The Split Screen Menu – ‘ Spotlight ‘

Katie W
As we enter the information era, people demand more and more information. As a result, films come with the Split Screen Menu. In order to provide the audience with the most information in the shortest time, some movie specialists are discussing how to split the screen into small menus. Also they are trying to identify the position, size, and changing paces and contents of these small menus.

In the Korean Drama , the director used this special technique. Although these split menus only appear at times, we can see the elaborate arrangement of the director who hopes they will add the finishing touch. The movie mainly focuses on journalism in Korea and vividly depicts the intense life of a journalist. We can see the technique even from the opening of the movie, in which the menus are changing split positions，not only increasing the strained atmosphere of journalism, but also indicating that the most important technique that is used in this movie is Split Screen Menu. We will examine two pictures in the movie to discuss this technique.

The picture above is about journalist Xu secretly visiting the illegal dwelling
houses of the top person of Mingcheng Journal.

The traditional montage technique is abandoned and at the same time, the whole large screen is split into three menus. Within these three menus,it includes not only face scene, but also back scene; not only panorama, but also close-up expression of the journalist; not only the main people, but also the impersonal atmosphere that journalist Xu observes. It has bright camera point,as well as dullish menu as a comparison,as a result, the comparison of horizontal and vertical menus are composed. It really increases the visual shock of the audience.

From these distribution composition menus we can see the result of this secret visit. Although the close-up eye line of journalist Xu is emphasized up-front, the director still puts it on the secret in-out car of the top person in the dullish menu, making her on the positive position and holding the up space for her. However, the viewer’s sight will be on the full menu on the right side, which is not the traditional 4:3 landscape orientation, but longitudinal. In the movie, journalist Xu took a lot of pictures as evidence, but even though the menu passes quickly, it makes the viewer feel that the journalist is in the picture as well. Although there is no specific scene where the journalist is seen taking pictures, the menu composition skill indicates that the journalist cannot hold the positive position in the end.

The picture above is about the journalist looking for the specific location. On the right hand is the foreground of the journalist and fleet scene. Despite that there are maps in the fleet scene, the director uses a lot of space on the left to show the maps again. It emphasizes the importance of the locations, as well as the way the journalist is heading, which indicates that the journalist is concentrated on his target. At the same time, this looking-down scene is matched with the scene shooting the reports looking-down from the plane.
The Split Screen Menu in ‘Spotlight’ works well for the content of the movie, the story of journalism. It pays attention to the briefness, rapidness and nicety, not only showing the characteristic of journalists, but also communicating more information in less time.

However, this technique has disadvantages. It abandons the traditional montage that of lower changing pace, making it that the audience cannot catch up with the pace and cannot enjoy the movie as they should do. Moreover, this division menu breaks the most important character of the movie: the artistic. Use of this technique pulls the audience out of the story. The audience realizes that this is a false world that was made up by the director.
http://www.shenzhoufilm.com/sz/en/2008/08/28/a10002.html 2008-8-28 09:41