In Presto, Perfect Sound is a development of de Boer's acutely structuralist approach to filmmaking, evident in earlier films such as Sylvia Kristel ‚ Paris (2003) and Resonating Surfaces (2005). Her work revolves around the portrait and the memory. Image and biographical account are often separated to question the nature of a portrait, to the one who is portrayed and the spectator. Her film Presto, Perfect Sound depicts composer and violinist, George van Dam, performing the fourth movement of a Bartok violin sonata. In order to achieve the 'perfect' soundtrack, de Boer edited together the audio track from the six different recordings with the performer and then edited the film to this soundtrack. In allowing the audio sequence to dictate the image on screen, de Boer inverts the traditional dominance of image over sound in cinema. The film is a meditation on the relationship between sound and image and offers an intense reflection on a moment of creative concentration, when the subject is fully absorbed, almost as if out of sync with the world around him. The film shows an impressive tension and relationship between the 'perfect', fluent sound and the cuts and jumps in the editing, the position of the musician and his instrument, and his face.
"I find it fascinating to watch the face of someone who is reading, playing music or thinking, because these are often moments when people seem to forget their 'social face', being so concentrated on an interior activity; moments in which a mental space is reflected on the face ó this surface between inside and outside." - Manon de Boer