The Technological Construction of Performance

Abstract

Performance in film is more than straightforward recording of actors; performances were (and are) often constructed in postproduction by technological means. Today with digital effects, we are seeing an unprecedented degree of technological advances that allow the breaking up, recombining, and reconfiguring of actors' abilities as multiple forms of input. This essay examines the history behind the technological construction of performance, the elements which performances have been divided into, and some of the ways in these divisions redefine what we have traditionally thought of as constituting a performance, which has become in many ways a more collaborative effort instead of the work of an individual 'star' performer.