Ken Burns’ company wraps up PBS film series at Campobello

The historic Roosevelt home and international park on Campobello Island bustled with a crew from Ken Burns' Florentine Films just days before the park was to open for the season on May 29. Florentine Films is recognized for its groundbreaking documentary style of film-making and best known for The Civil War, The West and, most recently, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. Burns and his crew are working on a new film, The Roosevelts, which will be shown by the Public Broadcasting Station in 2013 as its major fall season opener.

The Roosevelts will be a six- or seven-part series about Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt. Geoffrey C. Ward has written the script. Ward is the author of two books about FDR, A First Class Temperament and Before the Trumpet, and has collaborated with Burns on many other film projects, including The Civil War and The West.

Producer Paul Barnes, who has worked with Burns since 1984, explains the story behind the series as an interconnection of three lives and the combination of their personal and political lives, their children, their personal troubles. The story looks at how they were able to overcome personal difficulties and serve the nation, Barnes says of the depression that both Theodore and his niece Eleanor suffered from and the physical difficulty that Franklin suffered as the result of polio. "One thing Theodore did to escape depression was to remain active. We feel that Eleanor did the same thing C constant activity with public service." Theodore, Barnes notes, wasn't faced with the major crisis that FDR had to work with as president, "but he had progressive ideas... He was a little ahead of his time. He had a vision; he knew that America was becoming a world power."

This week Barnes was supervising the last few days of filming interior shots of the Roosevelt summer home. Crew members donned white gloves and handled items that were once played with by the Roosevelt children. The sun was just piercing through the early morning fog. The crew placed lighting outside the windows. Inside, shadows were cast on the floor, and a crew member placed a jacket and hat on a bench. She brought a photograph over to Barnes, noting that the hat and jacket were "just like the ones Franklin was wearing."

The film will feature many of the different Roosevelt homes, but the Campobello cottage plays an important part in explaining Franklin and Eleanor's early marriage, as young parents, and Franklin's feelings for his "beloved island." Barnes says, "Eleanor felt like this was a home of her own." The cottage "gives a sense of the people who lived here, a sense of their personality. The living room is so cozy and comfortable C it shows Eleanor's more relaxed attitude." He contrasts this style with Eleanor's mother-in-law, Sarah Roosevelt, whose homes, Barnes explains, were "stiff, square and rigid" in their decorations and furnishings.

The filming of the series started in May 2009 and will wrap up with this visit to Campobello. The completed film series will be 12 to 14 hours in length. "Editing starts next week," says Barnes. The editing will take two years. "These series take time. There's a lot of rewriting, edits, musical changes."

Barnes is known for his exceptional abilities as a film editor. He will edit parts one and four of The Roosevelts and supervise the editing of the other parts. "It's a push and pull of the Oyster Bay and the Hyde Park families. We're trying to interweave the two families together; I don't think that's been done before." Theodore Roosevelt's summer home, Sagamore Hill, was in Oyster Bay.

For the Campobello area, Barnes says that he hopes to use photographs that establish the nature of the fishing areas and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's interactions with local people. "I hope to use the informal photos." Those photographs, he explains, can sometimes reveal a great deal about people and their relationships with each other.