Blog Post Three: Editing Breakdown

Blog Post No.3
Black Swan (2010)- Attack it! vid

In this scene, Natalie Portman plays Nina who constantly strives to achieve perfection as not only the pure white swan, but the more dark and seductive black swan. The audience is first clued into the imbalance as the camera dizzily spins and twirls around her (in a medium close up shot that reveals Nina's battle to keep her grace) stating that the imbalance is not only unlike that of a professional ballerina, but also Nina's unstable mental state. The close up shot also reveals that she is tightly controlling her movements.  At 0:16, the camera cuts to the hawkeyed dance instructor who quickly makes note of how controlled Nina is with another medium close up shot. In this closed frame, the audience knows that he is in charge because the depth of field states that he is in the foreground and Nina is in the background. The dance instructor also follows Nina with with eyes and by bobbing his head slightly off time, as if he fails to see Nina's potential as the white swan, who he believed Nina was personality-wise. The camera is also very sturdy when he watches Nina, meaning that the audience can infer that he can see clearly and Nina cannot. The cut between Nina dancing and the dance instructor watching ultimately clues that audience into the power dynamics between that instructor and Nina as well. At 0:31 the camera cuts back to Nina in another mcu, looks down at the end of her performance which hints that she is not confident in herself, nor her as the white swan. And then from that shot, the camera quickly pans to the dance instructor again quickly walking into Nina's frame. There's no cut here, meaning that in this scene, the lack of lead room given to Nina originally in the frame means that the scene is framed openly, leading the instructor to barge in to her space, and as audiences seeing this, we can feel violated and almost fearful of what's to come. At 0:34, the camera cuts to Nina with a frightened look on her face which also means that we as the audience are supposed to match Nina's pov. As we cut back to the instructor using the 180 rule (ironic because the characters are framed along the line of action, but the power inequality is apparent) he literally almost dominates the entire frame in a close up shot. He takes up 2/3 of the frame (using the rule of thirds) and nina takes up one third.