‘Black Swan’ is the story of a prim Prima Ballerina (Natalie Portman) who is forced to expose her dark side in order to maintain her position as the face of the New York City Ballet. The film marks another development in Darren Aronofsky’s startling career: combining a unique take on the thriller genre with captivating, choreographic camerawork and excellent performances, this film is sure to cause a few ripples come award season. The following press conference was attended by Aronofsky, two of the film’s stars – Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel – and producer Scott Franklin, and was chaired by Screen International’s Mike Goodridge.
Q: I would like to start by asking Darren about the world of ballet, and how you immersed yourself in this world, and how different it is to the film business.
DA: The ballet world was a very hard world to get into. Usually when you make a movie, doors open for you; but the ballet world really just couldn’t care. And I think they are just very insular and self-involved and they are very focused, so it took a very long time. However, slowly but surely, we managed to find a few dancers who were interested in sharing their stories and we did a lot of research; and eventually the choreographer Benjamin Millepied came on and that sort of gave us a stamp of approval because he is very well respected at the New York City Ballet, and the ballet world. So eventually they helped us out.
Q: You describe yourself as an ‘existential humanist’, according to the Festival programme. I wonder if you could briefly describe what you mean by that?
DA: Oh gosh, I’ve got to actually write those things for myself next time! That’s actually odd because I had a girlfriend in college who said that’s what my short films were about. I don’t know how that carried over twenty years later. Uh, I have no idea what it means. Help, anyone?
Q: Could you explain a little about the connections between ‘The Wrestler’ and ‘Black Swan’? In terms of the body injuries, dedication, etc that both films exhibit.
DA: Well when we were cutting ‘The Wrestler’ we really got into revitalising this film, because we had been developing it actively for about 8 years but it kind of died during ‘The Wrestler’. And then one of the producers of ‘The Wrestler’, Mark Heyman (who is also my director of development), said he wanted to write something and I said, “what do you think of the ballet project?” So he got deep into it and said there were a lot of similarities between this and ‘The Wrestler’, but I wasn’t afraid of that because I thought it was an interesting thing because one is about the highest art and one is about the lowest art. And they are both about performers – and about performance – and both performers put their bodies before their health. And age and physicality are the big challenges to that. I just thought it was very interesting.
Q: During the rehearsal period, as you gradually learned more about the dancing, did this inform your understanding of the characters and the way you were to be directed?
MK: Well I think it was important for everybody to do a bit of dancing. The way a ballerina holds herself is very specific and you can only fake that so much. I personally needed to have my collarbone showing and certain bones protrude, and Darren made me lose weight, so that was great! But seriously the way they hold their arms and their shoulders are always tucked back and their ribcage is always tucked in, I think that stuff helped with the character.
DA: Just to be clear, did I ever ask you to lose weight?!
MK: No no no! It was a joke, not at all! Not at all.
VC: Well as you can see, I don’t dance that much in the movie… but I could have! There is one point in the movie where I direct Natalie’s character and I don’t know why but I thought, reading the script, that it would be some kind of a dancing scene. But I have seen Mikhail Baryshnikov training a young dancer, and he wasn’t moving at all. He was only slightly showing what he was doing. So when we got on set we got into the vibe where dancing wasn’t really required, and it was more about helping her, following her, etc. And that looked more like an ex-dancer than if I had proved that I could spin around and stuff like that. But I did train many years ago… as you can see.
Q: What have been the biggest creative challenges or struggles you have faced while making this film?
DA: Well it was a really difficult film to make. After ‘The Wrestler’ everybody was asking why I made a film about wrestling with Micky Rourke, but then we had the success we had with it. I though it would get easier having Natalie Portman and Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis and Winona Ryder, but it was very difficult. Raising the money on this was probably harder than raising the money on ‘The Wrestler’. And about two weeks out, the money fell apart – and I don’t know if my actors actually knew this, after training for months and months – but then we were very lucky and we quickly got Fox Searchlight to come in, with a few hands and knees begging. And then because we had so little money, every single day was really difficult. Everyday was like “oh my gosh, we have to do all that today?” and then the next day was like “oh my gosh, we have to do that…” So it was 42 days of a huge hustle. And then of course all the money that was spent shooting meant that there was no money left for post-production, and we have over 300 visual effects shots. So basically it was really hard… until now! Now suddenly we are in this fancy hotel and there is money!
