Split screens
How would you go about writing two scenes in a script that run at the same time in split screen, but don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other? Basically like a scene from the movie Timecode.
–John
That’s a real challenge to do in standard screenplay format. While someone watching a movie can follow the action happening in multiple sections of the screen at once, the reader simply can’t. Reading is a left-to-right, top-to-bottom process. So you’re going to have to figure out another way to communicate the same idea.
Your approach depends on how crucial the split-screen timing becomes. For instance, in an earlier draft of the first CHARLIE’S ANGELS, there was a chase sequence between Alex (Lucy Liu) and the Thin Man (Crispin Glover), in which they were both trying to get to the roof of the building in order to reach the satellite dish that Eric Knox was using. The chase started with the two characters on opposite sides of an iron fence, which formed the dividing line down the middle of the screen. We then followed each character on separate, sometimes overlapping paths, as they fought their way to the roof. Finally, Alex kicked the Thin Man “through” the center dividing line.
In this example, the exact timing of who-is-where-when was important, so I chose to write the action as two parallel columns on a horizontal page. It was a pain in the ass to format, because Final Draft couldn’t handle it, so each time I printed out the script I had to make sure to leave blank “filler” pages in which to insert the properly-formatted side-by-side pages. Still, it was a fun challenge.
Ultimately, the split-screen stuff was dropped and the sequence became about Alex and the Thin Man kicking the crap out of each other.
For TIMECODE, Mike Figgis apparently didn’t work off a traditional screenplay at all. The entire movie was rehearsed and reshot more than a dozen times. To figure out who-is-where-when, Figgis used musical score sheets.
For your script, since the two sides don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, I would recommend writing the scenes out straight. If it’s important to indicate to the reader that certain scenes are playing side-by-side, just put a note in parentheses in the first line of a scene’s description. It’s not a perfect solution, but in most cases that’s as straightfoward as you’re going to get.
(This article originally ran September 29, 2003.)
Articles
July 11th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
In ´24
it´s usually done by marking the groups of scenes that should play together with a ´SPLITSCREENtag and adding a ´END OF SPLITSCREEN´ orRETURN TO FULL FRAMEwhen the scene is over.You can check it out in one of the 24 screenplays, over at
http://www.dailyscript.com/tv.html
Greetings – Jason
July 11th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Oh, that one somehow looks weird?!
July 11th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Is there a possibilty to see the format of the scene, John? I would like to see the two column formatting.
July 12th, 2007 at 8:17 am
There is a similarly split scene in the book “Eiger Sanction” by Trevanian. In it Jonathan Hemlock kills Miles Mellough who is confused as a car chase ends in clouds of dust. I cannot remember though whether the 1975 movie (Eastwood) also used split screen. I am, however, impressed by the writing in the novel and application of this technique in prose. It’s only “split” for a sentence or two, and works surprisingly well.
July 13th, 2007 at 9:18 am
I wrote an entire short film in split screen a few years back and struggled with this exact question. I didn’t have the nads to turn the page horizontal though, so I just did it side by side on a portrait page (with extremely small side-margins). I was using Scriptware back then, which had modifiable element rules, but obviously wouldn’t allow this sort of thing (does any software allow this even now?), so I ended up writing two scripts–a left-column script and a right-column script–and just ran the paper through the printer twice. It made the writing process difficult because of flipping back and forth between two projects (this was before widescreen monitors) and keeping track of page #’s so things would line up properly. Also, there was the problem of keeping things aligned if the stuff on the right took up more page space to describe than the stuff on the left. Do you leave it blank? Do you sacrifice your economy of words on the left just to fill the space?
It also made READING the script problematic. Do you read the whole left side of the page, then the whole right side of the page? What if there’s multiple scenes on the page? Most people that actually got through the script liked it, but it was not reader-friendly at all.
A good solution would be an organic one. The program would need to adjust intuitively (and we all know how successful that usually is). Side by side descriptions work fairly well split down the center, but with dialogue that column’s width should increase (usually won’t have overlapping lines overlapping). This would result in something that would read top to bottom (except during side by side description elements), but would ping-pong between the left and right columns. This way the reader’s attention would follow the viewer’s eye… if that makes any sense at all.
If I find time to come up with a sample I’ll try to post it. Anybody know how to post formatted text in these comments?
July 13th, 2007 at 11:29 am
you could upload a pdf (on rapidshare.com) of that scene and everybody can download it.