Norman McLaren
William Norman McLaren, CC CQ LL. D. (11 April 1914 – 27 January 1987) was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).[1] He was a pioneer in a number of areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound.[2][3] McLaren was also an artist and printmaker, and explored his interest in dance in his films.[4]
Norman McLaren
27 January 1987 (aged 72)
Scottish / Canadian
Animator, director, producer
1933–1985
Filmmaking innovation, Founding the animation department of the National Film Board of Canada
Companion of the Order of Canada
Officer of the Order of Canada
Chevalier, National Order of Quebec
Prix Albert-Tessier
Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Concordia University
Film Awards: See below
His films garnered numerous awards, including one Oscar, one Palme d'Or, three BAFTA Awards and six Venice Film Festival awards.[5]
Early life[edit]
Norman McLaren was born in Stirling, Scotland, on 11 April 1914. He had two older siblings, one brother, Jack and a sister, Sheena.[6] At the age of 21, he travelled to Russia for a holiday which confirmed his communist beliefs; his father had paid for the trip in hopes of curing these beliefs.[6]
When McLaren was 22, he left Stirling[6] and studied set design at the Glasgow School of Art.[1] While there, he joined the Kinecraft Society; within the society, he began to experiment with different styles and techniques of filmmaking.[6] It was also at the Glasgow School of Art that McLaren met Helen Biggar, they produced films together outside the School and sought to have their productions released nationally.[6]
His early experiments with film and animation included actually scratching and painting the film stock itself, as he did not have ready access to a camera. One of his earliest extant films, Seven Till Five (1935), a "day in the life of an art school" was influenced by Eisenstein and displays a strongly formalist attitude.
McLaren's film Camera Makes Whoopee (1935), was a more elaborate take on the themes explored in Seven Till Five, inspired by his acquisition of a Ciné-Kodak camera, which enabled him to execute a number of 'trick' shots. McLaren used what would later be called 'pixilation' effects, superimpositions and animation not only to display the staging of an art school ball, but also to tap into the aesthetic sensations supposedly produced by this event.
His two early films won prizes at the Scottish Amateur Film Festival, where fellow Scot and future NFB founder John Grierson was a judge.[7]
Career[edit]
GPO Film Unit[edit]
Grierson, who was at that time head of the UK General Post Office film unit, saw another of his movies at an amateur film festival and hired McLaren.[1][7][8] McLaren worked at the GPO from 1936 to 1939, making eight films including Defence of Madrid, Book Bargain (1937), Mony a Pickle, Love on the Wing (1938), and News for the Navy (1938).[8]
Solomon Guggenheim Foundation[edit]
McLaren then moved to New York City in 1939,[9] just as World War II was about to begin in Europe. With a grant from the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, he worked in New York until 1941, making drawn-on-film animated works, including Boogie-Doodle (1940), along with Dots, Loops and Stars and Stripes.[10][11]
NFB[edit]
In 1941, at the invitation of Grierson, McLaren moved to Ottawa to work for the National Film Board and open an animation studio and to train Canadian animators. Upon his arrival in Canada, he made two films with the American director Mary Ellen Bute—Spook Sport and Tarantella. Grierson asked him to direct a promotional film reminding Canadians to mail their Christmas cards early, Mail Early (1941). He then worked on animated shorts as well as maps for Allied propaganda documentary films, followed by his War Bonds campaign films: V for Victory (1941), 5 for 4 (1942), Hen Hop (1942), Dollar Dance (1943) and Tic Tac Toe (1943).[8] In 1943, he also produced the six-film series of animated French songs, Chants Populaire. In 1944 and 1945, he would do a similar series in English with Let's All Sing Together.
As of 1942, McLaren could no longer keep up with the demands for animation at the fast-growing NFB, and he was asked by Grierson to recruit art students and create a small animation team—a task made more difficult because many young students had gone off to fight in the war. McLaren found recruits for his fledgling animation unit at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal and the Ontario College of Art, including René Jodoin, George Dunning, Jim McKay, Grant Munro and his future collaborator, Evelyn Lambart. McLaren trained these emerging animators, who would all work on cartoons, animated cards and propaganda documentaries before going on to make their own films. Studio A, the NFB's first animation studio, formally came into existence as of January 1943, with McLaren as its head.[1][8]
During his work for the NFB, McLaren made 70 films, including Begone Dull Care (1949), Rythmetic (1956), Christmas Cracker (1963), Pas de Deux (1968), and the Oscar-winning Neighbours (1952), which is a brilliant combination of visuals and sound, and has a strong social message against violence and war. McLaren won the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film for Blinkity Blank (1955), which he later selected as his diploma piece when he was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1974.[4]
Honours[edit]
In 1968, McLaren was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and, in 1973, Companion of the Order of Canada.[18]
In 1954, the Locarno Film Festival included a block of programming title Homage to Norman McLaren.[19]
In 1975, he was presented with the Winsor McCay Award in recognition of his lifetime contributions to the art of animation.
In 1977, he received an honorary doctorate from Concordia University.[20]
In 1982, he was the first anglophone to receive the Prix Albert-Tessier, given to persons for an outstanding career in Québec cinema.
In 1985, McLaren was named Chevalier of the National Order of Quebec.[21]
In 1986, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb.[22]
In 2009, McLaren's works were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme, listing the most significant documentary heritage collections in the world.[23]
Personal life[edit]
McLaren was gay. His life partner was fellow NFB director Guy Glover, whom he met at the ballet in London in 1937. They remained together until McLaren's death in 1987.[24][25]
Hen Hop (1942)[28]
A Little Phantasy on a 19th-Century Painting (1946)[29]
Fiddle-de-dee (1947)[30]
Begone Dull Care (1949)[31][32]
Dots (1940) and Loops (1940) (released together 1949)[33][34]
Pen Point Percussion (1951)[35]
Now is the Time (1951)[36]
Around Is Around (1951)[37]
Neighbours (1952)[38]
A Phantasy (1952)[39]
Blinkity Blank (1955)
Rythmetic (1956)
A Chairy Tale (1957)
Le Merle (1958)
Short and Suite (1959)
Serenal (1959)
Lines: Vertical (1960)[41]
New York Lightboard (1961)
Christmas Cracker (1963)
Canon (1964)[42]
Mosaic (1965)[43]
Pas de deux (1968)
Spheres (1969)
Synchronomy (1971)
Ballet Adagio (1972)
Animated Motion (1976)[45]
Narcissus (1983)