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Split Screen Technique - how to do it?


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Hi everyone, I'm DP'ing a music video soon and the director and I've talked about achieving some interesting techniques and one of them that we've been scratching our heads to figure out how to do was a live-split screen.

 

A couple of examples can be shown on the following :

 

EMINEM - Space Bound MV (01:15~)

https://youtu.be/JByDbPn6A1o?t=1m15s

 

Film, Green Hornet (00:11~)

https://youtu.be/1ttcmZYbFiU?t=11s

 

From what I could tell, it's a lot of lining up the shot correctly and key framing with scaling... But I just can't figure out how to do it in such a clean way. Anyone have an experience with this?

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Could you link a sample of you trying to do it with whatever gear you have at hand? I've never done an illusion like this, but seeing it done both wrong and right could help people give more accurate input relative to your situation.

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From what I could tell, it's a lot of lining up the shot correctly and key framing with scaling... But I just can't figure out how to do it in such a clean way. Anyone have an experience with this?

 

Why would you need scaling? I'm not sure what you are meaning by live either.

If you want to have the scenes happening at the same time for some reason then it's just a matter of multi camera synced time code but all the examples you gave don't seem much of anything. There is no scaling involved.

 

Here is a more complex version of the effect in Green Hornet:

 

 

Freya

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It would seem that the cross over to the split, where characters take two different directions is the hard part, the rest seems standard spilt screen. You could use a click track or music so that the actor moves (like a dancer) at the same pace in each version.

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Why would you need scaling? I'm not sure what you are meaning by live either.

If you want to have the scenes happening at the same time for some reason then it's just a matter of multi camera synced time code but all the examples you gave don't seem much of anything. There is no scaling involved.

 

Here is a more complex version of the effect in Green Hornet:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDiJ17Xgaw8

 

Freya

I'm not sure if you understood my post correctly. The effect is how a single scene seamlessly splits into two without missing a frame to naturally transition into two different camera framing. The video you posted would be a rather simpler effect since it's a 4 different videos played in different borders.

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It would seem that the cross over to the split, where characters take two different directions is the hard part, the rest seems standard spilt screen. You could use a click track or music so that the actor moves (like a dancer) at the same pace in each version.

So my question would be, how do I shoot it so when we split, it seemlessly separates into two different actions?

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Seems like a pretty simple case of rotoscoping and lining up the actors head carefully. Would be helpful to have a method to view the live camera and earlier take on the same monitor with 50% opacity so you can get things really close. Otherwise just a case of a little post work with a carefully planned setup.

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