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The study involved analysing the music in the movies 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) to determine if any of the cues could be the music that the character hears in his or her head.

This theory involves the linking of two concepts. The first concept is called audiation, and is described by Edwin Gordon as the music which a human hears silently, when the sound is not physically present. To put it simply, it's the music we hear in our heads. The second is the film technique called interior monologue, where the audience hears what the character is thinking.

I actually undertook an exploratory study of audiation in 1999. I was interested in individual experiences of audiation, whether there were differences between musicians and non-musicians, and if there were similarities between people's individual experiences. While individual experiences differed slightly, there were more general similarities than differences. A few of the relevant findings are listed:

The triggers include internal and external prompts, which include mood, boredom, something recently heard, word association (which is linked to the lyrics of a song), prior experience or association and a particular situation. The findings formed the basis of the parameters for audiation which governed the data analysis of the two case studies.

Audiation is a result of our ability to store sounds and music in our head, and to recall them, both at will and unintentionally. Audiation relies upon our musical memory, and the way in which audiation is used by the individual depends upon how the person constructs meaning from music.

Interior monologue is the film technique where the audience hears what the character is thinking. Two examples of this technique are What Women Want (2000) and City of Angels (1998). We are given visual and aural cues; we hear the character's voice but he/she's not talking. From our experience of movies we interpret this to mean we're hearing the character's thoughts. This technique should not be confused with voice-over narration, where the character narrates or tells the story. Two examples of this are Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) and American Beauty (2000). The character sets the context and is the storyteller. It can be confusing because interior monologue is sometimes referred to as voice-over.

To recap, the thesis links audiation and interior monologue to form a musical equivalent to the interior monologue technique. Basically, some film music may be the character's audiation, similar to hearing their thoughts.

In current film music theories, there are two widely used terms. Diegetic music, which is music with an obvious source in the world of the film. Non-diegetic, which is the opposite, it exists outside of the world of the movie and seems to have no logical reason for being there. However some theorists, namely Claudia Gorbman, Simon Frith, Jerrold Levinson and Anahid Kassabian have realised that this dualism is problematic. Jerrold Levinson introduced the term quasi-diegetic for the in-between music that cannot be adequately explained by diegetic/non-diegetic. There are two types, (a) music which begins as diegetic and changes to non-diegetic over an edit or vice versa, and (b) music which is impossible to pigeonhole as diegetic or non-diegetic due to no obvious sound source in a situation that seems like it should be accompanied by music.

Claudia Gorbman introduced the term metadiegetic, and metadiegetic scenes are flashbacks, dream sequences, fantasies and visions, scenes where we literally see into the character's head. She also speaks of metadiegetic music, where the character takes over part of the film's narration and we hear his or her musical thoughts. A metadiegetic cue, then, is film audiation (interior monologue linked with audiation).

Triggers, such as something recently heard, can act as a prompt for audiation, and also singing is an outward manifestation of audiation. Of all the above types of film music, only diegetic cues cannot be strictly audiation, however they can act as a trigger for audiation and can suggest the presence of audiation within a character.

Television more readily uses techniques like this. An episode of Everybody Loves Raymond (called "The Author") showed Raymond being accused by his wife of not spending enough time with his kids. In response, he indicates that he had "Cats in the Cradle" playing in his head. Now, the lyrics of "Cats in the Cradle" are about a man who doesn't spend enough time with his son, and realises that his son has grown up to make the same mistake. So here we have a reference that Raymond's conscience is causing him to audiate this song, linking a lyric/word association with the psychological "guilt" prompt.

Another complicated example of the use of audiation is in the TV series Charmed, where in one episode the entire story is built around a simple melody that one of the sisters complains of hearing in her head. The most obvious example by far is Ally McBeal. The show uses both visual and aural techniques to allow the audience to get inside the characters' heads. In one episode, the main character Ally visits a psychiatrist, who tells her she needs a theme song which she can play in her head to pep her up. The effect of the theme song draws upon notions of music influencing mood, and stereotypical Western conventions of slow music being sad or depressing, and fast being happy or lively.

Not all films or TV programs use this technique. It is a technique, and one used unconsciously at times. I watched ten movies, and selected the two which best fit my criteria, which follows:

The movies selected were 10 Things I Hate About You and A Clockwork Orange.

10 Things I Hate About You is a modern remake of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew which was written in 1591. The movie first screened in 1999. It is a teenage comedy, and is based on the battle of the sexes. The boy must tame the shrewish girl. The movie uses mainly pre-existing popular music (music with lyrics), in the genres of ska, alternative rock and mainstream pop/rock.

A Clockwork Orange is based on the novel by Anthony Burgess which was written in 1962. The film first screened in 1971. It is a moral tale, a story about a human's right to choose to be good or evil. Music is central to this, because the main character, Alex, is brainwashed to prevent him from doing evil and one of the side effects is that he cannot listen to one of his favourite pieces of music, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony fourth movement. The film uses mainly pre-existing classical music as well as synthesised music, pieces from Elgar, Rossini, Rimsky-Korsakov, Purcell, and of course Beethoven.

The thesis was based on a constructivist paradigm, from the viewpoint that an individual constructs and interprets a film, and music, based upon individual and societal experience. I wanted to triangulate the data by using the case studies, an audience reception study and an interview with a film composer.

The audience reception study wasn't really possible on a large scale, so I reasoned that by watching the films I was actually interpreting them, as the audience, through my own biases and experiences. I used my interpretations of what I was seeing and hearing and applied these to the case studies, and the data analysis of the films. The steps I took in chronological order were:

I identified seven metadiegetic cues in A Clockwork Orange and nine in 10 Things I Hate About You. These cues conformed with the parameters for audiation formulated after referring to my pilot study, which were as follows (The first three parameters were necessary for the cue to be verified as metadiegetic):

I found that metadiegetic cues generally function as a way for the audience to share an experience with a character. Things which might otherwise be hidden become clearer, or a moment might be made more poignant for the audience. Audiation in films gives critics, analysts and theorists another psychoanalytic facet of the character to explore. The conscious use of metadiegetic cues gives film directors and composers a more subtle tool for exposing a character's inner thoughts and feelings. Metadiegetic music also emphasises the need to analyse film music within its context.

The thesis shows how metadiegetic music is possible, how it is used in the two films analysed, and opens the way for future investigations into the functions and possibilities of audiation in film, so we can better understand and use this technique.