In
film and
video production,
split screen is the visible division of the screen, traditionally in half, but also in several simultaneous images, rupturing the illusion that the screen's frame is a seamless view of reality, similar to that of the human eye. There may or may not be an explicit borderline. Until the arrival of
digital technology in the early 1990s, a split screen was accomplished by using an
optical printer to combine two or more actions filmed separately by copying them onto the same
negative, called the
composite.