Q: Are you trying to introduce young people into the world of ballet? Or are you commenting on the problems in society such as drugs and self-harm, etc?
DA: I actually don’t think I am doing either of those things. Really what we were trying to do is just a movie version of the ballet ‘Swan Lake’. We went back to the source material of ‘Swan Lake’, which is about a maiden who is captured by an evil force and turned into a half swan/ half human creature. And then we just tried to dramatise that as a movie. So I think connecting that to real self-harm issues or real drug abuse issues or any of that was not really our intent.
Q: Darren, what advice would you give to filmmakers who want to be in your position?
DA: I think the only thing new filmmakers have to offer is originality, so that’s what I would push them to do, just do something different. And then persistence is a huge part of the game, so a combination of those two things is what will work.
Q: You mentioned that there are over 300 visual effects shots in the film, and obviously a lot of those are very subtle – with the Goosebumps, tattoo moving, etc – I wonder how much of that was conceived long before the production and how much of it was improvised?
DA: I think it was a mixture. The complicated ones that you noticed are all things that are really difficult to do unless you pre-plan them and there would really be no way to improvise them on the budget we had. But we got really into playing with things when we got into post because we realised that, with the whole thing shot in widescreen, we could think about where the audiences eyes would be at any given time and then we could manipulate the other side of the screen in very gentle ways and actually add to the tension and paranoia of the movie. So there are very slight manipulations of lots of things throughout the film, and they are very gentle things and most people probably wont notice them but they may, sort of, feel them.
Q: Could you talk about the look of the film (the graininess, etc)? And could you also talk about your choice of camera moves? Was that all storyboarded or was it improvised?
DA: Well the film is shot on film, on 16mm, and that’s what gave it the delicious grain you described. But we shot it widescreen, its actually the same format as ‘The Wrestler’, and very early on I knew that I wanted to get the camera on stage with the dancers, because when you are in the audience dance seems very effortless, but then when you go backstage you suddenly see all the effort and muscles and tendons and blood and sweat and breath. And as a director I thought, ‘how am I going to show this?” I was a little nervous about bringing the ‘cinema vérité’ handheld style that I used in ‘The Wrestler’ to a psychological thriller/ horror film, because I thought that the documentary feel might sort of suck out the tension, because people might think, “why doesn’t Natalie just turn around to the cameraman and ask for help?” And I couldn’t think of a movie like this that had used a handheld camera, so we were really debating it; but then eventually we just said ‘screw it’ and just gave it a shot to see what would happen. And as far as designing those dance shots is concerned, you couldn’t really storyboard them because the camera is too fluid. So firstly Benjamin (Millepied) and I would talk about which scenes from ‘Swan Lake’ we wanted to do for story points, and then I would tell him what was happening in the story, and it was interesting because he would then turn it into movement. Usually when I am working with actors I tell them what the story is and I get to watch them turn it into emotion, so it was interesting to see story turning into something else, into a different type of kinetic form. And then he would sort of choreograph something, and I would look at it and get some notes, and then we would eventually bring the video camera out and we would start moving with it, so it was almost like a dancing partner. And then we would create an interesting movement, but then when we would get to the stage to actually shoot it, it became very complicated because there would be spotlights and other dancers and shadows and all these issues would come up. So Matty [Libatique], our director of photography, would have to work around the camera to create the illusion that we weren’t there.
Q: Mila and Vincent, could you talk a little about working with Natalie? She obviously had a fairly demanding 42 days, and she seemed fairly consumed by this role. What was it like working with her on set?
