BRIAN LAMB, HOST, Q&A: C-SPAN producer, Mark Farkas, what have you been working on for the last 2.5 years?

MARK FARKAS, C-SPAN PRODUCER: We began about two, 2.5 years ago on a documentary history project on the U.S. Capitol Building that’s been here since 1800, and, obviously, serves a timeless function.

But we’ve been inside and outside that building for the last two years or so.

LAMB: Has this ever been done before?

FARKAS: No. We found out that it hadn’t. We were all sort of, for our C-SPAN’s 25th anniversary, wondering what our next history project would be. And sort of a group of us got around and said, why have we not seen anything on the U.S. Capitol?

So, we had meetings with the Senate historians and curators over there, and came to find out that nothing had been done on the building, and we made our pitch, and got in and did it.

LAMB: Any other programs in the past, any other tours in the past of the Capitol?

FARKAS: Well, first of all, we found out that a number of other networks had approached the Congress to do something on the Capitol and had been turned down. They’ve got rules that prohibit the profiting off the imagery inside the building.

So, the only thing that we had found was something that was produced by the Capitol Historical Society, and it was about a five- to 10-minute piece on the building. Ken Burns had done something on the Congress back in the late ’80s.

And actually, we did find one thing that ABC had done with Everett Dirksen in 1968, but it’s not an extensive tour of the building. It’s a lot about Dirksen and some of it’s about the building.

LAMB: How much video did you shoot?

FARKAS: We just actually tallied that up this morning. We have 385 tapes that we shot. Each one of those is about 45 minutes. So, the math probably brings us out to 270 hours or so of tape.

The thing to keep in mind is, a lot of that – this is a new venture for us, and we were shooting it with steady cams, jib. And a lot of that tape is take one, take two. So, it’s not 270 hours of usable tape.

LAMB: How many different people did you talk to on tape?

FARKAS: We talked to over 25. I tried to tally that up this morning. I may be off by a little bit, but it’s around 25. It’s a mix of historians and curators in the building who tell the story, as well as senators and congressmen who have an interest in the Capitol’s history, or have been there a long time and have personal stories about the building that play into its history.

LAMB: And what is the immediate objective for our audience to be able to see? And when will they see it?

FARKAS: Wednesday, May 31st, Thursday, June 1st and Friday, June 2nd, at 8:00 p.m., we will do a three-part series on the history, art and architecture of the building.

And really, the purpose of it is to show them this national icon that is really all of our building – everyone’s building. But to take them inside and help them understand the building’s history, the country’s history. And the art and architecture inside that building really helped tell that story.

So, we utilized the art and architecture inside the building to help tell the Capitol story, as well as taking you into places – some of them the grand public spaces of the building that you can see when you go on a public tour. But a lot of other places, the building is just filled with rooms and passageways and other places that you cannot get on a public tour.

And frankly, we met a lot of people over there in the course of our work who didn’t know a lot of the history of the building and didn’t know these places even existed. So, we got very, very good access, I’d say, to take you into these places that nobody really knows about. There are some people, but hopefully our audience will …

LAMB: This is your number what for you at C-SPAN?

FARKAS: Began in ’84. So, 22 years.

LAMB: What are people going to see in about the next 50 minutes?

FARKAS: Well, in the next 50 minutes, what we want to show them is a little bit of the program itself, as well as a lot of the behind-the-scenes activity that – what it took to make this program.

When we went into the building, since it had never really been done, undertaken by anybody else – certainly not us or the Capitol – we decided to take a small camera in with us to document our experience of putting the program together.

So, lots of behind the scenes, B roll of us trying to work on the program, as well as some of the scenes that you’ll see from the programs next week.

LAMB: You said three things that I want you to explain. What is a jib camera?

FARKAS: A jib camera is a – basically, it’s an arm. You put a camera on a very long arm that gets you up into perspectives that you cannot get down on the floor with a tripod. And it will show you a smooth movement that brushes over different areas.

LAMB: What is a steady cam?

FARKAS: Steady cam is – people are very familiar with what a steady cam movement looks like when you go to watch a lot of movies. It’s basically a – it’s a camera on an arm that has a couple balancing gizmos – I don’t know the proper technical term for it – that’s strapped onto a human being’s body. And as you walk down the hall, instead of getting that look that you do with a handheld camera on somebody’s shoulder, it’s a smooth look.

LAMB: And finally, what’s B roll?

FARKAS: B roll is all the beauty shots that go with the narrative in all of our programs.

LAMB: Let’s start first with this video from a helicopter ride with Bob Riley (ph).

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FARKAS: We’re up in a helicopter with the Park Police to shoot the Capitol. It’s going to be fantabulous.

The perfect day. We’ve got the right equipment. We’ve got a great helicopter pilot, Kevin Duckworth (ph), to take us up about an hour or so. And we’re going to shoot the bejesus in high definition of the Capitol.

BOB RILEY (ph), DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: I know you’re ready for it.

FARKAS: And I know you are, too.

RILEY (ph): Oh, yes. You’re right.

FARKAS: Let’s do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: And by the way, who is Bob Riley (ph)?

FARKAS: Bob Riley (ph), in addition to being one of my best friends, was the director of photography for the Capitol project.

LAMB: Where is he right now? What’s he looking at?

FARKAS: We are up over Washington, D.C., and you’re looking at Washington from the west, looking east, with the Washington Monument right there on the left of the screen, and the Capitol now right below us. And we are up in a National Park Service helicopter shooting aerial shots of the Capitol, obviously.

Bob is strapped in there with a harness, as well as the camera being strapped in. I’m behind him with a small mini-camera. And actually, I’m strapped in, obviously, as well as the camera, the small camera being strapped in, as well, so things don’t fall out of the helicopter. That is an open door as we circle the Capitol.

