Black Swan is
neck and neck with 127 Hours for my favourite movie of 2010. The film is
breathtaking, you won't see a more hauntingly enchanting movie this
year. Darren Aronofsky been the man behind some of my favourite films of
the last twelve years in The Wrestler, The Fountain, Requiem for a
Dream and Pi.
How did you immerse yourself in this world of Ballet?
Darren Aronofsky: Well the ballet world was a very hard world to get into. Usually when you make a movie doors open up, but the Ballet world just really couldn't care. They're just very very insular and self involved, they're very very focused, it took along time. But slowly but surely we met a few dancers who were interested in sharing their storys, and we did a lot of research and eventually the choreographer Benjamin Millepied came on board, that gave us a kind of stamp of approval because he's very well respected in the Ballet world, slowly but surely that helped us out.
There's a connection between your previous film The Wrestler and Black Swan in terms of the body injuries and dedication, can you explain that?
Darren Aronofsky: When we were cutting The Wrestler, and we had really got into revitalizing this film, we had been developing it for eight years actively and it kind of died during The Wrestler. Then one of my producers on The Wrestler, Mark Hayman, who was also my director of development, came to me and said he wanted to write something, so I said what about a Ballet project and he got deep into it and said there were a lot of similarities between this and The Wrestler, I wasn't afraid of that. I thought it was an interesting thing because ones about the highest art and ones about the lowest art; if you wanna call wrestling an "art". I think they are both about performance and performers, how performers put their bodies before their health, their age and their physicality.
What in terms of creativity, were your biggest struggles or challenges making this film?
How did you immerse yourself in this world of Ballet?
Darren Aronofsky: Well the ballet world was a very hard world to get into. Usually when you make a movie doors open up, but the Ballet world just really couldn't care. They're just very very insular and self involved, they're very very focused, it took along time. But slowly but surely we met a few dancers who were interested in sharing their storys, and we did a lot of research and eventually the choreographer Benjamin Millepied came on board, that gave us a kind of stamp of approval because he's very well respected in the Ballet world, slowly but surely that helped us out.
There's a connection between your previous film The Wrestler and Black Swan in terms of the body injuries and dedication, can you explain that?
Darren Aronofsky: When we were cutting The Wrestler, and we had really got into revitalizing this film, we had been developing it for eight years actively and it kind of died during The Wrestler. Then one of my producers on The Wrestler, Mark Hayman, who was also my director of development, came to me and said he wanted to write something, so I said what about a Ballet project and he got deep into it and said there were a lot of similarities between this and The Wrestler, I wasn't afraid of that. I thought it was an interesting thing because ones about the highest art and ones about the lowest art; if you wanna call wrestling an "art". I think they are both about performance and performers, how performers put their bodies before their health, their age and their physicality.
What in terms of creativity, were your biggest struggles or challenges making this film?
Darren
Aronofsky: It was a really difficult film to make, after The Wrestler
and everyone had been like what are you doing making a film about wrestling
with Mickey Rourke, and we had the success we had with it, I thought it
would get easier with this film having Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel,
Mila Kunis, and Winona Ryder on board but it was still very very
difficult, raising the money for this film was harder than raising the
money for The Wrestler. Two weeks out the money fell apart, I don't even
think my actors knew this (laughs), after training for months and
months. But then we were very lucky and we quickly got Fox Searchlight
to come in after we were on our hands and knees
begging. Because we had so little money, every single day was really
difficult, there was never an easy day, everyday was like ‘oh my gosh we
have to do all that today', and then the next day it was the same, it
was 42 days of a huge hustle. There was no money for post production and
we had to do over 300 special effects, so basically it was really
really hard until now (laughs).
I really enjoyed the look of the film with your choices of different camera moves and the grainy look.
Darren Aronofsky: The film is shot in 16mm film, that's what sort of gives it that delicious grain, we shot it wide screen as well, exactly the same as The Wrestler. But very early on I knew I wanted to get the camera on stage with the dancers. Because I think when you're in the audience it looks so effortless, these dancers train their entire lives and make it appear so effortless, but then when you go back stage you see all the tendons, muscles moving, bloody feet and sweat. As a director to capture that I knew I wanted to get the camera out of the wings – which is how most people have seen ballet. I was a little nervous about using this kind of hand held style of filming that we used in The Wrestler in a psychological thriller/horror film, because I thought the documentary feel would suck out the tension. We were really debating, but eventually we said screw it, lets give it a shot.
I really enjoyed the look of the film with your choices of different camera moves and the grainy look.
Darren Aronofsky: The film is shot in 16mm film, that's what sort of gives it that delicious grain, we shot it wide screen as well, exactly the same as The Wrestler. But very early on I knew I wanted to get the camera on stage with the dancers. Because I think when you're in the audience it looks so effortless, these dancers train their entire lives and make it appear so effortless, but then when you go back stage you see all the tendons, muscles moving, bloody feet and sweat. As a director to capture that I knew I wanted to get the camera out of the wings – which is how most people have seen ballet. I was a little nervous about using this kind of hand held style of filming that we used in The Wrestler in a psychological thriller/horror film, because I thought the documentary feel would suck out the tension. We were really debating, but eventually we said screw it, lets give it a shot.