VC: She was easy to work with because she was very focused on the dancing. I have to say I was really impressed by the amount of work she put into the physical transformation of being a dancer. I was so impressed by the way she got involved that I didn’t want to interfere with her, so I would let her do what she had to do. Because she was going back to warm up between more or less every take, so she was always training and her body was hurting, etc. So then when we had to do the scenes together she is really going for it. She’s not like a typical actress who doesn’t want to kiss or whatever, she just goes for it and she’s having fun with and uh, she’s doing it really well.
MK: She was absolutely fantastic to work with. I would say I was lucky to get to work with a friend of mine. She is a brilliant actress and she is amazing to watch so there is nothing bad I can say. She is absolutely everything you could want her to be, she is beautiful to watch when she is working and she is wonderful off-screen too.
VC: But what about the kissing? Do you agree with me?
MK: Well I knew that would be coming but I didn’t think it would be coming from Vincent! Um… yes, what he said!
Q: Mila, we read that you had two torn ligaments, a dislocated shoulder, etc. What was the hardest thing about getting into this fascinating young woman’s character?
MK: The physicality really was the hardest thing, and I think everything else kind of came alongside it. I wouldn’t say I am alone in this, I think everybody in this production who played a dancer got hurt at some point, so I would say that was the most challenging thing personally, to transform my body at the age of 26.
Q: Did you find that dancers and actors are different breeds? Do you find that dancers approach their work in a different way to actors?
MK: I think that both are incredibly competitive in a certain way. I think that dancers have this perception of perfection, which I don’t necessarily think actors do. I think actors constantly think that for every part there is something different they can do, and there is no such thing as ‘perfect’. Whereas dancers spend their careers trying to do something that is impossible. I think they are both incredibly disciplined, but I have never met anybody as disciplined as a dancer, ever, not in this industry or outside it. I have seen actors call in sick but I have never seen a dancer call in sick. And I think that is a testament to their work ethic and their discipline. The ballet world is incredibly competitive, much more so than any other world I have been able to experience.
Q: Vincent, I was wondering if there was anyone in particular that you looked at or studied or thought about when you were playing this creative unstoppable force.
VC: Yes, but it’s not Darren. When I was much younger I had the opportunity to be really close to a man called Michael Bennett, who was the director of ‘Chorus Line’, ‘Dream Girls’, ‘Ballroom’, he was one of the biggest Broadway directors ever. And he was a good friend of our family when I was younger and my father actually performed in ‘Chorus Line’ in London. So I got to see him work with the dancers, and he was really close to what I am doing in the movie: meaning that he was a real jerk with dancers, but he was only doing it to get them where he wanted them to go. He was gay, and that is a pretty big difference because my character is not gay at all, as you have seen, and he actually uses his sexuality to direct dancers. And then as I was telling you I had the opportunity to see Baryshnikov work. So it is a mixture of all those guys, and then all the documentaries I have seen on other legends. They all have something in common; they walk as if they own the world, at least within the ballet industry.
Q: One of the things that most impressed me about this film is that it is a film about dance that manages to not stand in the shadow of ‘The Red Shoes’. I wonder what other cinematic references you may have had while developing this film?
DA: Well I actually saw ‘The Red Shoes’ pretty late in the game. We were pretty deep down the road when Scorsese did that restoration of the negative, and then it came out and I saw it. I was blown away that the stories were similar, but I think that is because they are both based in the ballet world and there are certain characters that emerge and certain themes. But there were a lot of references throughout, of course Polanski’s work and Cronenberg’s work, and even the Dardennes, who were a major influence on ‘The Wrestler’, all kind of carried through into ‘Black Swan’. One journalist recently pointed out similarities to Hitchcock and ‘Marnie’, and ‘Vertigo’ has a double, so I think there are just a lot of themes that are out there.
Q: Why did you shoot on film, rather than Red, if money was tight?
DA: Well because film is amazing! And I actually haven’t shot with the Red but it seems to be just as much of a pain in the ass as film. I mean you still have to light it, and there are all different types of challenges. I mean I actually haven’t even seen a Red camera so I don’t know that much about it, but I love grain and that aesthetic of film, it adds a texture. When you’re watching a movie, you’re not watching reality. Whether its 2D or 3D, its something that isn’t real, so I’m not sure you should try to make things look real, because you can never quite get it there. So I am into stylisation of the work so that it takes on its own aesthetic and life. And I think doing a feature on 16mm just doesn’t happen that much anymore and it actually adds to something.