LAMB: How hard is it today with the security to do this?

FARKAS: It’s incredibly hard. They told us that no one had gone up there and done this since 9/11, because the air space around Washington, D.C., and specifically the Capitol, the Mall and the Washington – I mean the White House – is restricted air space.

But we approached the National Park Service, let them know that we had had permission to do this documentary from the House and Senate. We had to get their permission to do it. So, with that behind us, we were able to go up there and shoot these visuals.

LAMB: What are we looking at here?

FARKAS: That’s actually the stuff that Bob was shooting. That’s not my small steady – it’s not the small minicam material I was shooting. It’s what Bob is shooting from his camera.

And in a number of our pieces, to show perspective where the Capitol is, and really to show how Capitol Hill has grown, and the Capitol has grown since 1800, we will use these shots during the programs.

And that’s approaching the Capitol from the east, from the Potomac River, coming right up on its – actually on its south side there. That’s the House side of the building. And as you pass over that, that’s the Rayburn, Cannon and Longworth Buildings in the foreground that we saw.

LAMB: How many people worked on this?

FARKAS: Well, it started out small. It started out as a core group of Bob, myself, Rick Stoddard, who has been a production assistant on this for the entire time, and a small group that was over with us at the Capitol. Jamie Sides (ph) was with us a lot. We had a steady cam operator.

The first thing we did, for the most part was get all the steady cam shooting done in the Capitol. And Andy Coleman (ph) was the steady cam operator.

So, it started as a small group. But as anything we do here, it grows. And it now includes editors and graphic artists and other producers, the folks in the control room now. So, it started small and it’s grown.

LAMB: Let’s look at Andy Coleman (ph). And who is he?

FARKAS: Andy Coleman (ph) is a freelance steady cam operator, who has worked for HBO, Showtime, the networks, to do a number of different projects.

And what he has there – that’s a steady cam. As you can see, it’s strapped onto his body. It probably weighs about 75 to 80 pounds. It’s – I actually put it on one time and was not able to operate it effectively at all. And …

LAMB: This is in the Rotunda?

FARKAS: That is in the Rotunda of the Capitol. And you can see as the camera tilted upwards, shooting into the dome and ”The Apotheosis of George Washington,” the painting that is in the eye of the dome.

And so, Andy was with us for several months as we got the steady cam shooting done. It takes him about 25 minutes to set all that up and to put it on, and there’s a finite amount of time.

Now what you’re seeing is the result of some of his work. That is actually – the camera is on Andy. As you can see, it’s a nice, smooth-looking shot as we enter the Senate chamber from the Senate lobby.

LAMB: You can see the lights for our television up in the ceiling.

FARKAS: We had to have those lights turned on for us by the Senate so we had enough light level in the Senate chamber.

LAMB: What time of day did you do this?

FARKAS: That was done on a – it was during the middle of the day. We began early in the morning and went into the evening. We had two days to shoot in the Senate chamber when they were out of session.

LAMB: What’s the hardest part of this from start to finish?

FARKAS: Well, I’d actually say the easiest part was getting all the filming done, and the interviews …

LAMB: It’s not filming.

FARKAS: No, it’s not filming; it’s videotaping.

So, the hardest – not that that was easy, because it’s – you know, there’s a lot that goes into making sure that all the shots work. We had time and again where a shadow was in the steady cam shots, so we had to do it over again.

But really, the most complicated thing is putting it all together – with all the commentary and with all the visuals, with the music that we’re adding into it, and then the graphics that have to be added to it – so it tells a story.

Because we’ve got a lot, a lot of people talking about the building. But to present it in a taped format that condenses it, makes it understandable and makes all the visuals work with the narrative, it’s cutting, cutting, cutting, is the most difficult part.

LAMB: Here’s some video of you arriving in the morning with your equipment on the east front of the Capitol where the visitor’s center is going to be soon.

Who’s that in the driver’s seat?

FARKAS: That’s Jamie Sides (ph), who is driving the vehicle up to the north front of the Capitol, the north entrance to the Capitol. And that’s Bob unloading.

And what we had for the first couple months, we had to bring the equipment in and out of the building on a daily basis. And there’s light poles that you see. There’s steady cam equipment, sandbags.

We had to go through a security screening process, get everything set up in the building, and then, at the end of the day, bring it all out of the building.

Fortunately, the Senate radio and television gallery took some mercy on us and found us a small closet – actually in their closet up in the Senate radio-TV gallery – to store this.

That’s Rick Stoddard (ph).

LAMB: And this is outside the Senate at the security checkpoint?

FARKAS: That’s – yes. We were not allowed to shoot anything in the security checkpoint, and we are now going inside the building, into the Brumidi corridors, which you’ll see in a second, up that ramp, into the building.

And again, this was done on a daily basis. So what you’re seeing is the beginning of the day. And at the end of the day we would bring the material out.

And we’re just about to go into the north entrance of the Capitol. The Brumidi corridors are what you’re seeing there. That’s a bust of Constantino Brumidi, who is known as the artist of the Capitol. And those hallways there were decorated by him and his team of painters in the 1850s and 1860s.

LAMB: Now, when people see – and we’re going to run the first few minutes of the entire special, the nine-hour special, so people can see what it looks like.

It looks like that it’s cut off at the top and the bottom. Why is that?

FARKAS: We made a decision, since nobody had been inside the Capitol to do something like this, to shoot it in high definition. And the best format for high definition is 16x9. It gives you more – you can see more.

LAMB: What you mean by that are these new television sets that are rectangular instead of square.

FARKAS: Exactly. And what it will show up on C-SPAN – we don’t broadcast in high definition. So it will show up on C-SPAN as a letter box with a little bit of black at the top and a little bit of black at the bottom, as you’re seeing right there.

