Editing Split screen (video production) (section)

===In films===
[[File:Suspense (Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley, 1913).webm|thumb|thumbtime=5:07|start=5:00|end=5:38|''[[Suspense (1913 film)|Suspense]]'' (1913), a short thriller in which split screen is used to show a phone conversation during a home intrusion]]
Early use of split screen can be seen in [[Lois Weber]] and [[Phillips Smalley]]’s ''[[Suspense (1913 film)|Suspense]]'' (1913), where it is used to portray simultaneous actions, and in [[Yakov Protazanov]]'s ''[[The Queen of Spades (1916 film)|The Queen of Spades]]'' (1916), where one screen depicts reality and the other a character's inner desires.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6b313a76|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170102090211/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6b313a76|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 2, 2017|title=PIKOVAYA DAMA (1916)|website=BFI}}</ref> This technique has been used to portray twins in such films as ''[[Wonder Man (film)|Wonder Man]]'' (1945), ''[[The Dark Mirror (1946 film)|The Dark Mirror]]'' (1946), ''The Parent Trap'' (both [[The Parent Trap (1961 film)|the 1961 original]] and [[The Parent Trap (1998 film)|the 1998 remake]]), and ''[[Adaptation (film)|Adaptation]]'' (2002). In the 1961 version of ''The Parent Trap'', conversations between the twins were simulated by filming the actress ([[Hayley Mills]]) as she stood at the left of the frame facing right, then filming her again, standing at the right and facing left. 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.

In ''[[Indiscreet (1958 film)|Indiscreet]]'' (1958), the technique was famously used to bypass the censors and allow [[Cary Grant]] and [[Ingrid Bergman]] to be in bed together, and even to appear to pat her on the bottom.<ref>{{cite book | last=Glitre  | first=Kathrina | date=October 31, 2006 | page=196 | location=Manchester | publisher=[[Manchester University Press]] | title=Hollywood Romantic Comedy: States of the Union, 1934-1965 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hb5rBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT196 | access-date=April 9, 2018 | isbn=0-719-07078-3 }}</ref>

Several studio-made films in the 1960s popularized the use of split screen. They include [[John Frankenheimer]]'s ''[[Grand Prix (1966 film)|Grand Prix]]'' (1966), [[Richard Fleischer]]'s ''[[The Boston Strangler (film)|The Boston Strangler]]'' (1968), and [[Norman Jewison]]'s ''[[The Thomas Crown Affair (1968 film)|The Thomas Crown Affair]]'' (1968). In the 1970s, usage continued in films like ''[[Airport (1970 film)|Airport]]'' (1970), ''[[Woodstock (film)|Woodstock]]'' (1970), ''[[The Andromeda Strain (film)|The Andromeda Strain]]'' (1971), ''[[Sisters (1973 film)|Sisters]]'' (1972), ''[[Carrie (1976 film)|Carrie]]'' (1976) and ''[[More American Graffiti]]'' (1979).

[[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:
{{quotation|"The point is, it’s a device, and as far as I’m concerned I’ll never use it again — if it actually cries out for it, I’ll use it but as a device it’s lost its currency, because, later on, it was, unfortunately, used meaninglessly. It’s the kind of thing that grows up without ever having a youth and there’s no opportunity to explore it. On ''Grand Prix'' I took the multiple image... and carried it down the line quite a way. I think it is terrific at expressing muchness, but I suspect it’s not capable of expressing deep feeling or contemplative..."<ref>Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham, ''Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design'', Laurence King Publishing, 2011, p. 406</ref>}}

[[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.