The Ken Burns effect: how to move on still photographs without cheapening them

The push, the drift and the reveal: how documentary editors animate archive photographs, the speeds that feel like film, the mistakes that feel like a slideshow, and how templates carry the settings.

Most of a history documentary is still photographs. The Ken Burns effect (a slow move across or into a still) is what keeps them alive on screen. Done well, it's invisible. Done badly, it's the first thing that makes a film look amateur.

The three moves

• The push. A slow zoom into the detail the narration is about: the face, the sign, the hand. The default move.
• The drift. A slow lateral pan across a wide image: a crowd, a skyline, a battlefield. For establishing.
• The reveal. Start tight on a detail, pull out to show the whole. For the moment the narration reframes what you're looking at.

Speeds that feel like film

• Scale change of 5–12% over the shot's duration. More than 15% looks like a slideshow transition.
• Hold times of 5–10 seconds for history; the move fills the whole hold.
• Ease in and out. A linear move is the single biggest tell.
• One move per image. Never zoom and pan and rotate.

Where to point the move

Toward what the narration mentions, arriving as it's said. If the narrator says "the sign above the door" at second four, the push should land on the sign at second four. This is why word-timed narration matters; see AI voiceover for documentaries.

Mistakes

• The same move on every image.
• Zooming into low-resolution scans until they pixelate.
• Moving on images that should hold still (a portrait during a quiet line).
• "Animating" photographs with AI so people move: it crosses from motion on a record to fabrication. See Hedra and talking portraits.

Grain and edges

Add a consistent film grain over the timeline so scaled stills don't look digitally sharp, and let the image bleed past the frame edge slightly so the move never reveals a border.

In templates

An editor's Ken Burns settings, the scale range, ease, direction habits and hold times, are part of what a Glisse template captures. When the AI adapts the template, every archive photograph it places gets the editor's move, pointed at the detail the narration names, at the word it's named.

FAQ

What is the Ken Burns effect?

A slow pan or zoom across a still photograph, named after the documentary filmmaker who made it a signature.

How much should you zoom on a photo in a documentary?

5–12% over the shot, eased in and out. More looks like a slideshow.

Should every photo in a documentary move?

No. Hold portraits still during quiet lines; move on wide images and on details the narration mentions.