Norman Mc Laren PDF

Preview

Summary

Norman McLaren...

Description

Norman McLaren essay Student: Dang Duc Anh -102851297 Submitted on: 28 March 2021 Word count: 999 words Biography Norman McLaren was born in 1914 in Stirling, Scotland. Growing up in a remote village, he was used to listening to the radio, usually in the dark, helping him to develop a unique ability of conjuring images up from sound and music (Turner 2021). During his time at the Glasgow School of Fine Arts, McLaren watched the development of film and was interested in its potential. His early experiments in the world of film were actually done without a camera, he instead scratched and painted tiny images onto a film reel. This is evident in McLaren’s first real film in 1933, Seven till Five, followed in 1935 by Camera Makes Whoopee, a more elaborate take on his earlier film, filled with ‘tricks’ shots by his newly-bought Cine-Kodak camera. (Thorburn 2018)

Well-known documentary maker John Grierson, who was currently head of the UK General Post Office (GPO) film unit, became interested in McLaren’s potential and offered him a position after awarding him the Best Film Award at the 1935 Scottish Amateur Film Festival. His subsequent 3 years in this professional format with some important experimental animators of the time helped McLaren develop his own unique style.

McLaren spent 2 years in New York before meeting up again with Grierson now head of the newly-founded National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He promptly seized the valuable opportunity offered by Grierson to establish an animation department of the NFB, where he enjoyed an abundance of resources and artistic freedom to acquire an international reputation as an animator and inspire thousands of others.

Overview of McLaren’s films: with and without the aid of camera. McLaren is incredibly famous for his talent in cameraless synchronization of sound and vision, most evidently in Begone Dull Care (1949), and Fiddle-De-

Dee (1947). McLaren has also experimented with hand-drawn synthetic sound, or animated sound, namely in Loops, Dots, and Rumba. McLaren’s most typical innovation with the camera is called ‘pixillation’ and his best example is the famous 1952’s Neighbours. In 1946 McLaren introduced the “pastel method” to La-haut sur ces montagnes, the first in a beautiful series of French Canadian folk-song films. He also utilized another invention called travelling zoom in C'est l'aviron (1944) and tested with 3D effect from twodimensional flat drawings in stereoscopic films such as Now Is the Time (1951) and Around Is Around (1953). His latest dance films saw McLaren’s manipulation of machine rather than pen, introducing optical printers. McLaren studied the visual poetry of balletic grace in Pas de deux (1968), of light and color in Synchromy (1971) and returned to live action in Ballet Adagio (1972) and Narcissus (1983). Begone Dull Care Begone Dull Care (1949) is a visual music animated film using drawn-on animation, winning a Special Genie Award for experimental filmmaking. The music was actually created before the visuals. Then paints and scratches patterns were applied on a film sections that were organized by a cue sheet. The abstract images seem to display human characteristics and react to improvised sounds of jazz (Pinson 2017). The film is an unparalleled experience for me since it combines two art forms that are open to interpretation: abstract art and jazz. These frantically dancing objects may evoke from each of us fascinating visualization of another world without traditional cinematic concepts of space and sequential narrative; rather, space and narrative there are dictated by music.

Neighbours Neighbours (1952) is an Oscar-winning short film using pixilation effect. Its soundtrack is created entirely synthetically by scratching the edge of the film to create lines and blobs that the projector reads as sound. The narrative, which is the clearest of 3 films, is an anti-war parable: both sides start contradicted, draw boundaries, then proceed to destroy lands, nature, families, and themselves. Why this movie leaves a strong impression in me is that the escalating conflict is presented in a slow and comedic manner for the first three minutes that when it exploded at the end, the audience are at a lost for words. Close-ups of the men’s dreadful faces signify a transition to light horror. This could not succeed

without the discordant, alienating soundtracks that emphasize movements, giving the film both amusing and eerie vibes.

Pas de deux The 1968 Pas de deux earned 17 awards for McLaren, including the 1969 BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film and an Academy Award nomination. It shows a back-lit ballerina dancing with her own afterimages, before being joined by a male partner, to Romanian pan pipes music in a black background. A multiple-image technique was used in an optical printer. Each shot was repeatedly exposed on itself, but each time delayed by a few frames. The film reminds me of my wonderful experience with multiple-image technology at the ACMI. McLaren gave live subjects an animated feel and dream-like motions, thus capturing an aspect of dance that the human eye could not normally achieve. For me, this film is an excellent example of the immense power of cinema: allowing the audience to appreciate another art form in a whole different way.

Sound Sound always plays an instrumental role in his filmmaking career. McLaren maintained a visual perspective toward music, always showing an intuition for finding the motion and shape in musical forms. McLaren was gifted with a synesthetic imagination and inspired by musicians at the NFB. At the start of his career, he saw film reel as a more economical and precise way to produce soundtracks. He experimented with two methods of visual and musical animation: drawing or scratching directly on the film, and photographing patterns onto the soundtrack area. He used the former method for both the visuals and sounds of Blinkity Blank (1955). Each note can be determined by the size, shape, and density of patterns he etched on the film. The photographing on card technique, on the other hand, gives him a wider chromatic range and more tonal possibilities, culminating in Synchromy (1971), which is also the summary of all McLaren’s experiments in animated sound.

References

British Film Institute, 2021, Where to begin with Norman McLaren, viewed 25 March 2021, . Jordan, William, 1953, Norman McLaren: His Career and Techniques, University of California Press (JSTOR), . McWilliams, D., 1991, Norman McLaren on the creative process, Montreal, Que.: National Film Board of Canada. North, D., 2021, The Significance of Sound in Norman McLaren’s Films. [online] Spectacular Attractions, viewed 27 March 2021, . Pinson, Heather, A synthesis of animation and jazz in Begone Dull Care Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music/ Revue Canadienne de Musique, vol. 37, no. 2, 2017, p. 101+. Gale Academic OneFile, , . Thorburn, M., 2018. Norman McLaren: The Animation Pioneer Who Changed The Film Industry | Scotland.org, viewed 25 March 2021, . Turner, M., 2021, Lecture 2: A tale of two studios, History of Animation ANI10003, Swinburne University of Technology, viewed 21 March 2021....