Today we salute the innovative producer, director and animator Norman McLaren.
A splendid post from Scotland.com adds: Norman McLaren (1914–1987) was a pioneering Scottish-Canadian animator, director, and producer renowned for his innovative work at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
A pioneer in hand-drawn, abstract, and pixilation animation, he won an Oscar for Neighbours (1952) and a Palme d'Or for Blinkity Blank (1955).
That means it's time to get pixillated!
NEIGHBORS may be the first pixillated film this film buff ever saw in which the menacing creatures were humans and not prehistoric monsters!
A few years before the Beatles discovered Ravi Shankar, his soundtrack is a cornerstone of pixillated McLaren opus A Chairy Tale.
Along with the films of Oskar Fischinger, McLaren's work got this movie buff, unlike the viewer played by Mel Brooks in The Critic, to be just fine with colors, shapes, lines and movement synchronized to music as the beating heart of a short film, as seen in BEGONE DULL CARE.
Also admire anyone who would think of scratching the emulsion of the film and seeing what the heck happens! No budget, no problem!
Submitted for your approval, vintage Norman McLaren art films that make this blogger want to see them again.
Why are these shapes and designs so hypnotic? I don't know - play it again!
For more, see the documentary Creative Process: Norman McLaren (1990) and read The Sprightly Civil Servant: Norman McLaren at the National Film Board of Canada, Michael Cicinski's essay that accompanies The Criterion Collection's McLaren box set.
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