This thesis combines writing and audio-visual essays to examine, and better understand, Academy-A... more This thesis combines writing and audio-visual essays to examine, and better understand, Academy-Award-winning supporting female film performances (from 1936-2015). It utilises audio-visual research as methodology, through a series of deformative editorial interventions on the award-winning films, and as outcome (the video essays). This research contributes chiefly to the intellectual field of audio-visual criticism, specifically asking what deformative criticism’s role can be in the study of screen performance. Through a two-fold practice methodology of re-editing the original films to remove everything but the supporting female performance, and the subsequent creation of a series of audio-visual essays that tackle this corpus of screen performances from different perspectives, I gained a better understanding of the kinds of female supporting performances that are valued by the Academy. A shift away from role and towards performance allowed the intellectual inquiry of the thesis to engage specific films and performances, with a view to producing audio-visual essays that explore: how non-performance factors such as screentime mediate performance; ideas of enactment of support and how this relates to small, easily-overlooked performance qualities; and, performance style, and whether it is possible to discern overall styles across this corpus. The practice nature of this thesis, as far as I am aware, makes this one of the first (if not the first) of its kind in film studies. I was researching in ‘uncharted waters’ so to speak. This afforded me freedoms and challenges in equal measure. There was, and remains, no template for how to structure a thesis that uses audio- visual work as both research process and research outcome. However, it is my aim that the work of this thesis may inspire future doctoral researchers to try new things: experiment, play, make, reflect – to do these as part of a different, audio- visual research process
This thesis combines writing and audio-visual essays to examine, and better understand, Academy-A... more This thesis combines writing and audio-visual essays to examine, and better understand, Academy-Award-winning supporting female film performances (from 1936-2015). It utilises audio-visual research as methodology, through a series of deformative editorial interventions on the award-winning films, and as outcome (the video essays). This research contributes chiefly to the intellectual field of audio-visual criticism, specifically asking what deformative criticism’s role can be in the study of screen performance. Through a two-fold practice methodology of re-editing the original films to remove everything but the supporting female performance, and the subsequent creation of a series of audio-visual essays that tackle this corpus of screen performances from different perspectives, I gained a better understanding of the kinds of female supporting performances that are valued by the Academy. A shift away from role and towards performance allowed the intellectual inquiry of the thesis to engage specific films and performances, with a view to producing audio-visual essays that explore: how non-performance factors such as screentime mediate performance; ideas of enactment of support and how this relates to small, easily-overlooked performance qualities; and, performance style, and whether it is possible to discern overall styles across this corpus. The practice nature of this thesis, as far as I am aware, makes this one of the first (if not the first) of its kind in film studies. I was researching in ‘uncharted waters’ so to speak. This afforded me freedoms and challenges in equal measure. There was, and remains, no template for how to structure a thesis that uses audio- visual work as both research process and research outcome. However, it is my aim that the work of this thesis may inspire future doctoral researchers to try new things: experiment, play, make, reflect – to do these as part of a different, audio- visual research process
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