Again, it’s a widescreen format, and we plan on versioning DVDs for a widescreen, as well.

So, the decision was made, really, to do this in the best format that we could, because much of what we will see are the visuals of the building in high definition. It’s an archive for us. It’s a chance for us to do this in high definition if we want to try to air it on high definition DVDs or a high definition network at some point.

LAMB: And what kind of music did you use?

FARKAS: We are using a lot of different types of music in it. We entered into a contract with a place called American Music Company out of New York, and for a couple thousand dollars paid the rights to use their music library.

So, it’s a combination of classical music, music that I would consider sort of Americana that’s uplifting, but we also have segments in the program that have to do with slavery and its role in building the Capitol. So the music there is not uplifting; it matches the tone that the storytellers are telling.

So, it’s a broad variety of music that’s used.

LAMB: We’re going to show our audience the first seven minutes of the nine-hour special. And we’ll come back and talk more about what happened behind the scenes.

FARKAS: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Speaker, we meet today at a location actually selected by George Washington.

SENATOR TRENT LOTT, R-MISSISSIPPI: It’s a magnificent old building. It’s not elegant or opulent. It’s not like the Kremlin or the great palaces of Europe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The dome is simply the world’s most well-recognized symbol of American democracy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What’s unique about the Capitol is that it continues to tell a story. It’s not any static moment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Green of Wisconsin …

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here’s a place that you can come and have that battle of words and ideas.

SENATOR ROBERT BYRD, D-WEST VIRGINIA: I’m always enthralled by the Senate chamber itself, the walls themselves. Oh, if they could speak.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As you look at the statuary, as you walk around, it is the history of this nation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People should come here and think about the America they know, and does this place reflect it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We saw the Capitol as a place of hope.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The irony is, it was slave labor that built this temple for freedom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The framers endowed this institution with a few extremely important qualities and powers.

NARRATOR: Standing at the eastern edge of the National Mall, the U.S. Capitol has been home to the American Congress since 1800.

Seven hundred seventy feet long and almost 300 feet high, it has grown over the centuries as the country has grown.

It is here where visitors have always come to see the timeless function of Congress going on.

But while it is open for tours, its private spaces far outnumber those that the public can see.

Built with an architectural style based on ancient Greek and Roman principles, it is a working building and a museum, with statues of notable Americans sent here by each of the 50 states, historic old rooms and chambers, and corridors ornately decorated with painted walls and ceilings.

And in the center of it all is the Rotunda, lying directly beneath the building’s cast iron dome. It is here where the Senate and House share space, here where the ceremonies of our nation take place, and here where the paintings, architecture and statuary all help tell the story of our nation’s history and the building that symbolizes this democracy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the Rotunda you can see everything. It tells you the whole story of American history and how we’ve struggled for years to define it, to describe it, and to show the world what it means.

The thread that ties all the people together, who I think you can identify by name in the Capitol, and especially in the Rotunda, is the notion of expanding rights – expanding civil rights, expanding freedoms. Other countries have ideologies, but it’s America’s fate to be an ideology.

NARRATOR: Representing that ideology more often in the Capitol than anyone else is George Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: George Washington’s statue in the Rotunda is one depiction of George Washington out of many depictions of George Washington. And as you walk through the building here, statues of Washington here, there’s paintings of Washington there, there are busts of Washington.

Washington is the single most represented person in the art collection in the Capitol. I don’t know. Of course, the city is named for him. He picked the site of the building. He laid the cornerstone for the building.

He is so connected to it.

NARRATOR: After choosing the site for the Capitol in 1791, and then laying the cornerstone in 1793, it was Washington’s desire that the building be completely done and ready for Congress to occupy in 1800.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Washington’s vision for this building was something large, magnificent and would command respect, would make Americans of every state love their country better. And he hoped that it would be first in the affections of all Americans. That is his legacy.

NARRATOR: While Washington’s aspirations for the building and the federal city it looks out on have been more than realized over the course of the centuries, his hopes for what he called a Congress House on the banks of the Potomac being finished by 1800 would go unfulfilled due to construction, labor and weather delays.

As you look at the Capitol as it is today, it does not resemble at all the building in its early years of occupancy when the House, Senate and Supreme Court all shared space in a small, box-like structure on the northern, or Senate side, from 1800 until a similarly-sized House wing was completed just to the south in 1807.

And it would then be some 19 years later, in 1826, that the building Washington desired to be done by 1800 – and now called the First Capitol – would be finished, complete with a central section and Rotunda lying beneath a wooden and copper dome, connecting the two wings of the building.

(END VIDEO)

LAMB: First seven minutes. How long did it take you to do something like that?

FARKAS: Well, that one took a little longer than the rest, because it was our first sort of foray into doing something like this. And it took awhile to get everyone here – there’s not a lot of people – but the group here to say, OK, that works. That stays within sort of the mission of what we do here. But it’s also a little bit of a departure from the way we’ve done things around here.

So, it’s hard to put a finger on how long that took, but if we were to do something like that now, we’d probably put it together in a week or two. But it took a little longer at the beginning.

LAMB: And people will be able to see this, that, particularly the opening, and then the rest of the nine hours starting when again?

FARKAS: Wednesday, May 31st, 8:00 p.m. And then Thursday night and Friday night, also at 8:00 p.m.

LAMB: How long will each of those programs be?

FARKAS: We’re planning on three hours for each of the programs. And it will be a mix of the taped pieces that we just saw, and other different types of taped pieces, as well. And live segments where we will show those and come out and talk with some of the guests, who you heard in that first piece of tape.

Because we really can’t tell the whole story. I mean, it’s just like visiting a place compared to watching something on television about it.

