Norman McLaren

Norman McLaren (1914-1987), Dots, 1940

Born in Sterling, Scotland in 1914, he studied at the Glasgow School of Art. At the age of 19 he became interested in cinematic abstraction, devoting all his spare time to film-making and organising film showings for a newly formed art school cine club. This gave him the opportunity to make his first live-action film Seven Till Fit’e, showing an art school day. The film proved a success making it easier for him to attract the backing he needed for a more ambitious production Camera Makes Whoopee, showing preparations for a student ball, in which he exploited all the known camera tricks together with many complex optical effects. Colour Cocktail shot on Dufaycolor marked his first real full-length abstract short.

Lack of money made him beg a worn-out 35 mm commercial print, he removed the emulsion and painted directly on to the clear celluloid with brush and coloured inks. On projection, the richly coloured abstract pat-terns took on a lively and fascinating new lease of life. It was McLarcn’s introduction to the ‘cameraless’ technique! The film was aptly titled Hand-Painted Abstraction.

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He began at the GPO Film Unit in late 1936, as an apprentice serving alongside Cavalcanti and Evelyn Cherry. He was with the group until 1939, rubbing shoulders with Benjamin Britten, W.H. Auden and more significantly, Len Lye. Although he never actually worked with Lye they had much in common, they ran their colours and their hand-drawn cameraless animation the length of a strip of movie film, Lye with Colour Box and Trade Tattoo, McLaren in his publicity fantasy Love On The Wing.

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He directed his last British film, part animated part live-action, titled The Obedient Flame for the London Film Centre before moving to New York in 1939, where he made a short movie Christmas Card for NBC Television.

A period of development took place between l939 and 1941 during his lean years when working independently, and for the Museum of Non-Objective Art in New York, who commissioned five 200 foot camera-less films, these were Dots, Loops, Scherzo, Stars and Stripes and Boogie Doodle. The sound was drawn directly onto the sound track area of the first three, one without pictures, the others with hand-drawn visuals.

In 1940, in collaboration with May Ellen Bute he helped animate a semi-abstract Dance Macabre to Saint Saens music.

Norman McLaren drawing on film.

Towards the end of 1941 John Grierson invited him to join the newly founded National Film Board of Canada where he produced five short colour films, once again cameraless, direct drawing-on-film with scenes occasionally superimposed on multiplane backgrounds, and colour added at the very last moment. All made in support of the war effort, Hen Hop has special significance because its central character became a McLaren trade mark.

Ken Clark, "Tribute to Norman McLaren",  Animator Mag, #19, Summer 1987.