Film Poster Analysis:Black Swan

Black Swan is the thrilling 2010 tale of  Nina, a talented but shy ballerina, who overly shielded by her mother, seeks to achieve the main role of the swan queen in her company's next production of Swan Lake, striving to achieve this by pushing herself out of her sensitive and shy ways, Nina begins to experience explicit visions of herself either cutting or being wounded, sending her into a dangerous mindset in effort to perfect her "Black Swan" dance.

The film's poster effectively shows the deeper meaning behind this film, with many different observations that people can draw from it. The most obvious points we can draw from this is the solid visual of an attractive young woman seen staring powerfully at the audience. Which links to the films plot of wanting Nina to possess the persona of the "black swan", which is powerful and evil.

Her mise en scene can both convert to this and subvert. Her makeup shows her to be very pale, with dark eyes and rose red lips, creating an almost vampire-esque  image, fitting to her image of being mentally ill with her explicit out of this world hallucinations. Although her white fluffy hair piece we can see, shows her to have some innocence and purity about her persona, including the dainty flower shaped diamond earrings, which a child would wear, putting her into an infant character.

The most bewildering part of the film's poster would be the bold crack seen covering the girl's face, which could be interpreted as something breaking out of her pretty and polished look, making an appearance of something darker, making an almost frightening factor that disrupts her distilled image. This paired with the completely black background, makes the receiving audience focus solely on her, showing the audience both that the film's premise will follow this woman, but also that she wants people's attention.

The text that the film's title and other credits, are shown in a simple but bold font in black, to match the film's title "Black Swan", although next to the girl's face we see in smaller writing a quote, stating that the film is "An extraordinary intoxicating masterpiece", showing the film as a serious picture. Effectively aiming at the right crowd who want to see an academy award worthy film,which would be older middle to upper class members of the public.