“Some of the songs are used in quite a different way, for example – ‘Our Last Summer’ in the show is a duet between Donna and Harry, but in the movie, the song accompanies footage of Sophie getting to know her Dads on the island”- Catherine Johnson, on trying to make certain scenes from the musical fit into the plot of the movie, therefore changing the tone and message of the song. The differences between the two mediums is also important in terms of what the audience can see and absorb during the performance of the song. On the live stage (Broadway performance), the audience is able to see every thing that is happening, from the movement of all of the cast members to being able to see who is singing to who. During the movie, the camera can only capture on thing at a time, each shot included in the movie a specific choice that the director made during post-production.
One especially important difference is that during the stage performance, the audience is able to watch and listen to the cast perform the songs live (fully diegetic). The film is able to have the actors lip-sync to the music and put the music in the background of the action that is visually taking place. The clip of “Our Last Summer” intertwines different shots of Sophie getting to know each of her fathers with the being played in the background with shots of each dad singing with Sophie (non-diegetic and diegetic shots). (ABBA: The Official Site n.d., “In Focus: Our Last Summer – The Indefinable Magic of a Vocal Performance”).