Norman McLaren

There is a certain filmmaker that I believe deserves his own post. Norman McLaren (1914-1987) was a British/Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was a pioneer in a number of fields within video - hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound.

He won many awards in his time, among the most notable: an Oscar for the Best Documentary in 1952 for Neighbours, a Silver Bear for best short documentary at the 1956 Berlin International Film Festival for his short film Rythmetic, and a 1969 BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film for Pas de deux.

I first found out about McLaren when I was researching visual music for my previous project and for my dissertation. He is most well known for his experiments with image and sound - he developed some techniques for combining and synchronising animation with music. I was particularly interested in his drawn-on-film animation, especially his videos Dots and Blinkity Blank.

Dots, 1940

Blinkity Blank, 1955

Boogie Doodle

Spook Sport

I did not realise that McLaren was well known for his stop motion, as well as his hand drawn animation.

I actually didn't know that his short film Neighbours won an Oscar, but after reading about it, I'm not surprised he did.

Neighbours, 1952

This short is actually an anti-war film, inspired by his year long stay in China, where he witnessed the beginning of Mao's revolution. The film uses the technique known as pixilation, where live actors are used as stop motion objects. Interestingly, McLaren created the soundtrack of the film  by scratching the edge of the film, creating various blobs, lines, and triangles which the projector read as sound.