Norman McLaren was a scottish born animator and film director, known mostly for his work with the National Film Board of Canada. I wanted to put a few examples of some of his most ground-breaking, and yet, very straightforward techniques.
Below is an illustration for ‘C’est L’aviron’, a traditional French Canadian folk song that McLaren completed as part of the Chants Populaires series for the National Film Board of Canada. In this McLaren uses the double exposure technique, where he overlaps a series of zoom shots taken of hand drawn scenes on black card. I’ve also posted a video of him explaining this further below. Apologies for the stupid bloody watermark that persists throughout footage, I am making efforts to remove this and will soon give an updated version.
Also I thought I’d put in his most acclaimed piece, ‘Neighbours’ (1952) for which he won an oscar for best documentary in short subjects in 1953. I was watching the film ‘Eagle Vs Shark‘ the other day and noticed a similar attempt at McLaren’s use of pixllation, evidence that he is still taken very much as a contemporary source of influence. I also think the music is pure class, not sure how it was done however my sources on wikipedia (all hail wikipedia) tell me that he ‘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’. So there you go, enjoy.