Split screen (filmmaking)

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In film and video production, split screen is the visible division of the screen, traditionally in half, but also in several simultaneous images, rupturing the illusion that the screen's frame is a seamless view of reality, similar to that of the human eye. Until the arrival of digital technology in the early 1990s, this was accomplished by using an optical printer to combine two or more actions filmed separately by copying them onto the same negative, called the composite.

[edit] Popularisation

Several studio-made films in the 1960s popularized the use of split screen. They include John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix (1966), Richard Fleischer's The Boston Strangler (1968), Norman Jewison's The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Airport (1970), Woodstock (1970) and More American Graffiti (1979).

[edit] Influences

An influential arena for the great split screen movies of the 1960s were two world's fairs - the 1964 New York World's Fair, where Ray and Charles Eames had a 17-screen film they created for IBM's "Think" Pavilion (it included sections with race car driving) and the 3-division film To Be Alive, by Francis Thompson, which won the Academy Award that year for Best Short. John Frankenheimer made Grand Prix after his visit to the 1964 New York World's Fair. The success of these pavilions further influenced the 1967 Universal exhibition in Montreal, commonly referred to as Expo 67, where multi-screen highlights included In the Labyrinth, hailed by Time magazine as a "stunning visual display," their review concluding: "such visual delights as Labyrinth ... suggest that cinema—the most typical of 20th century arts—has just begun to explore its boundaries and possibilities." [1] Directors Norman Jewison and Richard Fleischer conceived their ambitious split-screen films of 1968 after visiting Expo '67.^{[citation needed]}

It's also common to use this technique to simultaneously portray both participants in a telephone conversation, a long-standing convention which dates back to early silents, as in Lois Weber's triangular frames in her 1913 Suspense, and culminating in Pillow Talk, 1959 where Doris Day and Rock Hudson share a party line. So linked to this convention are the Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies that Down With Love, the only slightly tongue-in-cheek homage, used split screen in several phone calls, explicitly parodying this use. In the 1971 Emmy Award winning TV movie "Brian's Song" which portrays the story of former Chicago Bears running backs Brian Piccolo and Hall of Famer Gale Sayers, it’s the night after Piccolo's second surgery and Piccolo (James Caan) is talking to Sayers (Billy Dee Williams) on the phone. There is a diagonal split screen from upper left corner to lower right corner (Piccolo on the right side and Sayers on the left). The BBC series Coupling made extensive use of split screen as one of several techniques that are unconventional for TV series, often to a humorous effect. One episode, 'Split', was even named after the use of the effect. The acclaimed Fox TV series 24 used split-screen extensively to depict the many simultaneous events, enhancing the show's real-time element as well as connecting its multiple storylines. The director of the pilot, Stephen Hopkins, was greatly influenced by The Boston Strangler's use of multiple screens to create tension.

An unusual and revolutionary use of split screen as an extension to the cinematic vocabulary was invented by film director Roger Avary in The Rules of Attraction (2002) where two separate halves of a split screen are folded together into one seamless shot through the use of motion control. The much acclaimed shot was examined and detailed in Bravo Television's Anatomy of a Scene.

[edit] Digital technology

The arrival of digital video technology has made dividing the screen much easier to accomplish, and recent digital films and music videos have explored this possibility in depth. Sometimes the technique is used to show actions occurring simultaneously; Timecode (2000), by Mike Figgis, is a recent example where the combination is of four real time digital video cameras shown continuously for the duration of the film. The extensive use of split-screen as part of the narrative structure of a film, as in The Boston Strangler.

[edit] Usage

[edit] In films

This technique has been used in films like The Parent Trap (1961) in order to show having an actress talk to herself in a dual role. The actress was filmed as she stood at the left of the frame facing right. Then she was filmed standing at the right and facing the other way. The negative of the first action was placed into a printer and copied onto another negative, the composite, but this other negative was masked so that only the right part of the original picture is copied. Then the composite was rewound and the negative of the second action was copied onto the right side of each frame. On this second pass, the left side was masked to prevent double exposure. This technique is then carefully hidden by background lines, such as windows, doors, etc. to disguise the split.

Perhaps the most extensive use of split screen was in Hans Canosa's 2005 film Conversations with Other Women. Conversations juxtaposed shot and reverse shot of two actors in the same take, captured with two cameras, for the entire movie. The film was designed to enlist the audience as perceptual editors, as they can choose to watch either character act and react in real time. While the shot/reverse shot function of split screen comprises most of the running time of the film, the filmmakers also used split screen for other spatial, temporal and emotional effects. Conversations' split screen sometimes showed flashbacks of the recent or distant past juxtaposed with the present; moments imagined or hoped by the characters juxtaposed with present reality; present experience fractured into more than one emotion for a given line or action, showing an actor performing the same moment in different ways; and present and near future actions juxtaposed to accelerate the narrative in temporal overlap.

[edit] By filmmakers

The visionary French director, Abel Gance, used the term "Polyvision" to describe his three-camera, three-projector technique for both widening and dividing the screen in his 1927 silent epic, Napoléon.

The filmmaker Brian De Palma has incorporated split screens into many of his films, most notably in Sisters (1972) and they have since become synonymous with his filmmaking style (Specifically; 1981's "Blow Out" and 1998's "Snake Eyes").

[edit] In technology

The "Interactive Olaf" bonus feature from the DVD release of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events shows Jim Carrey's makeup tests from the movie in a four-way split-screen. Viewers can split the audio by selecting which one to listen to, then pressing "ENTER" on their DVD remote.

The split screen has also been simulated in video games. Most notably Fahrenheit where it is used to allow a player to keep track of multiple simultaneous elements relevant to the gameplay.

[edit] In music video

A number of music videos have made creative use of split screen presentations. In Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" video a number of freeze frames are shown in split screen. Video and film director Michel Gondry has made extensive use of split screen techniques in his videos. One notable example is "Sugar Water" - Cibo Matto (1996), where one side of the screen shows the video played normally, and the other side shows the same video played backwards. Through careful and creative staging the two sides appear to interact directly - passing objects from side to side and visually referencing each other.

[edit] In television

The split screen has also been used extensively in television programs. Newscasts often show two reporters in a split screen frame. The sitcom That '70s Show relied on split screen transitions as well. The show that is probably best known for its split screen usage is the American gameshow The Price is Right, which did this for the Showcase Showdown from 1976 until 1996. Some pricing games also used the technique during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and it is currently used in Freeze Frame and Range Game. Occasionally, a four-way split screen was used with then-host Bob Barker and then-announcer Johnny Olson in opposite corners, and the audience filling up the other two, primarily while Olson was doing a contestant calldown. The split screen was permanently reinstituted in the Showcase Showdown during Drew Carey's first season as host in 2007.