongst their life boats. It wasn't for many months, and over 2,500 miles that the two survivors that ventured forth, that they were discovered. His style of film making is one i have yet to see in my Honors Film Studies course. He used historic events and actors to play out the events of the sea. There was no material to use for him besides the stories and the history reports, so Rick had a lot of work to do to make this documentary a good one.