Film Poster Research: 'Black Swan' [Alex]

BLACK SWAN

This special festival adaptation of 'Black Swan' was presented at the 'Hacked Off Films' festival, therefore, the poster shown above will not be the original.

The poster is has a simplistic design and sleek structure to foreshadow the themes of ballet within the film. The choice of black and white gives the impression that there is a dark theme within the movie plot line, so gives an impressionable look. This poster does not feature any actor names, release dates or reviews (which we might expect of a highly acclaimed film such as this). As this film was presented as a prestigious event, any additional information focuses on the event itself (e.g. Location, time of event, dress code).

If we were to compare this poster to the original feature-length version, we will see that there are very notable differences.

In terms of colour schemes, the film poster maintains the monochromatic feel, but has splashes of desaturated colours in the crown/make-up. 

This poster has more of a narrative, compared to the festival version as we can see who the main actor is. The poster shows a head-shot of actress Natalie Portman looking into the camera, cropping just below her shoulders. The character shows their vulnerability as they hide behind a very full-on face of make-up, compared to her exposed body. The film itself explores very feminine subjects, and the struggles that women of ballet face to maintain their thin, yet physically fit bodies. This is a clear representation of the dancer world, and could suggest an audience (e.g. Female dancers). The genre of this film is labelled as a  psychological thriller-horror, which would also suggest that this is a film aimed at an older audiences.

Just below the actors face, we are presented with the main actors names; these people are stars, and will help promote the film. Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassle and Mila Kunis's names are the second largest type to prove their importance. As the image will be the main fascinator,  iIt is important to have the title as the largest type to make people want to watch the movie.

This film poster also has a credit block, which we expect of feature-lengths. 

In this, the poster states who: presents, who they are in association with, which production team, the director's name, music supervisor, film editor, production designer, direction of photography, the producers, original story author and finally the screenplay actors.

These roles are not credentials for our own short film as we only had three people on our production team - however, it is important to see when the credit block is used and why it is necessary.

The film also has two of its film festival reefs  just to the side of the actor's neck - they are visible, yet small. They act a token of importance and demand - giving more reasons as to why the viewing audience should want to see this film.