Research Task - Black Swan

My research task was to watch a thriller movie during the holidays , i decided to pick quite a recent film . 'Black Swan' is a 2010 American psychological thriller .The plot itself revolves around a production of 'Tchaikovsky's Swan lake balllet' . The story is about Nina a ballerina in a new york city company who's life is completly engulfed in dance . She lives at home with her mother who is an obsessive former balerina that likes to control every aspect of her daughters life . When artistic director Thomas Leroy decides to replace prima ballerina Beth for the opening prodution of their new season,  Swan lake ,Nina is his first choice . But Nina has new competition : a new dancer Lily , who impresses leroy as well. Swan lake requires a dancer who can play both the white and black swan, this is very challenging for nina because she finds she can embody the white swan who represent innocence and grace perfectly but finds the black swan who represent sensuality difficult. Lily the new dancer is the opposite of Nina and plays the black swan with ease . As the two dancers expand their rivarly into a twisted friendship Nina begins to get in touch with her own dark side.  However little does she know that her dark side is what threatens to destroy her .


                                                            Black Swan Trailer

In this research task i will be analysing the first two minutes of the film , i'll be looking at : sound , camera and most importantly the title sequence . The reason why i say the title sequence is the most important part is because as i've learnt through watching  'The Watching documentary' the beginning could set the film up to  sucsess or a complete failure , if the beginning isn't satisfying enough the audience won't want to continue the film . What i've also learnt through watching the documentary is that the beginning now often starts of with the title sequence so getting that right is crucial .

This is how the film begins , the screen is black for approximately 8 seconds during these 8 seconds i can hear sad sounding violins in the back ground .By just having a black screen shot it allows the audience to really pay attention to the sound and let it toy with their emotions. The sound isn't one of terror but a soothing sound that defiantly builds up a tranquil atmosphere for the audience. As well as soothing the sound isn't fast paced , instead it's very slow so you can tell that the title sequence is going to go in a slow manner to match the sound.

After the 8 seconds of total blackness some words in white appears , the production company name appear onto the screen  and just as smoothly as the music ,  it fades off . By including this fading effect it really adds to the peaceful atmosphere which in turn makes the first few seconds effective , the sound and this fading effect blend togethere well .

<---  Here is an example of the fading they used at the beginning .

After introducing the product company the words disolve into nothing and the screen is once again black the music is still playing . However this time they've added the sound of wind as well which turns something that was soothing into slighty creepy. Shortly after the wind the words 'B L A C K  S W A N' appears and instantly the sound of evil laughing starts to play and that's when we know that the movie is a thriller . The timing was perfect , as soon as the evil , mysterious laughing plays they introduce the name of the film , by doing so the audience starts to feel the suspence building ever so slowly .

 The screen once again turns black and this time we get a different image , in this imagine we can see a ballet dancer about to start dancing , she is in the spotlight . The background is still black so therefore the spotlight doesn't show her face we just see her body .' Mysterious' is what springs to mind when watching the beginning of Black Swan and the mystery feel only increases as the seconds pass by . At this point the audience is wanting to know the identity of the woman whos dancing but instead of showing the face  the camera comes for a close up of the ballerinas feet .

 During these two shots of her in the spotlight and her feet the sound is still playing but this time it's increasing in speed .






All of sudden as the speed of the sound is increasing we start to see more and more of this ballerinas identity , after seeing her feet we then see : her skirt , her waist and then all of her body including her face . As soon as we see her identity though we start to see a dark figure approach , this dark figure stays in the bottom left hand side corner of the screen and then the camera get's ever so closer to the ballerina like a predator would . The colours are very symbolic , the ballerina is in white however her surroudings and the dark figure are black. The contrast in black and white is very important in this film so it doesn't surprise me that the only two colour i've seen since watching the film is black and white . While the figure approaches we can see that he is a dancer too , at all times he dances behind the ballerina as they do so the sound builds up even quicker until the male dancer in black grows black wings .

 The shots of them dancing are quick paced and as the sound continues it builds up to the male dancer with wings man-handling her and pushing her around as they dance. The two minutes end with her being tossed into a spin and then she's all alone again . I defiantly will use this thriller film as inspiration , i liked the way the colours were used  to foreshadow the plot , the way in which the sound started off slowly and then increased as the film progressed and how it made me want to continue watching the film .