We can’t tell the whole story, so we want to have live portions where we can expand upon the theme, and also talk about some of the things that come up in some of these taped segments that we see.

LAMB: You talked about B roll earlier. We have some B roll here, and I’ve got a list of a whole bunch of things.

This is number 18, where you show the behind-the-scenes of ”The Apotheosis of George Washington,” wherever that is. Can you explain that one?

FARKAS: ”The Apotheosis of George Washington” is the great painting in the eye of the dome. And we are going up some stairs here that lead up to the ”Apotheosis.” It takes you between the outer dome of the Capitol that you can see from the outside, and the inner dome of the Capitol that you can’t see.

And right now, we’ve made it all the way up there. It’s about 18 stories high, and we are by the great painting called ”The Apotheosis of George Washington,” done in the late 1850s, early 1860s, that really shows George Washington ascending up into the heavens, almost as a god.

And that is at the top of the Rotunda. There you’re seeing some of the painting itself. There’s lots of allegorical figures, ancient and Greek allegorical figures mixed in with things that symbolize America.

But you are way, way up there. And you came up with us one day.

Up above ”The Apotheosis,” at the very top of the Capitol – that is one our interns, Shannon Steuber (ph), who was with us that day – there’s a balcony that rings the upper part of the Capitol where the Statue of Freedom is, that looks out onto all the different parts of the city.

And it’s really from there – you see the Washington Monument in the background – that you can see how L’Enfant’s plan to lay out the city really took shape.

Bob is up there. We actually went up into the Statue of Freedom and we’re now descending back down to the third level of the Capitol through – that’s a spiral staircase. What we haven’t seen, and what you’ll see in the program, is a lot of that inner – the space between the inner dome and the outer dome – architecturally how it’s held up. It’s over nine million pounds of cast iron.

LAMB: One of the things you do is take people inside some of the spaces they can’t see when they’re walking through on a tour, and we want to show a little bit here in a moment of Senator Frist’s office.

What was the – what’s the significance of his office?

FARKAS: It’s really that, as – when we saw that opening segment and it mentioned in 1800 they opened up, and the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court were all in a small section of the Capitol, cramped in there. It is that section in there where we see – that’s Senator Frist – that’s in his office.

That’s the oldest part of the Capitol where …

LAMB: Let’s listen to what he has to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR BILL FRIST, R-TENNESSEE: From 1802 to 1804, it was the Library of Congress. After that the Supreme Court from about 1806 to 1808 met in this room. Following that, the House of Representatives came back in for two years.

So, in that period of 1800 to 1810, this was the heart and the soul and the seat of government in this very room.

As you mentioned, right in front of that window, where the speaker’s chair was. In 1801 it was Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr – they were standing on either side of the window. The speaker was in the middle.

And the decision of who would become president of the United States was made right there – thirty-six consecutive votes, because this was the House of Representatives. One was going to be president and one was going to be vice president.

So, 36 votes later, Thomas Jefferson became president of the United States, just right there in front of that window. Pretty remarkable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Dr. Bill Frist, the majority leader of the United States Senate.

Were you surprised when you heard that little story?

FARKAS: I was. I had done – we had done a lot of research before we went into the building. But to actually get in there and see that window, see that suite of offices – I had never been in there.

I think it’s an example of some of these untold stories about the building. Some of them you’ve heard, a lot of them you haven’t heard. But then to actually give our viewers a chance to go in and see where these things took place, as he said, it’s pretty special.

LAMB: When did you personally start on this?

FARKAS: Well, it was right around C-SPAN’s 25th anniversary, what, 2004, where we had our – early 2004 – had our first meetings with our friends over in the House, our friends being the historians and the curators in the House and Senate, to talk about how do we go about this? Who do we approach to get something like this done.

So, that’s right around where we began the process.

LAMB: Who did you approach then?

FARKAS: We ended up going to, on the Senate side, the Senate Rules Committee that oversees all, you know, sort of all the rules in the Capitol on the Senate side. And that Senate side is basically the north half of the Rotunda through the Senate wing. And on the House side, we went straight to the speaker of the House’s office, who controls everything on the southern side of the building.

LAMB: So, what was the first thing you learned about the difference between the House and the Senate when it came to trying to get your cameras in there?

FARKAS: Well, it’s interesting. On the House side, literally it comes to one person. The speaker says – or the speaker’s staff says – OK. You’re OK. And a lot of our shooting on the House side literally went – all of our requests went right to them, and then filtered down to the other folks who actually did the work of letting us in and getting it done.

And then on the Senate side, they were a little bit more hands off. Once they gave us permission to get in the building, we really dealt with the Senate radio and television gallery to facilitate our requests. So, the House was more hands on than the Senate was.

LAMB: Where would they not let you shoot?

FARKAS: We put in a master list of requests to both the House and Senate of places that we wanted to shoot. And originally, all of them were OK. And then in the final – the actuality of getting into the building, there were only a couple that we could not get into. We could not get into the House chapel.

And we could not get into the cloak rooms on either side, the Senate side or the House side. We wanted to, because …

LAMB: What’s the cloak room?

FARKAS: The cloak rooms are the rooms right off the floors of the House and Senate. The Republicans and Democrats both have their own cloak rooms in each one of them. And when we did our original walkthrough, we went into each one of these and were excited about going into them. But in the final round, we weren’t allowed into those.

There’s a couple of other small ones, but we got really good access, I’d say.

LAMB: You also took your cameras into Senator Kennedy’s office and behind the scenes. What kind of office is this?

FARKAS: Senator’s have hideaway offices, is what they call it in the Capitol. Senator Kennedy has one that he’s had for a lot of years.

