Split-Screening & Split-Comping are editing and visual effect techniques that enable you to nit-pick and

scrutinize every element in an individual frame and then alter those elements within the frame to

achieve “perfect” performances and “perfect” timing, thus creating a new “perfect” take that serves the

story better than any takes you got on set.

[Editor Kirk Baxter]

"First of all, I tend to do a lot of invisible split-screens. In a two-shot, I’ll often use a different

performance for each actor. Roughly one-third of the timeline contains such shots. About two-thirds of

the timeline has been stabilized or reframed. Normally this type of in-house effects work is handled by

the assistants, who are using After Effects. Those shots are replaced in my sequence with an After

Effects composition. As they make changes, my timeline is updated."

Kirk expanded on this, “Most of the last year was really spent polishing the film. We revisited every

scene to see how we could make it better. For instance, there are 250 split screens as ‘invisible edits’ in

this film. These are cases where we might adjust a take for timing or add a bird flying in the sky from a

different take, just to add that little something special. David shoots a lot of lock-offs and that makes

this sort of polishing very easy.

Kirk: He does a lot of locked off so that we’ll able to split the screen. If you’ve got more than one actor in

the frame you can be pretty sure, you can kind of bet on it, that 99% of the time I’ve split the screen and

sped up someone for their reaction time or replaced the take in the background. That’s why he’ll lock it

off so we can really get in there and manipulate it.

3:30 – 4:30 = http://moviola.com/inside-hollywood/editors-on-editing-kirk-baxter/#2

As long as the camera is locked down, the editors can create an entirely new take, combining the best

performance from each actor. Or, as Baxter and Wall discovered on the “The Curious Case of Benjamin

Button,” they can change the dynamic entirely.

During the late-night tea scenes between Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton, they used split screens in virtually

every shot. “In normal life, there’s this natural pace of a second or two for a pause between sentences,”

Wall explains. “When those gaps were there, Benjamin became more of a ‘touched’ character, but when

you tighten him up, you saw how eager and alive he was.”

Instead of being forced to cut away from the two-shot to over-the-shoulder coverage, the “Button” duo

could simply speed up the footage slightly between lines — a process that literally involves accelerating

the frame rate.

“I find that immensely useful, because you can begin to change the meaning of something,” agrees

“Slumdog Millionaire” editor Chris Dickens, who regularly employs split screens and speed ramps to

fine-tune actors’ performances.

“The crucial thing is getting the timing right,” he adds. “Say you want to do a jump cut in a shot and

there’s nothing really to hide it. You can grab someone walking through-frame from another take and

just insert the body moving through, and that would hide the cut. Then the effects people just chase

that through-frame.” These days, using relatively simple visual effects solutions, editors can save their

directors the trouble of reshoots. “You can stop an actor from blinking or make them blink,” Dickens

continues, explaining how he fixed such a moment in “Slumdog” by matting the section around an

actor’s eyes and padding in an earlier frame.

Other editors cite examples in which they turned a speaking scene into an establishing shot by sealing

an actor’s lips or salvaged a take that might otherwise have been ruined by head-replacing an extra who

looked directly into camera. “In the past, you would junk some slates because of these things,” Dickens

says.

http://variety.com/2009/digital/news/editors-cover-tracks-with-digital-tricks-1118000086/

F&V: Do you composite different parts of a single shot together?

Angus Wall: Oh god, yes.

Kirk Baxter: Constantly. Constantly.

AW: With David, very often, if you’re in the meat of a scene it’s a lock-off. If it’s a two-shot, the actors

will often give a little bit of room in between each line. Sometimes it’s nice to do a split screen on those

two-shots and pull up the gap between the two lines.

KB: If you’re shooting over the shoulder, it helps keep continuity with the foreground person, as well,

what they’re doing. You can go through all of their performance and make sure you’ve got your

foregrounds matching to your back plate and you’re using the right performance in the main part of the

shot. We’re constantly doing it. He’s also looser now with how he frames, so that we can move in and

stabilize something in order to Frankenstein two shots together.

F&V: So that’s something you’re doing commonly.

KB: Even during the assembly.

AW: Oh yeah.

F&V: And how long has that been easy for you to do?

AW: We did it on Panic Room a lot. It was more expensive then, because it became an optical. You’d

scan two pieces of negative together and send them out somewhere to be composited. Now, it’s

something the assistant does.

KB: It’s unlikely for us not to have a split in any scene in the film. And that’s just one. Sometimes it’s 10. I

don’t know what the count is [on The Social Network], but I’m sure there are hundreds.

AW: We rely on it so much that when you’re in a scene like Ruby Skye, where the lighting is changing all

the time so you can’t do it, it becomes much harder, because you lost a trick.

F&V: What about cutting the Winklevoss twins, with the face-doubling VFX? [The twins were played,

physically, by Armie Hammer and Josh Pence, but Hammer's facial performance was mapped onto

Pence's body in every scene.] Are there tricks to keeping up with that kind of performance?

KB: It takes more time, but you’ve got more control of everything. Because David knows he’s going to

be splitting up the screen, there’s more room for us. You don’t have to take a performance at face value.

You can dissect it and get things much more accurate. I loved cutting the Winklevoss twins.

AW: It’s sort of like using Photoshop, where you take a bit of this shot and a bit of this shot and put

them together to make a better shot. Working on those scenes, you start to build the split screens, and

then head-replacement kind of is what it is, and you can see Josh Pence as one of the Winklevi in each of

those scenes. I actually started to forget that there was only one Armie. It is a testament to his

performances that I started to believe there really were twins. I think that helps the cutting. You fully

immerse yourself in the scene and believe everything you’re looking at. KB: I was always racing to do

those [split screens] as quickly as I could, to get that illusion up as fast as I could. You want to get rid of

the tell-tale sign as fast as you can. That was a joy.

http://www.studiodaily.com/2011/02/editors-angus-wall-and-kirk-baxter-and-the-social-

network/#sthash.ZTzgXEND.dpuf

A look into the way Fincher uses location or events twice. How do we get there and what changes when

we go back: https://vimeo.com/120741828

Fincher Cinematography Reference:

Social Network: http://evanerichards.com/2011/1811

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: http://evanerichards.com/2012/2598

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: http://evanerichards.com/2010/557