Montage It: Model

The client is a dancer, so I designed a dance studio.

My concepts were drawn from themes of the movie, and a lot of the visual quality of it.

I drew heavily from the (most obvious) black/white motif, with the two mixing and overlapping, and the black enveloping the pure whiteness, as Nina was eventually overtaken by the 'black swan' in the film. I built the model from cardboard that was white on one side and black on the other (bought like that). I had made a smaller test model from cereal box, and tried to use balsa wood for my final model, but it couldn't support the sharp angles I was trying to make. The cardboard supported the sharp angles and the whole construction is quite jaggered to capture the harshness of the film.

The interior is empty, as required for rehearsal space, but feels suffocating and hollow because the ceiling is unusually high and the windows are placed high up. Two of the interior walls are mirrors (shiny cardboard :D), and while this is common in rehearsal halls, it feels unnerving and introspective in this case because it is undisrupted, which is a quality of the film, as she looks into herself and goes mad...

I wanted captured the duality of the film (two distinct personalities of black & white swan), and did so by splitting the roof, making a butterfly roof sort of thing.

The studio is not intended to be used just for the client, as dance studios are utilised by many 'artists', practicing dancers, dancing schools, etc. Note to capture this aspect in the montages (the actual client is never physically featured in the montages, but is instead represented through the model.