And so, we wanted to show what one of these hideaway offices looked like, and show Senator Kennedy, for his length of service and the story behind his office.

LAMB: Let’s watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR TED KENNEDY, D-MASSACHUSETTS: One of my favorite parts is this fireplace, because it’s in this fireplace that goes down to the first floor – the whole fireplace, right behind those bricks there – goes directly to the first floor.

And it’s where the British soldiers lit their torches in the War of 1812, and then went down to the White House and Dolly Madison – President Madison’s wife – left the White House 45 minutes before the British soldiers arrived there with James Madison’s notes of the Constitutional Convention – which are the greatest set of notes; they’re really authoritative group of notes – in one arm, and the Gilbert Stuart painting that hangs today in the East Room under the other arm. And she left.

And the British soldiers came in. There was food that had been prepared. They ate the food and they torched the White House. And it was burning dramatically, and a storm came and put the fire out, or otherwise, we wouldn’t have had a White House.

Then they came up here and they burned this building down with all but a handful of rooms which have been preserved, obviously. It’s all been restored.

But this has a very important – downstairs is the majority leader, Senator Frist. We can’t hear anything through the old fireplaces what they say.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Now, if you were a tourist in the Capitol, could you find that office? Is there anything marking it?

FARKAS: There’s nothing marking it. And if you were a tourist in the Capitol and found that office, the Capitol police would not have been doing their jobs.

LAMB: How big is that room?

FARKAS: It’s not that big, actually. It’s nice, but it’s not a huge office. Space is at a premium in that building. There’s about 500 rooms in the Capitol. All the House members don’t have hideaway offices, but the senators do. And so, they’re rather small. But you’d not be able to find it.

LAMB: For the moment, let’s look at the other side of the Capitol, and number 17 on our list is the Statuary Hall. Explain that. We’re going to see it as the camera walks into it.

FARKAS: The steady cam is actually going from the Rotunda into Statuary Hall, which was the old hall of the House, where the House of Representatives met in 1807 to 1857, before they moved into their current chamber.

LAMB: Anybody that ever visits here does the John Adams whisper routine.

FARKAS: The John Quincy Adams whisper routine, which is what we found is one of the sort of apocryphal stories that’s perpetuated in the Capitol, about him listening to other people’s conversations and making his notes and strategy off of that.

After the old hall of the House closed down in the 1850s, when they moved into the new chamber, Statuary Hall basically became sort of a passageway where vendors would come in, and it fell into disrepair.

And in the 1860s, they passed legislation naming this Statuary Hall where all the states of the nation can bring – and that’s Daniel Webster – each state in the nation – Robert E. Lee there – can send in two statues to represent their state in the Capitol. And Statuary Hall is – that’s Robert LaFollette – is where – is the main place to show these statues off.

But they’re all around the Capitol, because there’s 100 now, and Statuary Hall does not have room for 100.

LAMB: When did you first get interested in history?

FARKAS: Oh, gosh. I went to school in Williamsburg, Virginia at William and Mary, and you sort of can’t get around history when you’re down there.

So, really, in college, but it was – I mean, frankly, I was like – I’m like a lot of people who, really – you age a little bit, and I’m getting a little older.

LAMB: How old are you?

FARKAS: I’m 45. And I didn’t pay that much attention to history in high school, so the older I’ve gotten, the more interested I’ve gotten. And C-SPAN has sort of followed along and helped along with that.

LAMB: But what was your first kind of, not documentary here, but your first historical project?

FARKAS: We did the Lincoln-Douglas debates back in the ’90s. Ottawa, Illinois, I believe, was the first of the seven. And that was our – that was both C-SPAN’s first foray into historical programming and my first foray into historical programming.

LAMB: Here are some shots of Sing-Sing, of all things. What was this related to?

FARKAS: We did the Alexis de Tocqueville tour of America back in, I think it was ’96-’97, and went to all the places that he and Gustave de Beaumont had been during their tour in 1832 and ’33. They were studying prisons, and in retracing their steps, we went there.

And American presidents was our next historical series we did in 1999. That’s Mount Vernon. That was our first program as we did a biography series on each of the 41 presidents up to that time period.

And American writers was my next historical programming assignment. And that is in Plymouth, Massachusetts, at the Plymouth Plantation. So, there’s been a number of things.

This is something that, again, as C-SPAN sort of expanded their look into outside the Beltway and the history and other text programming, we’ve gone to other places to expand our programming. And that’s a trip I took to Afghanistan, and before that to Iraq, to document how our money is being spent in those countries.

LAMB: And you actually shot that video.

FARKAS: Yes. One of those small, little mini-DV cameras I took along with me.

LAMB: So, where would you put this project, which you worked in off-and-on over two years, on the list of all the things you’ve done up till now?

FARKAS: Well, it’s just different. It’s a different type of production than we’ve done in the past. I think it’s – a lot of people will probably watch and say, that doesn’t look like C-SPAN. But I think it stays within the mission of what we do here, which is helping tell a story of a building that really – you know, it’s our taxpayers money that pays for everything that goes on inside that building.

And that building’s story really tells the story of our country’s history.

So, it’s just different. It’s just as exciting. But the fact that nobody else – the story’s not been told before is something that really jazzes you.

LAMB: Number 15 on our list is a behind-the-scenes little minute with the speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. How much involved was he with this?

FARKAS: Well, he was the one, ultimately, on the House side of the building that had to give the OK to do something like this. Now, this is in his ceremonial office. And he’s coming in, we’re doing a taped interview with him for the series.

He has an interest as a former history teacher in high school, has an interest in the building’s history, and he talks with us about not only the role of speaker, his interest in Lincoln and his connection to the building, but the role that slaves played in building the Capitol, which is not told over there in the official telling of the building’s history.

