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what it means to look in a mirror. Mirrors become a big part of looking into Nina’s character, which is all about
doubles and reflection.”
The task of forging the physical world of BLACK SWAN fell to production designer Thérèse DePrez.
Here, she faced the double challenge of designing both a Manhattan-based psychological thriller and an onscreen
production of “Swan Lake” meshing them together in every detail. “I’ve wanted to work with Thérèse
for a long time,” says Aronofsky. “She created a really big canvas for us on a very tight budget. She created a
world that is not the real world, but feels like it is real, which is a very hard thing to pull off.”
“Darren is very organic in the way he approaches his films,” says DePrez, “so I started by looking at the
palette, which was inspired both by ‘Swan Lake’ and by what Nina sees everyday – the rehearsal spaces that are
both Old World and modern New York. We wanted something very minimalist so it is mostly shades of black,
white, grey and the pinks of ballet, which were divided into the innocent pinks of Nina’s character and Beth’s
pinks which are a little more worn. Then there are some greens, which come from Rothbart and also the nature
settings of ‘Swan Lake.’ But that’s really it. We kept the colors very limited.”
Many of the film’s sets would quietly presage what is later seen on stage in “Swan Lake” during the
explosive climax of the film including Thomas Leroy’s stark, black-and-white apartment, where he gives Nina
an unusual homework assignment as well as Nina’s pink, childlike bedroom, which offers her fewer and fewer
comforts as the story builds. “It’s all very subtle, but there are common visual threads that keep weaving
throughout,” points out DePrez. “One thing about Darren is that he doesn’t like to over-stylize anything. So a
lot of the design was about grounding Natalie’s character in reality.”
It all built up to DePrez’s most massive challenge: designing sets for a new take on “Swan Lake,” one
that would be dark, modern, edgy and, most of all, highly cinematic.
“One of the things that was very important to Darren and me was to have movement in all of the set
pieces on the stage. We didn’t want anything stagnant or still,” she explains. “So, you’ll see in every act of the
ballet there are stage elements that move. There are tree scrims that spread apart, there’s a moon that is backlit,
there’s a cliff with a moving ramp. Everything also has a touch of photorealism to make it more modern and
unexpected. It all had to be very intricately composed.”
Her designs even extended to the wings of the stage. “The wings were almost as important as the stage
itself,” she says. “We made sure there were ballet bars where the dancers are stretching, and of course, mirrors.
Everything is there for the camera to capture.”
That same attention to Nina’s reality with the visual elements of “Swan Lake” intertwined throughout
can be found in the work of costume designer Amy Westcott, who started by throwing herself into the ballet
world. “I sat in on classes, went to performances at ABT and New York City Ballet, and then began to put lots
of idea together,” she explains.
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