Understanding support: Academy-Award-winning supporting female performances and audio-visual criticism

Massie, Daniel (2020) Understanding support: Academy-Award-winning supporting female performances and audio-visual criticism. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

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.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Additional Information: Due to copyright issues this thesis is not available for viewing. The thesis is a portfolio work comprising a text file (141 pages : colour illustrations) and 6 audio visual files.
• Keywords: Audio-Visual Criticism, Supporting Performances, Film Performance, Practice-Research,
• Subjects: N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Theatre Film and TV Studies
• Supervisor's Name: Garwood, Dr. Ian and Boyle, Prof. Karen
• Date of Award: 31 April 2020
• Embargo Date: 12 August 2023
• Depositing User: Dr Daniel Massie
• Unique ID: glathesis:2020-81580
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 12 Aug 2020 14:21
• Last Modified: 13 Aug 2020 14:01
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/81580