LOWELL — Filmmaker Tim Janis wanted “The Button Girl,” his first feature-length film, to be historically accurate. From costumes to props to locations, he tried to keep every facet true to the early 20th-century setting of the movie, an uplifting family musical that will air during the holidays on the PBS network.
For an important opening scene, set in a New England mill, Janis and his crew spent a day in Lowell in June shooting at Lowell National Historical Park’s Boott Cotton Mills Museum, an hour from his York, Maine, home.
“We were lucky to find the museum in Lowell, and the staff was very supportive and helpful,” Janis said recently during an interview in York. “When you walk into the mill and hear rows and rows of machinery, running and clanking in unison, it feels like you’ve stepped back in time. It’s great that it has been preserved as a living history museum of what life was like during those times.”
The brief scene in the mill involves the movie’s main character Annabelle’s mother. The mom, an exhausted mill worker, becomes ill and eventually dies from her long, strenuous work hours.
LNHP staffers coached actress Julia Burrows, portraying the mother, during the Lowell shoot to wind the thread accurately onto the loom so that the scene “true to that time,” said Janis.
Credit for the authenticity goes to Rick Randall, the Boott’s exhibit specialist and weave room manager.
“Rick is extremely knowledgeable about the machinery and what occurred in a weave room,” said Phil Lupsiewicz, the LNHP film permit coordinator.
“Tim’s project was set in the earlier part of the 20th century — about 1910. Knowing that certain machinery would not have been available at that time, we directed Tim to toward the older machinery in our exhibit to make it look accurate to that time.”
Janis cast several well-known Hollywood veterans, including Dick Van Dyke, Jane Seymour and Charles Shaughnessy, in his movie and introduces 11-year-old Alivia Clark as Annabelle and Burrows, a Broadway actress. Kate Winslet narrates the film.
Van Dyke plays the pivotal role of Annabelle’s guardian angel, who helps her after she is orphaned. Seymour and Shaughnessy portray a wealthy couple who adopt her.
Most filming was done in York, Kennebunkport and Portland, Maine. The scenes with Van Dyke were shot in Hollywood.
Janis, a composer with millions of albums sold, five NPS specials and two #1 Billboard-charting CDs, has worked with top artists in the music and entertainment business, including Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, George Clooney, Seymour and Winslet.
And for his new foray into filmmaking, he wrote the screenplay with his assistant Elizabeth Demmer.
He thinks “The Button Girl” has the potential to become a holiday classic, enjoyed year after year.
“It has a fairy tale feel to it — and one of the reasons we continue to be drawn to fairy tales is they touch on messages and themes we can relate to which makes these stories last with us forever,” he said.
Nancye Tuttle’s email address is nancyedt@verizon.net