So, he helps us understand the role that they played, along with other immigrants and other laborers in the Capitol.

And that’s – we’ve got Bob Young (ph) on the left doing audio. Bob Riley (ph) is shooting it. And the speaker is right there, and I’m actually talking with him.

Portions of that interview will show up in our program, and the full interview will show up. We have a Web site that’s connected to this series called The-Capitol.org. And what we have on there, you see the home page of it will be active by the time this program goes on the air.

We’ve got an oral history project on there, where all 25 or so interviews that we did, the full interviews will be on there. Portions of them are on the program, but the full interviews are there, as well as virtual tours of the building. All the produced pieces that you see that we have on our programs, you’ll be able to go on the Web site and click on, you know, Statuary Hall and see a virtual tour of it.

LAMB: And again, the address of that is ”The” – T-H-E …

FARKAS: The hyphen Capitol dot org. The-Capitol.org.

And we had to do that only because TheCapitol.org was taken already.

LAMB: You mentioned slavery and the work of the slaves in the Capitol. Here is Roger Wilkins talking a little bit about his view of this building.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROGER WILKINS, AUTHOR: Kids from schools all over this country come on tours through that Rotunda. And they ought to see that we have a common history.

We sure as heck have a common future. And that common future will be a lot better if the young people growing up now have a sense that we have a common past, rather than a past that was dominated by one group to the exclusion of all the others.

So, if I were a person in charge of the future of this wonderful building that we’re in, I would think it my urgent task to find ways to find a richer representation of America’s full history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: There is the video of the Rotunda. And Roger Wilkins didn’t directly address the slave part of all this, but that seems to come up from time to time. It’s slaves that built this building, or helped build this building.

FARKAS: Well, I think that, and I guess just the issue of race is something that’s come up in our other historical series, and it’s one of those issues that, you know, the world really deals with. And America is no different.

There is a debate going on inside that building, even now, about how to better represent not only the story of the slaves, but the story of the country.

And the one thing that sticks out to a number of people – and we have people talking about this in our programs – is the fact that, out of all the statuary and the busts inside the building, you see, obviously, a lot more representation from Caucasians than you do African Americans or Native Americans.

And there’s a struggle going on to how better represent, as our country’s history has evolved, the statuary in the building has not necessarily kept up with it. And so, I think what you’ll see – and that’s the frieze of American history in the Rotunda.

The Capitol tells a story in its art work and its statuary. But a lot of that art work and statuary was done in the 1800s, when the building was really being built.

And there’s a lot of people who say, well, it should not change, because that’s part of our country’s history, and there’s a lot of other people that say, well, maybe we need to get up. Maybe we need to have rotating collections in here, so when people come through the building, they see themselves represented, and not just an 18th century, or a 19th century depiction.

LAMB: Did any member of Congress or any staff member have anything to say about the content of what this show looks like?

FARKAS: No. They may have a desire to, but no one from the building has, will have seen this production before it goes on the air.

The only thing we did allow was, for security purposes, we – a member of the Capitol police force did come in and screen our tape pieces for security breaches, security procedures. The building is full of cameras, especially since 9/11, so they had some concerns about that. But we really only – we’re blurring out one little security checkpoint in one of our pieces, and that was it.

LAMB: One of the Senate historians, Don Ritchie, takes you where most people don’t ever see. Let’s watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON RITCHIE, SENATE HISTORIAN: So, this space was taken over by the electrical shop. The (inaudible) tiles are painted over. The arched ceilings were destroyed.

But a couple of the tubs (ph) were preserved, just to show what it was like in the 19th century. And you can imagine some of the most famous names in American history at one time soaked in this tub.

FARKAS: Is this something that the public can see?

RITCHIE: This is about as far removed from the public tours as you can get.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Why don’t they let the public see that?

FARKAS: You know, that’s a good question. And it was literally in the basement, and there’s no public tours in this area, mostly because the area that that is in is the electrical shop now. And it’s where a lot of work is going on.

In the piece that you’ll see – actually, the first night of the program, on Wednesday night – you’ll see that there’s a lot of machinery down there. It’s a working area, and so, that’s the reason that the public can’t get into it.

LAMB: You mentioned earlier that a lot of time was spent editing. Do you have any idea how many hours?

FARKAS: Well, that’s something we haven’t tallied up. But we stopped shooting – the last place we shot was in the Senate chamber. We actually had to get a resolution passed by the Senate to shoot in the Senate chamber. And that was in the summer of ’05.

Then after that, we had to start looking through all the tape and coming up with an outline of what we were going to do.

So, we began editing, actually, probably in the summer of ’05, as well, last August. So, we’ve been in some way, shape or form, been editing ever since. The past, I would say, two months have been sort of in overdrive in preparing for these programs.

LAMB: In order to show folks a little bit of how the process works, we have a camera right over here. That’s on the screen right now. Bill Hefley (ph) is holding that on his shoulder.

And he is going to walk through the Green Room, down past the control room, and down where Susan Bundock and Keith Warehime are sitting, where they’re editing part of this program. It still hasn’t been completed.

And is this where you did your work, too, with them?

FARKAS: Yes. That’s Susan and Keith Werheimer – we’re going to see them in a second – we’re walking down the hall. The control room is on the right where all our great friends are doing their work, switching this program. We can’t see them, but Greg’s in there. And Andrea’s in there.

But you walk right down the hall into this avid, adrenal editing room. And this editing machine can edit both high definition footage and standard definition footage, which is what we see everything else on C-SPAN.

Susan’s in the foreground. Keith is sitting with the checked shirt. And we saw Rick over to the right, who has been a production assistant all throughout this. And Rick has gone through almost every one of those 380-odd tapes to help Susan and I prepare. And Susan’s been working for the past couple of months.

