Layering Meanings - Music and song as an element of screen performance

Although ‘performance’ is a widely written and discussed aspect of cinema studies, the majority of analyses have focussed on the contribution of the actor and the development of a language to describe it. By contrast, the argument can be made that the contributions of the actor are just one element of the construction of cinematic performance, and that to fully consider cinematic expression, the skills specific to the technical aspects of filmmaking must also be examined.

For the actor, performance therefore involves the comprehension of and adaptation to the specifically technical requirements of the medium - cinematography, sound recording and the edit. In addition, the delivered production content is then reconstructed through the post-production process where the addition and subtraction of elements contributes to the final performance. With this concept of actor and mechanism in mind, in this paper I will explore the role of non-diegetic song/music in constructing performance, revealing the ways in which integration of raw material and post-production can produce a final realisation of a ‘performance’ for the audience. Song and music can underscore and influence the concept of performance and it is this addition and impact that will be examined here. This is therefore not so much an inversion of the traditional image sound hierarchy but an acknowledgement and examination of its place within the perception of a performance.