‘Black Swan’ is released nationwide on 11th February 2011
Q: I would like to start by asking Darren about the world of ballet, and how you immersed yourself in this world, and how different it is to the film business.
DA: The ballet world was a very hard world to get into. Usually when you make a movie, doors open for you; but the ballet world really just couldn’t care. And I think they are just very insular and self-involved and they are very focused, so it took a very long time. However, slowly but surely, we managed to find a few dancers who were interested in sharing their stories and we did a lot of research; and eventually the choreographer Benjamin Millepied came on and that sort of gave us a stamp of approval because he is very well respected at the New York City Ballet, and the ballet world. So eventually they helped us out.
Q: You describe yourself as an ‘existential humanist’, according to the Festival programme. I wonder if you could briefly describe what you mean by that?
DA: Oh gosh, I’ve got to actually write those things for myself next time! That’s actually odd because I had a girlfriend in college who said that’s what my short films were about. I don’t know how that carried over twenty years later. Uh, I have no idea what it means. Help, anyone?
Q: Could you explain a little about the connections between ‘The Wrestler’ and ‘Black Swan’? In terms of the body injuries, dedication, etc that both films exhibit.
DA: Well when we were cutting ‘The Wrestler’ we really got into revitalising this film, because we had been developing it actively for about 8 years but it kind of died during ‘The Wrestler’. And then one of the producers of ‘The Wrestler’, Mark Heyman (who is also my director of development), said he wanted to write something and I said, “what do you think of the ballet project?” So he got deep into it and said there were a lot of similarities between this and ‘The Wrestler’, but I wasn’t afraid of that because I thought it was an interesting thing because one is about the highest art and one is about the lowest art. And they are both about performers – and about performance – and both performers put their bodies before their health. And age and physicality are the big challenges to that. I just thought it was very interesting.
Q: During the rehearsal period, as you gradually learned more about the dancing, did this inform your understanding of the characters and the way you were to be directed?
MK: Well I think it was important for everybody to do a bit of dancing. The way a ballerina holds herself is very specific and you can only fake that so much. I personally needed to have my collarbone showing and certain bones protrude, and Darren made me lose weight, so that was great! But seriously the way they hold their arms and their shoulders are always tucked back and their ribcage is always tucked in, I think that stuff helped with the character.
DA: Just to be clear, did I ever ask you to lose weight?!
MK: No no no! It was a joke, not at all! Not at all.
VC: Well as you can see, I don’t dance that much in the movie… but I could have! There is one point in the movie where I direct Natalie’s character and I don’t know why but I thought, reading the script, that it would be some kind of a dancing scene. But I have seen Mikhail Baryshnikov training a young dancer, and he wasn’t moving at all. He was only slightly showing what he was doing. So when we got on set we got into the vibe where dancing wasn’t really required, and it was more about helping her, following her, etc. And that looked more like an ex-dancer than if I had proved that I could spin around and stuff like that. But I did train many years ago… as you can see.
Q: What have been the biggest creative challenges or struggles you have faced while making this film?
DA: Well it was a really difficult film to make. After ‘The Wrestler’ everybody was asking why I made a film about wrestling with Micky Rourke, but then we had the success we had with it. I though it would get easier having Natalie Portman and Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis and Winona Ryder, but it was very difficult. Raising the money on this was probably harder than raising the money on ‘The Wrestler’. And about two weeks out, the money fell apart – and I don’t know if my actors actually knew this, after training for months and months – but then we were very lucky and we quickly got Fox Searchlight to come in, with a few hands and knees begging. And then because we had so little money, every single day was really difficult. Everyday was like “oh my gosh, we have to do all that today?” and then the next day was like “oh my gosh, we have to do that…” So it was 42 days of a huge hustle. And then of course all the money that was spent shooting meant that there was no money left for post-production, and we have over 300 visual effects shots. So basically it was really hard… until now! Now suddenly we are in this fancy hotel and there is money!
