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Post by lune7000 on Aug 13, 2021 0:47:37 GMT
The Boston Strangler uses a multi image technigue to an extent that doesn't seem to have occurred before or after this film. The picture below shows an example of this:  I found this very enjoyable and particularly liked the fact that it allowed me some control in how I viewed the film as I could choose to look at some images over others and choose the order. This method also allows for some really great options no other method can achieve: You can see the front and back of a subject at the same time
You can see a distant and close up of the same scene at the same time
You can view totally different scenes at the same timeThis film also has another remarkable effect: when Henry Fonda interviews Tony Curtis they are in a interrogation room a certain distance apart and in different postures. As Curtis goes back into his memories we are transported to the room he remembers and both he and Fonda are in the same positions and postures- Fonda enters his memories. I thought this visual trick wasn't developed until after 2000. Why was the multi image technique mostly abandoned? I thought that it had great possibilities. BTW- here is a link to an article where the director and camera people share how they approached this method of filming. It's a great read if you are into the thinking process and technical issues. ascmag.com/articles/multiple-image-technique-for-the-boston-strangler |
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Post by Isapop on Aug 13, 2021 18:57:01 GMT
The Boston Strangler uses a multi image technigue to an extent that doesn't seem to have occurred before or after this film. The picture below shows an example of this: I found this very enjoyable and particularly liked the fact that it allowed me some control in how I viewed the film as I could choose to look at some images over others and choose the order. This method also allows for some really great options no other method can achieve: You can see the front and back of a subject at the same time
You can see a distant and close up of the same scene at the same time
You can view totally different scenes at the same timeThis film also has another remarkable effect: when Henry Fonda interviews Tony Curtis they are in a interrogation room a certain distance apart and in different postures. As Curtis goes back into his memories we are transported to the room he remembers and both he and Fonda are in the same positions and postures- Fonda enters his memories. I thought this visual trick wasn't developed until after 2000. Why was the multi image technique mostly abandoned? I thought that it had great possibilities. BTW- here is a link to an article where the director and camera people share how they approached this method of filming. It's a great read if you are into the thinking process and technical issues. ascmag.com/articles/multiple-image-technique-for-the-boston-stranglerWhen The Boston Strangler opened, the NY Times film critic wrote: "The film...begins as a split-screen collage (the effect is like flipping continuously among TV commercials)." Maybe a more successful (critical and commercial) film could have encouraged some more ventures into that technique.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Aug 13, 2021 19:54:15 GMT
Some cinematic innovations come to be accepted aspects of film grammar, often evolving to suit the styles of succeeding eras. And after doing so, some of those will, in time, fall by the wayside. Others, perhaps perceived as too boldly innovative, are quickly discarded as gimmicky, trendy and/or distracting and, having been so abandoned, are cited by later viewers as "dated" styles. The Thomas Crown Affair, released several months before The Boston Strangler, also employed multiple-image montages.  Alas, I found both at the time to lean more in the direction of gimmicky, distracting and ultimately tiresome. There were others in the next few years, smacking of style for style's sake, although I can't recall just now what they were. In 1970, however, the technique found a very effective non-narrative use in Woodstock, the subject matter and atmosphere of which seemed complimented by - and harmonious with - the device. In 1972's Sisters, Brian DePalma pared it down to a two-panel split screen to show concurrent events, sometimes the same ones from two points of view. Although more modest, it too overstayed its welcome by extending longer than it needed to. Perhaps, in the end, audiences found the technique a bit too visually chaotic and overwhelming. |
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Post by Isapop on Aug 13, 2021 20:17:43 GMT
Some cinematic innovations come to be accepted aspects of film grammar, often evolving to suit the styles of succeeding eras. And after doing so, some of those will, in time, fall by the wayside. Others, perhaps perceived as too boldly innovative, are quickly discarded as gimmicky, trendy and/or distracting and, having been so abandoned, are cited by later viewers as "dated" styles. The Thomas Crown Affair, released several months before The Boston Strangler, also employed multiple-image montages. In 1972's Sisters, Brian DePalma pared it down to a two-panel split screen to show concurrent events, sometimes the same ones from two points of view. Although more modest, it too overstayed its welcome by extending longer than it needed to. Perhaps, in the end, audiences found the technique a bit too visually chaotic and overwhelming. Robert Aldrich used split screen for the climactic football game in 1974's The Longest Yard. And he used it very adroitly, 2, 3, and even 4 simultaneous images to heighten suspense in Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977).
