The typeface for the main title font is Trajan regular, however, other alternatives could include other serif fonts like Garamond and Monotype Modern. This gives the elegant classic look.
The color scheme in this scene contains black, white and the subtle greenish-blue which will transition to the main color theme of the movie. Nina is dreaming that she is the White Swan and it indicates what will happen in the climax of the movie.
Nina has mental breakdowns which cause her to scratch herself unconsciously. Nina's obsession to be perfect is to please her mother, for her mother was once a dancer.
In this scene, her instructor tells her to relax and that her form is beautiful. Nina's obsession to be the perfect dancer causes her stress to surface. Nina’s attire is all white and pale pink, inferring that she is determined to fit the White Swan role.
After Nina receives the news that she will be playing the Swan Queen, she calls to tell her mother, but Nina is now under much more pressure with this role to fit both the White and Black Swan. Mirror represents self-image.
Birds and feathers are also one of the major motifs throughout the movie, and they represent Nina's paranoia and transition to her final metamorphosis at the end of the movie.
Notice how Nina's dance attire is different. She doesn't wear pastel pink and blue. She is wearing black and white, a grayscale outfit. In this scene with Thomas, it is obvious that she is emerging out of her comfort zone and letting go.
The color green is seen at various moments throughout the movie, and it represents the darkness that's inside Nina that awakens.
Nina doesn't have a good performance as the White Swan, for her lift partner dropped her. The color green is significant during the dance because it represents Nina's paranoia rising up inside her.
Back in the dressing room Nina gets into a fight with "Lily" who is actually her twin dark self, and the dark Nina chokes her before getting knocked out by real Nina. Nina's delusions start to climax here as she envisions her neck growing long like a swan.
Once Nina finally embraces her dark side, she was able to perform the Black Swan with perfection. She lets go and her metamorphosis is complete with her arms turning into black swan wings.
During her mental breakdown in the locker room, she accidentally stabbed herself but proceeds to perform. The light behind her signifies that she is losing too much blood, making her feel even more fleeting during her dance back as the White Swan. As Nina life fades away into the bright light, she felt as though she really embodied the Swan Queen. "I felt it...perfect."
Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan supports how single minded professionalism in the pursuit of a career can lead to the destruction of personal lives. Nina Sayers devoted her life to ballet, but that wasn’t absolutely her choice. Her mother was once a dancer, and is now devoting her life to the career of her daughter. They share a tiny apartment that sometimes feels like a refuge, sometimes like a cell. Nina dances in a company at New York's Lincoln Center, ruled by the autocratic Thomas Leroy, who was holding a production for Swan Lake.
Thomas now auditioning for a new lead, having cast off his former prima ballerina and girlfriend, Beth MacIntyre, Swan Lake calls for a lead to play opposing roles. Nina is clearly the best White Swan dancer, however, Thomas considers her too "sweet" to dance for Black Swan. Nina dances with technique, not with emotion.
There's tension between Nina and Thomas, and then a new dancer named Lily arrives. She is all Nina is not: bold, loose, confident. Nina envies those traits, for Lily is, among other things, a clearly sexual being, and we suspect Nina may never have been on a date, let alone slept with a man. Thus, the movie spotlights the forbidden love triangle occuring in a professional workplace. This poses a crisis in Nina’s life: how can she liberate herself from her mother's obsession for perfection and sexual repression while remaining loyal to her incestuous psychological relationship? She shows elements of an anxiety disorder with obsessive compulsive behaviors. She also manifests self-injurious behavior and some signs of an eating disorder. She dabbles with substance abuse.
The irony of Nina, and many young artists and athletes, is that success in one area of life has led to failure. Everything gets focused at a young age on satisfying someone (a parent, a coach, a partner) and somehow it gets wired up in that the person can never be satisfied. One can become perfect in a specific area, but can not be prepared for life itself. In order for Nina to fully achieve the role of the Black Swan, she had to extinguish the White Swan, the person she was before.
5 words: elegant, tragic, lustful, jealousy, metamorphosis
Thesis: Nina Sayers needs to make a huge transition from her obsession with achieving her ideal self and lose herself to fit the evil character of the Black Swan.