Q: Are you trying to introduce young people into the world of ballet? Or are you commenting on the problems in society such as drugs and self-harm, etc?
DA: I actually don’t think I am doing either of those things. Really what we were trying to do is just a movie version of the ballet ‘Swan Lake’. We went back to the source material of ‘Swan Lake’, which is about a maiden who is captured by an evil force and turned into a half swan/ half human creature. And then we just tried to dramatise that as a movie. So I think connecting that to real self-harm issues or real drug abuse issues or any of that was not really our intent.
Q: Darren, what advice would you give to filmmakers who want to be in your position?
DA: I think the only thing new filmmakers have to offer is originality, so that’s what I would push them to do, just do something different. And then persistence is a huge part of the game, so a combination of those two things is what will work.
Q: You mentioned that there are over 300 visual effects shots in the film, and obviously a lot of those are very subtle – with the Goosebumps, tattoo moving, etc – I wonder how much of that was conceived long before the production and how much of it was improvised?
DA: I think it was a mixture. The complicated ones that you noticed are all things that are really difficult to do unless you pre-plan them and there would really be no way to improvise them on the budget we had. But we got really into playing with things when we got into post because we realised that, with the whole thing shot in widescreen, we could think about where the audiences eyes would be at any given time and then we could manipulate the other side of the screen in very gentle ways and actually add to the tension and paranoia of the movie. So there are very slight manipulations of lots of things throughout the film, and they are very gentle things and most people probably wont notice them but they may, sort of, feel them.
Q: Could you talk about the look of the film (the graininess, etc)? And could you also talk about your choice of camera moves? Was that all storyboarded or was it improvised?
DA: Well the film is shot on film, on 16mm, and that’s what gave it the delicious grain you described. But we shot it widescreen, its actually the same format as ‘The Wrestler’, and very early on I knew that I wanted to get the camera on stage with the dancers, because when you are in the audience dance seems very effortless, but then when you go backstage you suddenly see all the effort and muscles and tendons and blood and sweat and breath. And as a director I thought, ‘how am I going to show this?” I was a little nervous about bringing the ‘cinema vérité’ handheld style that I used in ‘The Wrestler’ to a psychological thriller/ horror film, because I thought that the documentary feel might sort of suck out the tension, because people might think, “why doesn’t Natalie just turn around to the cameraman and ask for help?” And I couldn’t think of a movie like this that had used a handheld camera, so we were really debating it; but then eventually we just said ‘screw it’ and just gave it a shot to see what would happen. And as far as designing those dance shots is concerned, you couldn’t really storyboard them because the camera is too fluid. So firstly Benjamin (Millepied) and I would talk about which scenes from ‘Swan Lake’ we wanted to do for story points, and then I would tell him what was happening in the story, and it was interesting because he would then turn it into movement. Usually when I am working with actors I tell them what the story is and I get to watch them turn it into emotion, so it was interesting to see story turning into something else, into a different type of kinetic form. And then he would sort of choreograph something, and I would look at it and get some notes, and then we would eventually bring the video camera out and we would start moving with it, so it was almost like a dancing partner. And then we would create an interesting movement, but then when we would get to the stage to actually shoot it, it became very complicated because there would be spotlights and other dancers and shadows and all these issues would come up. So Matty [Libatique], our director of photography, would have to work around the camera to create the illusion that we weren’t there.
Q: Mila and Vincent, could you talk a little about working with Natalie? She obviously had a fairly demanding 42 days, and she seemed fairly consumed by this role. What was it like working with her on set?
VC: She was easy to work with because she was very focused on the dancing. I have to say I was really impressed by the amount of work she put into the physical transformation of being a dancer. I was so impressed by the way she got involved that I didn’t want to interfere with her, so I would let her do what she had to do. Because she was going back to warm up between more or less every take, so she was always training and her body was hurting, etc. So then when we had to do the scenes together she is really going for it. She’s not like a typical actress who doesn’t want to kiss or whatever, she just goes for it and she’s having fun with and uh, she’s doing it really well.
