From the Film Maker...

Inspiration came from the mood of the painting: the control the man has over the woman and reinterpreting that for contemporary social significance.

My Director of Photography wanted to recreate the mood of the painting; she did this by giving the film a high contrast ratio. Apart from this the colour palette was dictated by the location and the period. The style of the film was dictated by the story and getting the characters across to the audience.

I wanted some parts of the film to be slow to give the audience a chance to think about what the film was saying and some parts to be quick to keep the pace up and keep the audience's interest.

My theme was based on rampant consumerism: money doesn't buy you love.

I took the relationship between the man and woman as the start point. Jan van Eyck is a third character in the painting, which is what gave me the idea of making the film about an outsider who is a photographer, giving an insight into the lives of the characters that we wouldn't normally see. I wanted to go underneath the image and subvert the original painting.

I took the control the man seems to have over the woman as my starting point: the way he has his hand held up and she has her head bowed. It got me thinking about how a lot of couples these days organise their lives by a set path, and that ultimately filling our houses up with big TVs and expensive paintings doesn't make us happy.

I was inspired by the photographer Tom Hunter and the artist Francis Bacon who have both subverted the work of other artists for social significance.

The final composition of the film mirrors the composition of the original painting. The whole idea of the film and the characters came from the composition of the original painting.
Henry Darke