BLACK SWAN Visual Effects Video Reel

Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a computer graphics programmer and news junky that's been working in the field for the last 15 years. He's responsible for visualizations generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, ytnef, mullion support in ParaView, and VizWorld.com.

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5 Comments

Sam Wilson says:
September 20, 2013 at 9:32 pm
Well I’m disappointed that the studio and Natalie Portman lied about her dancing in the film. Kudos to the excellent dancer that doubled for her during the film that has gone unappreciated.
Robert Thomason says:
March 28, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Yes great that this video is still up. Hopefully it will remain line longer and show the coverup that Fox executives are trying to do. Natalie Portman was excellent in the film, as was the dancing/body double, and the VFX. But they don’t want credit to go to everyone, just to their big name star…just said and petty.
Randall Hand says:
March 28, 2011 at 8:41 am
It’s a shame they want to take away from the contributions of the VFX studio just to preserve an already awarded Academy Award.
I imagine I’m safe tho. I’m not hosting the video, I’ve merely embedded it from the ‘Viva La Geek’ site. Thanks for the heads up tho.
anon says:
March 27, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Indeed the studio claim is that Portman (who did train in ballet as a child) did most of the dancing in the movie herself. Unfortunately for Fox-Searchlight, this video proves objectively that it isn’t true.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a nice take-down letter from Searchlight’s lawyers soon.
That a double was involved doesn’t in any way detract from the movie. At issue is that Portman won an academy award for her work here.
Would she still have won if it was well known that all the top-level dancing was done by a double with Portman’s face overdubbed by computer animation?
I doubt it, actually. The academy loves to award actors who “transform” themselves for roles (eg, Christopher Bales for “The Fighter” being another example). Portman’s acting was certainly good, but take away the dancing element, and its not typically the sort of thing that wins awards.
conan says:
March 27, 2011 at 5:14 pm
Randall, you may not be aware of this, but there’s a controversy brewing over the video you’ve posted here.
Fox Searchlight removed the original video from YouTube and then proceeded to cut out segments showing face replacements and head replacements and then put out a new video.
They are not going to be happy you have the original.