Exercise: Multiscreen

Assignment Four: Multiscreen Video

Use a multiscreen process to create a short piece (3 minute max) that examines at least two (maximum three) films.  Two of the films you employ must be taken from this week's viewings— Girlfight, Pariah, Ladybird, or Fish Tank—but feel free to use any other film of your choosing for a third film,  if you are so inclined. The video must contain moments of both fullscreen and multiscreen.  All audio and visuals must come from the films you are working with.  You may edit both video and audio as much as you like.   Each editor must impose an additional parameter upon themselves.

***A quick reminder that the formal parameters for your exercises no longer specify a 3 second black slug/solid color bar at the opening, as was the case for your Pechakucha.  But a bit of black video is highly encouraged in the opening and closing frames of every project you produce.  

Videographic Examples

1. To prepare for the multiscreen exercise,  I recommend studying two multi-screen exercises that were developed following prompts relatively similar to yours. The first of these is Kathleen Locke’s "2049 Blade Runner Multi-Screen Links to an external site." which she made for a video essay summer workshop at Middlebury College a few years ago, although the Middlebury exercise required each individual to include material from films that two other participants in the group had been working on [note added April 27; the original link to Locke’s exercise is currently not working since Scalar is down; but Jason Mittell shared the exercise with us on his google drive which is the link embedded here!].     The second is Dayna McLeod's "The World is Only Gonna Break Your Heart, Links to an external site." which she made as a multiscreen exercise at an audiovisual essay workshop at McGill University a few years ago.

2. I encourage you to think more broadly about the use of the multiscreen and to consider various examples.  One of the most impressive multiscreen projects I've witnessed in the field is Barbara Zecchi's Rhythms of Rage: From Solitude to Solidarity Links to an external site. (5 min).  There is a reason this video essay has been selected to screen at various film festivals the past year-plus!  

3. Zecchi's multiscreen project can be intimidating to emergent video editors, however.  A more modest, but extremely effective and compelling use of this technique to reveal a specific aesthetic choice at work in Todd Haynes' films, is Allan Daigle's Todd Haynes + Negative Space Links to an external site. (2019, 4 min), published in [In]Transition.  You might also recall Ken Provence's elegant Wong Kar-Wai's Sleepers Links to an external site. (2021), also published in that same journal, which was on the list of video essays to watch for day one in this class.  

4. The possibilities for the multi-screen technique in video editing are innumerable, as illustrated by this recent issue of  "[In]Transition," on "Feminist Videographic Diptychs Links to an external site.."  There are 7 video essays in that issue that employ multiscreen techniques to different ends (we've previously watched Maud Ceuterick's Resilient Aging Women: A Question of Performance Links to an external site.) and it is worth taking some time browsing that issue and others in the journal as you begin to think about your final project.   

DaVinci Editing Tutorials

James Watkins will be offering a multi-screen tutorial using DaVinci Resolve in our class this week.  Keep in mind that there are many ways to approach multi-screen editing.  When searching for on-line tutorials, the phrase "split screen" will likely pull up more hits than "multi-screen," although you should find plenty of both. 

Obviously, you’ll be importing more than one film/media file for this exercise.  For that reason, remember that the first media file you import will likely create the settings for your project.  You may wish to choose one over another to import first, for that reason.  

A few useful tutorial to get you started: 

How to Add a Split-Screen in DaVinci Resolve Links to an external site. by DaVinci Made Simple.  Less than 30 seconds!  You'll need more than this to create a good multi-screen project, but this 26 second tutorial doesn’t take much time to get a basic grasp of a simple split screen application.

Create Animated Split-Screens in DaVinci Resolve—Basic and Advanced Links to an external site. by Essential Video Editing.  This 11 minute tutorial employs an AI generated voiceover, which is a bit off-putting.  But its a super useful overview of three different approaches to animating split screens.  Each "step" of the tutorial, from basic to more advanced, runs around 3 minutes, and you'll understand the limitations and/or applications available for each slightly different approach.  

Super Easy Animated Split Screen/ Video Collage Effect Links to an external site. by MrAlexTech.  This tutorial focuses on the "Video Collage Effect," which is yet another way to create split screens.   The process locks you in to a particular framing (or “tiling”) mechanism.  But the tiles are manipulable and its fun play.