Resources
Animators
Norman McLaren (1914-1987)
Norman McLaren's life was devoted to experiment and innovation in animation. For him, movement was central to the art of cinema and he spent most of his time exploring the different ways of creating movement on film. Though he never made a feature film or worked in the commercial sector, McLaren was one of the most influential animators of the 20th century.
McLaren was born in Scotland and studied at the Glasgow School of Art, where he discovered cinema. In 1937 he joined the GPO Film Unit, which was headed by John Grierson, and worked with the New Zealand-born animator, Len Lye, who made films by painting directly onto film stock, a technique with which McLaren had already experimented.
Leaving the GPO Film Unit, McLaren moved to the United States in 1939 where he worked on experimental films with funding from the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1941 Grierson, who was now head of the National Film Board of Canada, invited him to join the organisation and in 1943 McLaren set up the NFB's animation department. He spent the rest of his working life at the NFB and died in Montreal in 1987.
McLaren was forever adapting or inventing new techniques of animation. For Beyond Dull Care (1949) and Blinkity Blank (1955) he drew or painted directly onto film, and in his Oscar-winning anti-war film Neighbours (1952) he used the frame-by-frame photographic technique of pixillation to animate living people. He used cut-out shapes for films such as Alouette (1944), Rythmetic (1956) and La Merle (1958). Possibly his most beautiful film, Pas de Deux (1967) used a technique that built on Harold Edgerton's stroboscopic flash shots combined with multiple printing. McLaren was also drawn to abstraction with films such as Lines Vertical (1960) and Lines Horizontal (1961). His films often explored the relationship between music and movement, and he even drew directly onto film to produce sound tracks.
His constant experimentation and technical virtuosity brought McLaren many admirers, particularly amongst animators, and his work still has a radical edge, showing that animation has no boundaries.
Further reading
Norman McLaren The Drawings of Norman McLaren (Tunda Books, Canada, 1975)
Norman McLaren Cameraless Animation (National Film Board of Canada, Canada, 1958)
Valliere T Richard Norman McLaren: The National Film Board Years, 1947-1967 (University of Delaware Press, US 1982)
'Craft of Norman McLaren' Film Quarterly Vol.16(2) (1962-1963), pp. 17-19.
Selected films
Norman McLaren: Selected Films Connoisseur Video/BFI (1991). Video compilation including Beyond Dull Care, Neighbours, Pas de Deux, Lines Horizontal
Norman McLaren: Creative Process Connoisseur Video/BFI (1991). A film exploring McLaren's methods.
