One actor playing twins: how do they do it?

Cafe Society
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After watching An American Pickle, where Seth Rogen plays two characters, my wife asked “How do they do that?” and I had to admit I don’t know.

It’s not “computers” (at least, not always)…movies have been doing it for a long time. Prisoner of Zenda (1937) had Ronald Colman in two parts (although as I recall, there are few scenes in which he appears as both). Prince and the Pauper (1937) used actual twins, but the 1962 version had one actor. Parent Trap (1962): Hayley Mills, two parts.

So how do they shoot a scene with two roles, one actor?

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It’s called split screen.
Here’s a good primer

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It’s easily done even without split screens, so long as you never show the characters face-to-face from the side in the same frame.

Just alternate shots of the one actor from different angles. Or, shoot over the shoulder of a double if you want both characters conversing with each other.

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As in the Patty Duke Show, in which Patty played identical cousins Patty and Cathy Lane.

Or the Addams Family, in which Carolyn Jones played Morticia Addams and her sister Ophelia.

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Tacoma FD just did a show with one of their characters playing his own twin. In their aftershow they discussed some of the difficulties involved. They were using the old split screen method but didn’t realize the difficulty involved in shooting and editing by giving the characters a lot of back and forth dialogue. Every scene had to be shot twice to get both parts taking more time, and of course extra makeup and costume changes. This actor was also taller than the rest, they would have another actor read lines while filming each side of the dialogue but they had to put the other actors on boxes so his eye line would be correct for talking to someone else his own height. And of course they used another actor of similar proportions to shoot from behind to make it look like they were both there.

The Patty Duke Show from the 60s was on for four years using split screen and other techniques to portray twins. Several actresses played the back of her head for those over the shoulder shots but even with that technique most scenes needed to be shot twice. And frequently, as in almost every twin plot, the twins would end up pretending to be each other.

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Only two people? Child’s play. Buster Keaton played an entire theater audience in 1921.

More notable because cameras were hand cranked at the time. You had to depend on the cameraman to keep cranking at the same steady rate multiple times.

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Nitpick: Cathy and Patty were identical cousins. It was their fathers who were twins.

Patty’s father was played by William Schallert; I don’t recall if they ever had an episode where he was his brother as well. Did they?

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Well they were twins in that they looked exactly the same. His brother did make appearances, in at least 2 consecutive shows I think. Cathy was expecting her father to visit but he was late, of course Patty’s father pretended to be his identical twin brother, then Cathy’s real father did show up. I don’t recall them appearing to be together but I’m sure they would have done that.

Also, people of my age would immediately understand that “Patty Duke’s dad” refers to the actor William Schallert. He was with us until 2016, and made his last appearance in 2014 on the show Two Broke Girls.

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In an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, a character was split into two. They achieved the two interacting by a very clever method. If you don’t know already, see if you can guess how they did this

They used the actor’s real life twin brother.

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Same method as in Terminator 2.

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There was also a soap opera star, Deidre Hall of Days of our Lives, with the same scenario.

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For The Parent Trap, in addition to traditional split screen shots, they used yellow screen. It was the first use of the one and only prism created for the Sodium Vapor Process that would go on to win an Academy Award for visual effects a few years later for Mary Poppins.

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I noticed in one scene they were having a conversation with the fireman’s pole in the background between them. Perfect to hide the split screen seam.

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No conversation about twin interactions on screen is complete without the awesome Orphan Black Dance Scene - four clones, one party. I’m sure I have seen an analysis of how they pulled it off but can’t now find it - it looks like it uses some pretty intense choreography. I notice for instance as the camera swings round to put each clone front and center, the cuts to Kira (the little girl) seem pretty strategic, and they get “interaction” without the clones ever having to actually interact via Felix dancing with different clones in turn.

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Multiple Kylie Minogues and numerous background characters using 2002 computer technology:

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I know that there was a least one scene in The Deuce where the twins played by James Franco were talking to each other face to face (from the side) and even kissed goodbye. I don’t know how they did it but it was pretty impressive.

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Jeremy Irons in 1988 with Dead Ringers. Hell of a task to get them both interacting as much as they did with just Irons playing both of a set of twins.

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There was an actress who worked for the show, who was “the back of Patty Duke’s head.” She had a Cathy wig, and a Patty wig, so all the scenes of conversations between Patty and Cathy that are shown over the shoulder of one are using this actress. She was built quite a lot like Patty Duke-- but not exactly. It worked great in the first run of the show, but now you can rewind and slow down, and see that the “back of the head” actress was actually older, and a little less fit than Duke.

Some of the best compositing is in Xena: Warrior Princess, in the episode (“Warrior…Priestess…Tramp”) where Lucy Lawless has to play three roles (they actually have three different look-alike characters besides Xena, in the Xenaverse). Anyway, this ep. has three of them, and they are all on screen a couple of times, but much of the effect is Lawless’ good acting-- convincingly doing three distinct characters, and some really good camerawork, where they use a double, and have, in one instance, what appears to be a Steadicam shot-- it’s not-- it’s a composite, but the camera seems to rove seamlessly around two look-alikes holding hands in a circle with Gabrielle. My brother worked for Flat Earth productions, which did the FX for Xena and Hercules, and he did most of the digital compositing on episodes like that, so I’m bragging.

But composite shots and greensceen (it used to be blackscreen) is very old technology. Composite shots go back to silent films. They were used in The Lost World. Blackscreen, which became blue or greenscreen in color films was invented for The Invisible Man in 1933.

Composite shots are put together digitally, but they still have to be shot separately, and it’s still a lot of work on the set. They don’t have to be cut and pasted together by hand; digital compositing is much easier; but it still does come down to the actor, director, and set director.

When an actor plays twin 1, and those scenes are shot, he speaks to stand-in, who feeds the lines, and then when the actor plays twin 2, the stand-in is twin 1. This is all carefully done, in order for the composite shots to look right. If the stand-in is seated a little off, then the actor’s eye contact won’t look right. It has to be carefully rehearsed, too, so the reaction is good. This is why those shots usually don’t last very long. The actor has to remember what he or she did in the first shooting in order to react correctly.

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Then there was the film Multiplity, in which Michael Keaton is cloned not once, not twice, but three times.

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Sometimes in the old Mission: Impossible, the guy Rollin (or another member of the IMF) is impersonating enters, walks toward the impostor, and is shocked when he comes face-to-face with himself just before he’s karate chopped or injected with a knockout drug. There’s always a point where he blocks out the camera for just a second, the scene resumes from over his shoulder, and we too see the face of the impostor.

Amazing what you could accomplish on a television budget back in those days! :wink: