From the Film Maker...

I used the orange and green colour palette of the painting as the basis for the production design of the film. Zippo's Circus allowed me to shoot in a corner of the Big Top tent. I dressed the empty space to look like a dressing room - hiring in a mirror with lights and a dressing screen, etc. - and the circus very kindly lent me some feathered costumes. I also sourced a book of rare circus posters from Dover books, which is copyright-free. I used one poster as the end image in the film.

I designed a costume for the character of Anna which was entirely made up of peacock feathers (75 in all) and used a burnt-orange sari as the tablecloth for her dressing table.
Degas used negative space in his work and I selected scenes in which to use this method, for example, the entrance of Jacob into the dressing room tent. There are areas of black between both characters.

I worked very closely with the Director of Photography on this film. I wanted a soft lighting set-up to achieve a Degas-like painterly quality to the film. We visited the location several times and viewed the space a few days before shooting was to take place. For the exterior shots I wanted to capture the brilliant colour of the circus. I took the circus theme of the painting and elaborated on the acrobat aspect.

I wanted to write a story about trust - Jacob trusts his wife to be faithful and Anna trusts her husband to catch her every time she flies. I admire the way Degas tells Miss La La's story without revealing her face, and I tried a similar method to tell the end of Trapeze. I used sound to tell the ending of my story, using a drum roll on one track followed by loud audience cheers and applause on another track.

I like the dynamism of Miss La La; she twists in the air with ferocity. At the end of the film I used still photography of existing trapeze artists flying through the air to emulate this movement.

I became intrigued by this painting several years ago and found myself returning to it on my subsequent visits. It has a certain elegance that I have attempted to capture in my film, Trapeze.
Christine Lalla