Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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52 DOCUMENTARY FILM NEWS Canadian News Animated Films by Norman McLaren DFN has asked me to write a short article on the conception and execution of some of the animated films I have been making for the National Film Board of Canada. Their production method differs radically from the usual one for animated films, and this largely conditions the final result. On the visual side their making is a one-man operation from start to finish, I have tried to preserve in my relationship to the film, the same closeness and intimacy that exists between a painter and his canvas. This is rather difficult, for in the one case only a stick of wood with a tuft of camel hair intervenes between the maker and the finished result, and in the other, an elaborate series of optical, chemical and mechanical processes, which become a perfect breeding ground for lack of intimacy, frustrations, ill feeling and hostility between the artist and his finished work. And so my militant philosophy is this: to make with a brush on canvas is a simple and direct delight — to make with a movie should be the same. Examples To illustrate the effect of this philosophy on my technique I will give details of different solutions. One group of films made for the Film Board in the earlier part of the war publicizing the War Savings Campaign were all made by a handdrawn-camera-less method; they were Dollar Dance, Five for Four, V for Victory and Hen Hop. As Hen Hop is the purest example, I will speak about it. In it the camera, shooting, developing of original negative were completely short circuited. In one operation, which is the drawing directly on to 35 mm. clear machine leader with an ordinary pen nib and indian ink, a clean jump was made from the ideas in my head to the images on what would normally be called the developed negative. Because these ideas were never thought out in precise detail until the moment of drawing, and because, when drawing, I had a chart of exact footages of the music both beside me and in my head, the equivalents of SCRIPTING, DRAWING, ANIMATING, SHOOTING, DEVELOPING OF NEGATIVE, POSITIVE CUTTING and negative cutting were all done in one operation. If a mistake was made, a small amount of water (I use saliva) on cloth would wash the offending images off the frame, and drawing could continue as before. The rectification with one swipe of the damp cloth affected all the traditional processes from script through to negative cutting. Summary To summarize the technical processes involved : Music recorded first. Music track run on a movieola and each note, phrase and sentence marked with grease pencil. Track put on a frame counter and the notes measured cumulatively from zero at start. Measurements are put against the notes on a dope sheet, which is usually a simplified musical score, and, by subtraction, the length of each note in terms of frames is written in. The grease pencilled sound track is run through a two-way winder, along with a roll of clear machine leader, called a 'dummy'. The notes are copied and identified with indian ink on the dummy. The final drawing is done with the aid of an apparatus whose purpose is to hold the film in place, move it on from frame to frame and provide a means of registration from frame to frame. It is actually an adapted camera gate with claw mechanism and an optical system that reflects the image of the frame just drawn on to the frame about to be drawn. The dummy is threaded through this apparatus. On top of it and riding along with it is threaded another track of clear machine leader for doing the final drawing on. With a bottle of ink, pen and dope sheet at hand drawing can begin. All drawing is done in natural sequence, starting at the first frame of the film and working straight through to the last. When finished, the drawn track goes into the lab for a couple of prints; one for a checking print to sync up with the sound track, the other for a master for release printing. If colour release is desired, various kinds of dupes are made from this master and assembled in parallel to act as the separation negatives for the particular colour process used. Interesting Points The above may sound rather like a failure to realize my philosophy of the simple, hand-made movie. However, it should be noted that the real creative job of it is all concentrated into one unified and uninterrupted session (in our paintercanvas parallel the rest of the jobs are equivalent to stretching and sizing the canvas, setting out the palette, varnishing and framing). There are several other points perhaps worth mentioning: Beginning at the first frame and working through to the end in natural sequence is a procedure which seldom happens in film making, even in animated shorts. I found it valuable for it allowed improvisation and had a direct bearing on both the detailed and total continuity. The small size of the frame made it difficult to draw complex images; cinematically this is a healthy limitation for it forced me to make my point solely by the action rather than by relying on static characteristics. The most effortless and easiest thing to produce by this hand-drawn method is extreme mobility; the most difficult, and almost impossible is staticity. This is the opposite of most other animation techniques where the static image is the easiest footage to obtain, and the mobile the most difficult. With the standard animation technique, one breathes life into a static world: with hand-drawn technique, one slows down, to observable speed, a world of frantic mobility. (When beginners draw footage by hand and the result is projected at normal speed, the image-flow is so fast that it gives the impression of looking at thought, if thought were visible.) The image. must needs be linear; tone value and light and shade cannot be used as they fluctuate too much from frame to frame. For certain types of film this is a severe limitation. When the National Film Board needed publicity shorts during the war, the above handdrawn linear technique served quite well, but when the need for animated films on our FrenchCanadian folk songs came up it was hardly adequate, particularly for the more poetic and slow songs. I had, therefore, to think of maintaining my intimacy with the celluloid in some other way. I felt the need for using chiaroscuro and slowness, and solved the problem thus. Doing a painting In doing oil paintings myself, and in watching other painters at their canvases, it often seemed to me that the evolution or change that many a painting went through from its virgin state to (in my own case) its soiled and battered conclusion, was more interesting than the conclusion itself. Why not, therefore, consciously switch the focus-point of all the effort from the end condition and spread it over the whole process? In other words, do a painting, but put the emphasis upon the doing rather than the painting — on the process rather than the end-product. And so for Poulette Grise, I stuck a bit of cardboard about 18 in. by 24 in. upon a wall, placed rigidly in front of it a tripod and camera loaded with colour film. To avoid reflection and waiting-to-dry trouble, I used chalks and pastel rather than paint. The picture then grew in the normal way that any still painting grows, being evolved from moment to moment, and each stage being very dependent on the stage before it. About every quarter of an hour the evolution was recorded on the film mainly by short, contiguous dissolves. For three weeks the surface of this one bit of cardboard metamorphosed itself in and out of a series of henly images, and at the end of it, all 1 had was one much worn bit of cardboard w ith an unimpressive chalk drawing on it, and 400 ft. of exposed film in the camera. In a sense the film was the by-product of doing a painting. Of course the sound track has to be marked up first and the dope sheet made out in much the same way as for the hand-drawn technique, but once again the creative part of the job happened in one and only one concentrated binge, unhampered by technical headaches and frustrations. Also of importance was the fact that here again the movement evolved in its natural sequence.