We’ve sort of divided it up. I’ve been doing the House side pieces. Susan’s been doing the Senate side pieces, and then I’ve been doing the Rotunda pieces. And right now …

LAMB: Susan (ph), tell us what you’re doing there.

SUSAN BUNDOCK, C-SPAN FILM EDITOR: Well, what Keith and I are working on right now is a piece on the old Supreme Court chamber. People, when they watch this special next week, will see several produced pieces on tape that range from five minutes to 15 minutes in length.

And we incorporate the video that was shot of the interior spaces and exterior of the Capitol, as well as historic photos. And then, of course, with interviews that have been accumulated with historians, curators and members of Congress.

So, our job has been to listen to the interviews and try to pick the most important and interesting comments that are made about these different parts of the Capitol, and then combine these interviewed clips with video of the space.

So, for instance, right now, we’re looking at photos of key members of Congress during the time period 1810 to 1860, when the Supreme Court used the old Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol.

LAMB: Let’s get a close-up, if we can, of exactly what Keith is doing there.

And again, how many people does it take to do this, Mark Farkas, when you’re editing? How many people have to be in that room?

FARKAS: Well, at the very minimum, sometimes just one. Sometimes we leave some things to Keith and Roger and some of the other editors to put together after we’ve talked about it.

But most of the time it’s two of us in there, either Susan and myself, or Keith or Roger, or we have a couple of freelance editors who are working on it as well. And Rick is in there helping us along to – since, again, he’s watched a lot of the B roll, beauty shot tapes.

So, at the very minimum, two is the best way to do it.

LAMB: Susan, what’s this experience been like for you?

BUNDOCK: Well, it’s been fascinating. I’ve been in the Capitol many times, but you do find yourself looking at it quite differently when you are able to view the video that we have.

For instance, the corridors, the Brumidi corridors, is one part of the Senate side of the Capitol, which is filled with magnificent art work. And I’d walked through there before, but never really had an appreciation for the complexity of the work.

So, I’m learning a lot, and it’s a great project.

LAMB: Thank you all very much.

Mark Farkas, you also went behind the scenes with Chris Dodd, who played what role in all of this?

FARKAS: Well, Senator Dodd is also on the rules committee. He’s also, I believe, on the Senate Commission on Art.

And we wanted to interview him – there you see, that’s a Senate room in the Capitol that we are going into. You actually did the interview. That’s me in the foreground, Jamie Sides (ph), and he’s got a bunch of folks, as a number of these senators do, that tag along with him from place to place.

And we wanted to interview him for the series, because of his length of service, his service in both the House and the Senate, his family history. His father was a senator. And we thought that his commentary from both a historical perspective and his own personal experiences, would be interesting for people to hear. And so, that’s the reason.

LAMB: And we no information at the time of this interview, which was done some time ago, that he was thinking about running for president.

FARKAS: We did not have any of that information.

LAMB: Also, we have you on the floor of the Senate with Bob Riley (ph), talking about how to use the jib and high definition camera, and all that.

At approximately what time of the year was this done? Do you remember?

FARKAS: Just listen in. It was done about the summer of ’05.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RILEY (ph): You’ve got to remember, it’s (inaudible), it’s at an angle. So, once you set the angle, you’ve set the fulcrum off (ph). And it’s not a matter of balancing the camera anymore. Now it’s a matter of balancing for you. It’s not meant to operate on a slope.

So, if we do, just got to make sure, you don’t want to fall over. Which you shouldn’t, but I never operate on a slope like this.

FARKAS: Is there a ramp up here?

RILEY (ph): (inaudible).

LAMB: Explain that camera.

RILEY (ph): Well, that’s an HD camera, and it’s on a …

LAMB: What’s HD?

RILEY (ph): High definition. And that’s a 720p, as opposed to a 1080i interlace. It’s a 720 (inaudible) in resolution; 1080i is an interlacing which has a duplication of the line before it.

This is supposed to be very, very, very good. And if you watched any sports in HD, it really is …

LAMB: Is it always 720p?

RILEY (ph): This is always – this camera is always 720p.

LAMB: Why didn’t you use 1080i?

RILEY (ph): Because 720p is better. In this instance it is. I mean, who knows what happens in the next couple of days.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: I’m sure people at this point are saying, fascinating – 720p versus 1080i.

Does it really make any difference whether this was shot in high definition television or regular 3x4 ratio?

FARKAS: Well, I think it does. I think the video that will show up on C-SPAN, even though, by the time we’ve taken it off the editing system and get it to standard definition, the quality of it – hopefully you can see in that first seven minutes that we showed – is markedly better than a standard definition camera.

LAMB: What did you learn?

FARKAS: Well, I’ve learned a lot. I mean, number one, just about the Capitol itself. Number two – and going along with that is just the – it’s a complicated place over there. Complicated for them to pull off something like letting us get in and do that, and complicated for us to actually get in the building and, you know, we had to do a lot of our shooting during congressional recesses, which we thought would be a great time to get in, because they weren’t in there. We’re in the House chamber there.

But what we find – what we found a lot of times is, when we go in during a recess is when all the painters come out and the art conservators. And all the work, the other work of the Capitol gets done.

So, I’ve learned the history of the building, and also, there’s a lot, there’s a learning curve in putting something like this together.

LAMB: There’s often something – well, not often – that’s something we don’t often see.

FARKAS: Well, I think …

LAMB: The actual ceiling of the House of Representatives.

FARKAS: I think that’s actually one of the fascinating things, that even for these places in the building that you see on television, when you watch the House chamber on C-SPAN, you recognize the space.

