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Oldest Split Screen effect

Author	Comment
professor liebstrum	Oldest Split Screen effect	Lead	[-]
(07/12/08 4:12 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Claire, my better half just asked me if I knew which was the first film to employ a split screen effect similar to those in THE BOSTON STRANGLER or THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. Halliwells and the Guinness Book of Film Records aren't any help. The oldest I can think of is WHITE ZOMBIE. Can anyone help? Prof
captainmarvel1957		#1	[-]
(07/12/08 4:26 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	You're probably talking about a split screen with two scenes in the same shot, like two people talking on a telephone being shown at the same time. But, split screen was used in the silent era. In his Keaton biography Rudi Blesh mentioned that Buster Keaton had used split screen to shoot a scene where a number of people exited the same automobile. Blesh pointed out that while others had used the same trick to achieve the effect it had always been flawed because half of the car would move due to the weight of the people passing through it. It was Keaton who figured out that if the car was up on blocks and was "stable" that the two sides of the split screen shot would match. So, while I don't know which title it was used in we do know that split screen was used in the silent era. The initial car gag was probably used by The Keystone Cops in the 1910's.
professor liebstrum		#2	[-]
(07/12/08 4:32 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	You're probably talking about a split screen with two scenes in the same shot, like two people talking on a telephone being shown at the same time. Thanks, Cap, Yes what you describe above is what we meant when we said split screen. Good Keaton story too. Prof
doctor kiss		#3	[-]
(07/12/08 5:35 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I've seen quite a few pre-1910s films from both sides of the Atlantic which show telephone calls using split-screen, so that became an established convention pretty early on. You can certainly find split-screen used as early as Edwin S. Porter's LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN (1903) [link to YouTube], and by 1906, a film such as Lubin's THE SECRET OF DEATH VALLEY was able to use the technique to quite sophisticated narrative ends, with both a wife and a would-be killer sharing a vision of the latter murdering the former's husband (allowing the wife to intervene and stop it from happening). And by 1913, someone as skilled as Lois Weber was doing really pretty dazzling stuff, as in SUSPENSE (image below). The swathe of doppelgänger films made between 1912 and 1914 (again, on both sides of the Atlantic) also made heavy use of split-screen, albeit to different ends (duplication of characters). SUSPENSE (1913):
professor liebstrum		#4	[-]
(07/13/08 10:13 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Claire and the Prof thank you, Dr Kiss.

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