MK: She was absolutely fantastic to work with. I would say I was lucky to get to work with a friend of mine. She is a brilliant actress and she is amazing to watch so there is nothing bad I can say. She is absolutely everything you could want her to be, she is beautiful to watch when she is working and she is wonderful off-screen too.
VC: But what about the kissing? Do you agree with me?
MK: Well I knew that would be coming but I didn’t think it would be coming from Vincent! Um… yes, what he said!
Q: Mila, we read that you had two torn ligaments, a dislocated shoulder, etc. What was the hardest thing about getting into this fascinating young woman’s character?
MK: The physicality really was the hardest thing, and I think everything else kind of came alongside it. I wouldn’t say I am alone in this, I think everybody in this production who played a dancer got hurt at some point, so I would say that was the most challenging thing personally, to transform my body at the age of 26.
Q: Did you find that dancers and actors are different breeds? Do you find that dancers approach their work in a different way to actors?
MK: I think that both are incredibly competitive in a certain way. I think that dancers have this perception of perfection, which I don’t necessarily think actors do. I think actors constantly think that for every part there is something different they can do, and there is no such thing as ‘perfect’. Whereas dancers spend their careers trying to do something that is impossible. I think they are both incredibly disciplined, but I have never met anybody as disciplined as a dancer, ever, not in this industry or outside it. I have seen actors call in sick but I have never seen a dancer call in sick. And I think that is a testament to their work ethic and their discipline. The ballet world is incredibly competitive, much more so than any other world I have been able to experience.
Q: Vincent, I was wondering if there was anyone in particular that you looked at or studied or thought about when you were playing this creative unstoppable force.
VC: Yes, but it’s not Darren. When I was much younger I had the opportunity to be really close to a man called Michael Bennett, who was the director of ‘Chorus Line’, ‘Dream Girls’, ‘Ballroom’, he was one of the biggest Broadway directors ever. And he was a good friend of our family when I was younger and my father actually performed in ‘Chorus Line’ in London. So I got to see him work with the dancers, and he was really close to what I am doing in the movie: meaning that he was a real jerk with dancers, but he was only doing it to get them where he wanted them to go. He was gay, and that is a pretty big difference because my character is not gay at all, as you have seen, and he actually uses his sexuality to direct dancers. And then as I was telling you I had the opportunity to see Baryshnikov work. So it is a mixture of all those guys, and then all the documentaries I have seen on other legends. They all have something in common; they walk as if they own the world, at least within the ballet industry.
Q: One of the things that most impressed me about this film is that it is a film about dance that manages to not stand in the shadow of ‘The Red Shoes’. I wonder what other cinematic references you may have had while developing this film?
DA: Well I actually saw ‘The Red Shoes’ pretty late in the game. We were pretty deep down the road when Scorsese did that restoration of the negative, and then it came out and I saw it. I was blown away that the stories were similar, but I think that is because they are both based in the ballet world and there are certain characters that emerge and certain themes. But there were a lot of references throughout, of course Polanski’s work and Cronenberg’s work, and even the Dardennes, who were a major influence on ‘The Wrestler’, all kind of carried through into ‘Black Swan’. One journalist recently pointed out similarities to Hitchcock and ‘Marnie’, and ‘Vertigo’ has a double, so I think there are just a lot of themes that are out there.
Q: Why did you shoot on film, rather than Red, if money was tight?
DA: Well because film is amazing! And I actually haven’t shot with the Red but it seems to be just as much of a pain in the ass as film. I mean you still have to light it, and there are all different types of challenges. I mean I actually haven’t even seen a Red camera so I don’t know that much about it, but I love grain and that aesthetic of film, it adds a texture. When you’re watching a movie, you’re not watching reality. Whether its 2D or 3D, its something that isn’t real, so I’m not sure you should try to make things look real, because you can never quite get it there. So I am into stylisation of the work so that it takes on its own aesthetic and life. And I think doing a feature on 16mm just doesn’t happen that much anymore and it actually adds to something.
‘Black Swan’ is released nationwide on 11th February 2011
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