Wednesday 7 October 2015

Deconstruction of Black Swan Trailer




The Trailer starts with the voiceover of the Protagonist, telling the story of the Black Swan, and effectively revealing the entire plot of the film, despite the audience being unaware of this. The voiceover is synchronous to what is happening on screen, as there is a medium shot of the protagonist dancing before the screen goes black, as the voiceover ends.

Non-Diegetic orchestral music is played throughout the trailer and increases in pace and volume, building up tension, making the audience feel apprehensive as to what happens next, thus creating narrative enigma. The music also fits the genre of the film, which is a psychological thriller.

As the music increases in volume, the pace of the editing increases, as well as the diegetic sounds of conversations, which develop into a more intense tone. This all adds to the overall theme of the film, conveying to the audience that it is very dark. This is further complimented by the choice in colours and lighting, mostly being Black and White. The juxtoposition of the two colours portrays the battle between good and evil, or insanity and sanity which the protagonist faces in the film. Low key lighting is used to also convey this theme.

A variety of locations can be seen from the trailer, through the use of fast paced editing. There are a variation of close-ups of the protagonists face, displaying her emotions, as well as various repeated shots of her seeing herself walk past her in the trailer. This adds to the confusion being portrayed to the audience, raising questions which is a convention the psychological thriller genre. This can be also seen of the medium shot of the Protagonist facing away from the mirror as the audience sees her reflection move to face the direction of the camera. The use of fast paced editing, and only showing the different shots for a couple of seconds amplifies the confusion for the audience, as they are not fully able to understand what is happening, adding to the purpose of the trailer, which is to leave the audience wanting more, so they go to watch the film.


The final scene of the trailer shows an extreme close-up of the protagonist, with focus on her eyes, which are red, connoting evil, and therefore displaying a resemblance to the devil, which juxtaposes the scene at the start of the trailer, where the Protagonist is wearing white. The trailer therefore presents the progression of the downfall of the protagonist to the audience,  which could represent the characters change from sanity to insanity, or theoretically, the white swan to the black swan.

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