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, a selection of vintage Norman McLaren art films - he made over 60 - that make this blogger want to see them again.
Why are these shapes and designs so hypnotic? I don't know - play it again!
Many moons ago, the indie filmmaking technique du jour was pixilation. . . . A.K.A. stop-motion, shot a single frame at a time. The technique, developed at the turn of the 20th century by Emile Cohl, would be adopted by countless young filmmaker wannabees. Pixilated short subjects were made by the dozens with crummy 16mm (or even 8mm) movie cameras and without the creativity of a Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen or king of pixilation Norman McLaren.
Everybody who made crappy cheapjack student films in the 1970's (as this writer did) used it. Boy, did we use it - like 1960's slide guitarists used Elmore James' "dwee dee dee dwee dee dee dwee dee dee dwee dee dee DWEE DEE" ad nauseum.
Films featuring pixilation seemed to have required by law to be shown in every program everywhere and proved a staple of that relic from the 1980' s, the "16mm film room." Some were great, some not-so-great. Consistently in the former category: the short subjects of the creative and "pixilated" indie filmmaker Mike Jittlov. In Fashionation, he skewers the unrelenting marketing of 1960's - 1970's pop culture images adeptly.
The Mike Jittlov opus which seemed to be required by law to be shown at every screening in the 1970's and 1980's was The Wizard Of Speed & Time. Still enjoy seeing it.
This was followed by a feature film version of The Wizard Of Speed & Time produced by Mike Jittlov in 1988. Don't know Mike Jittlov's story, but he did employ a lot of ingenuity and razzle-dazzle on limited budgets to make fun independent films. Wherever Mr. Jittlov is in October 2017, hope he's doing well. Periodic appearances at conventions and film festivals indicate that Jittlov's moxie, formidable imagination, swashbuckling personality and excellent sense of humor remain intact.
Don't know if indie filmmakers Frank and Caroline Mouris are still with us and active in 2017, but their idea-packed and visually kaleidoscopic short subjects were staples of animation screenings.
Tom Petty, the great bandleader/songwriter who passed a few days ago, was known to show the duo's Oscar-winning cut-out animation opus, the biographical Frank Film (1973) as part of the Petty & The Heartbreakers sets, as accompaniment for one of his songs (forget which one, unfortunately).
Like Mike Jittlov, Frank and Caroline Mouris managed to consistently create strong indie filmmaking distinguished by intriguing visuals and split-second psychedelic montages on shoestring budgets.
The Iota Center website features some very cool and in some cases pixillated animation by Frank and Caroline Mouris.
This blogger's favorite purveyor of pixilation, then and now, is Norman McLaren.
We close today's post with a favorite of all pixilated films: Norman McLaren's OPENING SPEECH. Norm had a wacky sense of humor to go with his artsy side.
Alas, Mr. Blogmeister, unable to think of a damn thing to write, has submitted for your approval a selection of incredibly cool Canadian cartoons. Of course, had the Canadians only brought us the Second City theatrical troupe and TV show, that would have been more than enough to deserve the love and gratitude of millions around the world, not just comedy geeks.
The National Film Board Of Canada preceded the often devastatingly funny SCTV by decades and produced creative animation in all imaginable genres. Several NFBC classics (in this posting) from the otherwise moribund 1980's can be found on the following DVD, which is out of print, but available via Amazon.
Among the studio's funniest and very best films: the following by NFBC granddaddy and
stop-motion animation innovator Norman McLaren.
Among the first post-McLaren directors to make a big name with a series at NFBC was the prolific Dutch animator Paul Driessen. I can never explain just how or why Paul Driessen cartoons make me laugh - have an easier time explaining Andy Kaufman - but they do, every time. His graphic design, dark sensibility, minimalist conception, animation style and timing are wholly original. Cat's Cradle and Oh What A Knight are two of Driessen's best.
Following Mr. Driessen will be two very funny films - the second a classic twisted take on Pinocchio (only surpassed by the even more satiric and subversive Jay Ward Productions spoof from the Fractured Fairy Tales series) - directed by NFBC stalwart John Weldon.
Next up, two indescribably funny films. The first is Richard Condie's cartoon with the euphemistic title The Big Snit. The second, The Cat Came Back, a hilarious piece by Cordell Barker, is very likely the only case in animation history of a cartoon being much funnier than another one made by Friz Freleng with the exact same title.
Even the NFBC's animated instructional films, such as this fire safety piece created by Don Arioli and former Zagreb cartoon director Zlatko Grgic, are extremely entertaining and serve those lessons up with plenty of humor.
Weldon, Barker and Condie have enjoyed something anybody working in U.S. films and especially animators would gladly sell their first born male, female or hermaphrodite children for. . .job security. They are to NFBC animation what John Hubley, Robert "Bobe" Cannon and Pete Burness were, rather briefly, to the UPA studio and have continued to make top-notch animated short subjects and television series for NFBC in the decades since.
We'll wrap up this very Canadian posting, of course, with some SCTV, which, more than any other sketch comedy program other than The Ernie Kovacs Show, could get pretty darn cartoon-like (unfortunately, the infamous Quincy - Cartoon Coroner sketch has been pulled from YouTube and Daily Motion). The sight gag brilliance and cartoony qualities extend to the visual presentation and comic timing of the SCTV show openings.
It's a good bet that all of us dyed-in-the-wool classic movie buffs have been affected by the passing of the incomparable Ray Harryhausen at 92 earlier this week.
The many Ray Harryhausen action-adventure-science fiction-fantasy epics - all populated by his remarkably otherworldly creatures - sparked that THIS IS SO COOL sense of wonder and astonishment, not just on the first viewing, but every time.
