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23 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E F E A T U R E an epiphany. "It was like a lightning bolt — just standing in this room where he had created some of my favorite works," said Novick, who then pitched the idea of a documentary on Hemingway to Burns and another stalwart collaborator, writer Geoffrey C. Ward. Years passed. Burns, who is famous for juggling multiple films, had already committed to making other documen- taries that would take precedence, and there was talk of outside Hemingway-re- l a t e d p ro j e c t s t h a t t h e f i l m m a k e r s wanted to steer clear of. "Other things just became more urgent for whatever reason," Novick said. "It got officially on our list of something we were definitely going to do probably 10 years ago." While Burns, Novick, and Ward spent years or even decades mulling Hem- ingway, the picture editor on the show had a far more compressed timeline. Senior picture editor Erik Ewers, ACE — along with fellow picture editors Ryan Gifford, Cat Harris, and Margaret Shep- ardson-Legere — worked for about 16 months on "Hemingway," earning credit on all three episodes. And he hadn't even revisited the legendary writer in years and years. "The last time I gave Hemingway any thought was in high school," Ewers said. "I hadn't re-read him." One of two senior picture editors currently working at Florentine — the other is Tricia Reidy, ACE — Ewers has certainly been busy during his 30-year association with Burns. While still a student at the University of Massachu- setts Amherst, Ewers happened upon a broadcast of Burns' "The Civil War," which was a national sensation during its initial airing in September 1990. "There were a bunch of people watching this very strange film where there were pho- tographs and sound effects and they were panning across these images of soldiers," Ewers recalled. "I found myself actually in tears in a matter of minutes." Ewers later phoned his father, a Civil War buff. "I told him how much I wanted to do something like that, and he said, 'Well, you should talk to your aunt and uncle — they live next door to the di- rector,'" said Ewers, who, after meeting Burns and having made an impression on then-supervising editor Paul Barnes, ACE, earned a spot as an apprentice on Burns' 1992 radio documentary "Empire of the Air." "I fell in love with the mechanics of editing, back then on Steenbecks," Ewers said. "Organizing trims and cleaning fill and all of that was thrilling to me, believe it or not. And it was a very educational environment. Paul made it pretty clear early on that he wanted to grow me." E w e r s , w h o h a s w o r k e d i n b o t h picture and sound editing, steadily rose through the ranks at Florentine: He became an associate picture editor on "Baseball" (1994) and earned his first full co-picture editing credit on "Lewis & Clark" (1997). And, since the turn of the millennium, he has been among the editors on some of Burns' most ambi- tious and impactful projects, "The War" (2007), "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" (2009), and "The Roosevelts: A n I n t i m a te H i s to r y " ( 2 0 14 ). " H e's really grown — he's a terrific editor," Burns said, reflecting on his protégé's evolution. "It's been a long, long journey together, and it's been a family. And Erik is most definitely a part of that family." D e s p i te B u r n s ' o w n te n d e n c y to hopscotch between projects, editors em- ployed at Florentine — all of whom work at the facility in New Hampshire — work on just one at a time. They are assembled into teams; one team of editors might be starting a project while others are at a later stage on another project. The editor tasked with keeping the moving parts moving along is post-production supervisor Daniel J. White. "I've called it sort of like [being] a harbor pilot," said Partners: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. P H O T O : A P