Split-screening Research for Me, Myself & I

My main idea for my Me, Myself & I project (a three-minute film which illustrates something about myself) is to literally have three versions of myself on screen at once, interacting with each other as those three personalities would react.

In order to do this, I need to know how to make it possible to ‘duplicate’ myself on screen 3 times. I have done some research into this and although nowhere I have looked says how to use three of the same actor, I believe that if I use the same technique as for two of an actor, if I add a third layer it should have the desired result.

I found that there are two ways in which to duplicate a character on screen the first of these (and the simpler way) is to simply split the screen into segments of how many actors there are and film it as many times as there are actors, this does mean however that the actors cannot physically interact and the camera and background must be consistent, i.e., it must be a stationary shot with an unchanging background.

(Photo Taken from: http://www.mediacollege.com/video/special-effects/duplicate-actor/images/duplicate-screenshot-01.gif)

The second way in which you can achieve this effect is through the usage of a green screen to superimpose the other characters onto the background scene, this can be tricky as you need to match up lighting and the aesthetics so that the character looks as though they’re meant to be in the scene. Another way to do this is to green screen all three actors and then put a separate layer for the background that has no actors in it. This could be done with an image but this may be obvious as not fitting as there may not be any movement if it is outside, this will draw attention to the fact it doesn’t fit. This is a technique I plan on experimenting with just to get the hang of it and to see if I can find a way to create the effect and have camera movement.