Split Screen 3d Movies

[Karola]

Infilm 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. There may or may not be an explicit borderline. Until the arrival of digital technology, a split screen in films 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.

In filmmaking split screen is also a technique that allows one actor to appear twice in a scene. The simplest technique is to lock down the camera and shoot the scene twice, with one "version" of the actor appearing on the left side, and the other on the right side. The seam between the two splits is intended to be invisible, making the duplication seem realistic.[1][2][3]

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, 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.

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 photography. The much acclaimed shot was examined and detailed in Bravo Television's Anatomy of a Scene.

In 1975, behind the Iron Curtain, filmmaker Zbigniew Rybczynski created his experimental film Nowa Książka (Eng. New Book), where he split his screen into 9 small screens, shot on 35mm film. This innovative approach allowed him to create a fascinating continuous story of a man in a red hat and red coat. This film served as an inspiration for Timecode by Mike Figgis.

The arrival of digital video technology[5] 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. Split-screen can also be used to the extent that it becomes part of the narrative structure of a film, as in The Boston Strangler.

Title sequence designer Saul Bass lamented the popularity of split screen in the 1960s. Although he used it extensively in his work for Grand Prix, he later claimed that it had been artistically exhausted from excessive use. According to Bass:

Hans Canosa's 2005 film Conversations with Other Women made extensive use of split screens. 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.

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.

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. The music video for "Doo Wop (That Thing)" by Lauryn Hill was filmed using a split screen technique, the video features Lauryn, performing the song at block parties in two different eras: the mid-1960s (The year 1967 is shown on the left of the video) and the late-1990s (The year 1998 is shown on the right).

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, Nickelodeon teen sitcom Drake & Josh, Disney Channel teen sitcom Lizzie McGuire, USA Network's Burn Notice and Fox's 24 made extensive use of split screens. It is sometimes used in game shows to show two contestants simultaneously, and on cable news shows, when participants in a discussion are in different locations.

Split screens are frequently used in motor racing, especially during safety car pit stops in the IndyCar Series and NASCAR, where four way splits are used, most often with three leading cars or trucks' pit stops shown on the left and a shot of the pit exit (where restart order is determined after pit stops) on the right, with some featuring just four different cars or trucks making pit stops. Often these pit stops can change the entire outcome of a race. In sports, an instant replay, highlights package, or featurette on a specific subject relating to the play may be shown in a corner while the main play is happening.

Split screens showcasing individual character reactions are a common device of Japanese anime, where they imitate the panel layouts of manga. These sometimes feature more than two characters at once, and may be split at oblique angles.[9]

In 2019, Snapchat's original content arm, Snap Originals, released a series called 'Two Sides', which followed a young couple as they navigated a breakup, told from both perspectives at the same time.[10] Season Two and Season Three will be released in 2021.

Split screens are sometimes used during commercial breaks, as in ESPN's "Side-By-Side" coverage of racing, where one side of the screen shows race footage and the other shows advertising. This allows commercial to be shown while not interrupting coverage of race action.

Call us biased, but everyone loves a creatively-infused, mind-bending example of a good split screen, and chances are that you clicked on this article to see if your favorite made the list. The shot choice has long been a favorite amongst film fans and we're curious to see how it came to be (and which directors have showcased it the best).

A strong use of the technique can produce a number of playful, ironic juxtapositions, running the gamut from producing different angles of the same event (Carrie), alternate outcomes (The Queen of Spades and 500 Days of Summer), parallel events running simultaneously (Passion) and even the miracle of twins (Adaptation, The Parent Trap, and The Social Network).

These aforementioned examples only scratch the surface. The invention of the split focus diopter, combining two images to make a single shot in which both the foreground and background are equally emphasized, possesses an otherworldly effect that gives the brain a real workout, and the black borders sometimes used to emphasize the fact that we're looking at a split screen can be both performance-serving (two characters talking on the phone) and a means to finding a loophole in the face of censorship (Stanley Donen's Indiscreet).

If you're curious as to how long the presence of split screen has been in use (and how it can work as both an innovative narrative and nonfiction device), watch our video below to discover its origins and how each new configuration has produced inspiring results.

Senior Post is an award-winning Brooklyn-based post house that provides full post production services for film, television, web, and branded content. Their work has screened at Sundance, Slamdance, Tribeca and SXSW and they've worked with clients such as A24, Apatow Productions, Vice, Vevo and Refinery 29 to name a few.

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