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Post by timshelboy on Aug 13, 2021 20:18:10 GMT
 This one used the technique for the whole feature. and the technique has been used prior to 1968 
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Post by Doghouse6 on Aug 13, 2021 20:42:49 GMT
and the technique has been used prior to 1968 Indeed, the more standard split-screen employed in Pillow Talk is almost as old as talking pictures and, since their advent, was used almost exclusively for telephone conversations, to the best of my recollection. Or, in the case of a film like Airport, for radio communication with aircraft. My recollection, of course, is by no means definitive. Pillow Talk brought some wit to the device; notice, below, how Day is framed in a deliberately intrusive triangle between Hudson and his amour du jour.  And earlier still, Abel Gance employed multiple images in 1927's Napoleon. 
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Post by _ on Aug 13, 2021 20:45:23 GMT
Ang Lee’s HULK (2003) used it quite extensively.
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Post by OldAussie on Aug 13, 2021 22:32:19 GMT
Grand Prix and Wall Street used it very effectively.
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Post by MCDemuth on Aug 13, 2021 23:05:39 GMT
I've seen it used a few times, but not very often.
As I recall, "Dressed to Kill" (1980), used a two scene shot...
Other films, like "Resurrection Mary" (2007) and some comic book based media, have used multi frame shots to transition from one scene to a next.
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Post by phantomparticle on Aug 13, 2021 23:23:06 GMT
There has to be a good reason to use multiple images beyond a simple split screen during a telephone conversation. Some crime and suspense films like The Boston Strangler benefit from seeing things from different perspectives, but what would be the point in something like Kramer vs. Kramer?
I think Hitchcock would have despised the idea as actually robbing the audience of the anticipation of the unknown. The Birds is a good example of when not to employ it. When Tippi Hedren sits on a bench outside the schoolhouse, Hitchcock cuts to a couple of birds landing behind her. He then focuses on Hedren for a very long take while the audience moves closer and closer to the edge of their seats. The next shot of hundreds of birds behind Hedren is breathtaking. Multiple images would have destroyed the anticipation and the payoff.
Like the 3D phase of the early 1950's, it was a good idea that needed to be used sparingly and eventually was discarded for one reason or another.
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Post by mikef6 on Aug 14, 2021 16:37:05 GMT
Wasn't there a French film from the first decade of the 21st that used a split screen or multi-sceen throughout the entire run time? Can't quite put my brain on a title.
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Post by lune7000 on Aug 15, 2021 6:32:30 GMT
I wonder if the lack of split screen isn't due just to people not being used to it. Over time we become comfortable with anything. Almost any news or sports channel has continuous split screen action and as well as internet screens on phone or laptop. Years ago directors stayed on one scene longer than today. After MTV, people became habituated to the quick cutting video style that audiences of the 1940's probably would have found irritating. We could become used to split screen.
Over time, directors would start to develop more effective uses also. It's after a method is played around with for a while that it starts to come into its own.
I agree that it could be overused and inappropriate. But it seems ideal for the following types of set ups:
People talking from different locations
A sense of a "news feed' feeling of public events
Where the synchronicity of differing events is important (example: bomb ticking down, rescue workers entering)
Where lots of clues are key to a plot
To me the multi-screen approach seems underused. Without split screen, a director resorts to endless cutting back and forth. But this has its own cost as sustained scenes cannot be displayed and the movie starts to feel like a "choppy" MTV video. But people have grown to accept hyper cutting so maybe this was the demise of the split screen.
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Post by Stammerhead on Aug 16, 2021 1:48:29 GMT
Although it wasn't abandoned it went the way of the gimmick and usually pops up in stylistic sequences. There was a film in 2000 that used a slightly more experimental take on the technique.
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Post by lune7000 on Aug 16, 2021 2:14:12 GMT
Here is an idea for a concept film- I don't have it worked out fully yet. A person with a split personality goes through an entire film with the screen divided in half. Each side of the screen represents how each of the personalities experiences the same event that is happening.
We all have at least two people in us. We have all experienced doing something and feeling somebody else in us rebelling against it or is scared to death of the consequences. What is this could be shown?
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Post by SuperDevilDoctor on Aug 17, 2021 1:10:44 GMT
What initially "killed" this technique was the fact that, until relatively recently, all movies used to be broadcast on TV in godawful "Pan & Scan" mode -- which utterly destroyed the multi-image experience.
Bad enough for a director's vision to be ruined because the aspect ratio was screwed up (2.35:1 to 4:3!)... With multi-image cinematic "panels", the destruction was even worse.
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Post by theravenking on Aug 21, 2021 15:07:56 GMT
Director Gaspar Noé's latest Vortex uses split screen for the entire running time.
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Post by Rufus-T on Aug 27, 2021 2:23:22 GMT
De Palma uses split screen a lot. I think I see it often on TV shows. The show 24 ended each episode in multicam.  |
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