The opening scene of Black Swan establishes the psychological horror genre. It introduces the main character Nina dancing gracefully on stage in a white swan costume. As she dances with a male partner, he leaves a dark impact on her. The scene uses dark music, camera zooms, and unnatural sounds to portray Nina's growing sense of pressure and descent into madness as she competes for the role of the Black Swan.

1. FILM OPENING ANALYSIS
Sijjal Shafique (A1)

2. ABOUT THE MOVIE
 Black Swan is a 2010 American psychological horror
film. It is directed by Darren Aronofsky.
 he plot revolves around a production of Tchaikovsky's
Swan Lake ballet by a prestigious New York City ballet
company. The production requires a ballerina to play
the innocent and fragile White Swan, for which the
committed dancer Nina (Portman) is a perfect fit, as
well as the dark and sensual Black Swan, which are
qualities better embodied by the new arrival Lily (Kunis).
Nina is overwhelmed by a feeling of immense pressure
when she finds herself competing for the part, causing
her to lose her tenuous grip on reality and descend into
a living nightmare.
 The production companies involved are Cross Creek
Pictures, Protozoa Pictures, Phoenix Pictures and Dune
Entertainment.
 The main starring actress is the stunning Natalie
Portman.

3. THE OPENING SCENE
 The opening establishes the genre by the
darkness shown, the music is very intense and in
all black a girl wearing a white costume is
dancing, hence establishing the genre, horror.
 The character is introduced doing what the
whole movies is about, ballet. She is dancing
very gracefully and elegantly.
 The setting is in a theatre where ballets are held
and the girl is shown dancing on the stage with
a guy, who after engaging with the girl leaves a
dark impact on her.

4. Cinematography
 Most of the shots were eye level, to show the audiences
observing the dance, though some of the shots were
from a lower angle to show her feet and the way she
moves.
 There is a lot of hand held movement with the camera,
this gives a naturalistic feel to the piece as you feel like
you are on stage witnessing the dance, by doing this it
makes it more dramatic.
 There are beautiful medium close ups of her detailed
foot positioning and the camera follows them to make
the audience think of how intricate the movement is.
Zooms were used quite a lot, at the beginning of the
sequence the camera zooms into her footwork, and
when she flies away at the end the camera zooms out
to finish the scene.

5. Editing and Sound
 Continuity editing was used to simply make the scene flow
nicely. They used a fade out to black at the end to finish the
scene and to complete the sequence in a professional way.
They used matched cuts, as it is a dance they have to use it
so it doesn't look random. Cutting rhythm is used to look
visually appealing as the shots of the ballerina dancing is in
time with the song.
 There are strange noises added to the sequence, for example
a sound of a birds wings flying, this creates a sense of
unnaturalism because it's not what the audience would
expect to hear when watching a ballet dance, this is added to
the piece to try to think of what she the main dancer is feeling
and how she has a connection with the sound. (UNDIGETIC
SOUND)
 The music playing is a very famous piece by Tchaikovsky,
from Swan Lake.

6. Mise en scene
The ballerina is wearing a white
leotard designed to look like a swan, a
white tutu, tights, and point shoes, this
shows that she is pure and beautiful.
They male dancer is in a black leotard
and a feathery jacket over. And when
he changes into the 'black evil swan'
he has wings and a scary mask,
showing him as the devil who takes
her purity away.
This is all set up in a theatre on a
stage showing the profession of the
main actress.
The lighnting used makes everything
more magical. As the scene is a
performance, lighting is mainly low
key as the stage is quite dark, but the
single spotlight on the ballerina makes
gorgeous shadows when she dances
and on her face. The light is always
being changed as the couple dance,

7. SEMIOTICS
 Basically the opening of the
film shows the main actress
dancing happily in her own
thoughts to her own music until
the evil man in black comes
along, he intervenes with her
life, messing everything up,
scaring her. Like most men in
real life.
 It shows how the evil takes
away the girls purity, how the
crow tangles with the swan.
 The ballet shows her life and
as her life gets in a darker
place, the music intensifies
and even the pace of her
dance intensifies.