But when you’re looking at what we’ve done, there’s things explained about those rooms, the symbolism that was put there for a reason – things that you can’t see on a television broadcast of the House of Representatives. You know, anything from the eagle in the top of a ceiling to an explanation of the mace – you know, we go behind the scenes back in the speaker’s lobby. You never get to see that view.

So, there’s lots of – again, even these spaces that you see, the Senate and the House chamber, I think you’ll watch our program and you’ll say, ah, I did not know that.

LAMB: Our number six clip is a little behind-the-scenes of setting up the jib – again, that camera, the boom camera – in the front of the Capitol, the west front.

How much did you use this jib camera?

FARKAS: Well, the jib camera is essential to getting perspective shots that you can’t get on a tripod or a steady cam. It gets you up higher. It gives you a great flow in the shot that you see.

LAMB: Let’s listen to you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FARKAS: I had to give up one of my children, to let them – to get them to let us do this.

So, what we’re doing is shooting sweeping shots of the west part of the building with the sun working with us for introductory shots, transition shots, shots where our guests are going to be talking about the architecture of the place.

Obviously, the dome is a focal point for this. And this camera enables us to get shots that we’d never be able to get with a tripod. We’ve been out here a couple of times with tripods. This will get you the beautiful sweeping motion shots.

And hopefully some tourists will come into the shot, because it would nice to get some people up there, instead of just the empty foreground. But actually, either way it would be all right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAMB: Again, this is going to be available for people to see the whole series. It’s how long?

FARKAS: About nine hours. Wednesday the 31st, Thursday the 1st, Friday the 2nd, at 8:00 p.m. each night until 11:00 each night.

And it’ll be available – we will re-air it immediately following that. And then all the programs will be available online at The-Capitol.org.

LAMB: And will there be more specials in the future with all the video that you’ve shot?

FARKAS: I certainly hope so. This is just, I think the three nights will be a great program. But we’ve got so much more in terms of interviews, other visuals, I think we probably could do a couple different versions, one that would just be on the art of the building, and another one that might be just a one program that would talk about the building’s history in one sitting.

LAMB: Mark Farkas, we’re going to sign this off by showing again the opening, so people can get a flavor of what this looks like. And thank you very much for joining us.

FARKAS: Thank you, sir.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Speaker, we meet today at a location actually selected by George Washington.

SENATOR TRENT LOTT, R-MISSISSIPPI: It’s a magnificent old building. It’s not elegant or opulent. It’s not like the Kremlin or the great palaces of Europe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The dome is simply the world’s most well-recognized symbol of American democracy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What’s unique about the Capitol is that it continues to tell a story. It’s not any static moment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Green of Wisconsin …

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here’s a place that you can come and have that battle of words and ideas.

SENATOR ROBERT BYRD, D-WEST VIRGINIA: I’m always enthralled by the Senate chamber itself, the walls themselves. Oh, if they could speak.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As you look at the statuary, as you walk around, it is the history of this nation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People should come here and think about the America they know, and does this place reflect it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We saw the Capitol as a place of hope.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The irony is, it was slave labor that built this temple for freedom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The framers endowed this institution with a few extremely important qualities and powers.

NARRATOR: Standing at the eastern edge of the National Mall, the U.S. Capitol has been home to the American Congress since 1800.

Seven hundred seventy feet long and almost 300 feet high, it has grown over the centuries as the country has grown.

It is here where visitors have always come to see the timeless function of Congress going on.

But while it is open for tours, its private spaces far outnumber those that the public can see.

Built with an architectural style based on ancient Greek and Roman principles, it is a working building and a museum, with statues of notable Americans sent here by each of the 50 states, historic old rooms and chambers, and corridors ornately decorated with painted walls and ceilings.

And in the center of it all is the Rotunda, lying directly beneath the building’s cast iron dome. It is here where the Senate and House share space, here where the ceremonies of our nation take place, and here where the paintings, architecture and statuary all help tell the story of our nation’s history and the building that symbolizes this democracy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the Rotunda you can see everything. It tells you the whole story of American history and how we’ve struggled for years to define it, to describe it, and to show the world what it means.

The thread that ties all the people together, who I think you can identify by name in the Capitol, and especially in the Rotunda, is the notion of expanding rights – expanding civil rights, expanding freedoms. Other countries have ideologies, but it’s America’s fate to be an ideology.

NARRATOR: Representing that ideology more often in the Capitol than anyone else is George Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: George Washington’s statue in the Rotunda is one depiction of George Washington out of many depictions of George Washington. And as you walk through the building here, statues of Washington here, there’s paintings of Washington there, there are busts of Washington.

Washington is the single most represented person in the art collection in the Capitol. I don’t know. Of course, the city is named for him. He picked the site of the building. He laid the cornerstone for the building.

He is so connected to it.

NARRATOR: After choosing the site for the Capitol in 1791, and then laying the cornerstone in 1793, it was Washington’s desire that the building be completely done and ready for Congress to occupy in 1800.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Washington’s vision for this building was something large, magnificent and would command respect, would make Americans of every state love their country better. And he hoped that it would be first in the affections of all Americans. That is his legacy.

NARRATOR: While Washington’s aspirations for the building and the federal city it looks out on have been more than realized over the course of the centuries, his hopes for what he called a Congress House on the banks of the Potomac being finished by 1800 would go unfulfilled due to construction, labor and weather delays.

As you look at the Capitol as it is today, it does not resemble at all the building in its early years of occupancy when the House, Senate and Supreme Court all shared space in a small, box-like structure on the northern, or Senate side, from 1800 until a similarly-sized House wing was completed just to the south in 1807.

And it would then be some 19 years later, in 1826, that the building Washington desired to be done by 1800 – and now called the First Capitol – would be finished, complete with a central section and Rotunda lying beneath a wooden and copper dome, connecting the two wings of the building.