Norman McLaren: Synchromy (1971)

Personal story here. In the mid-Eighties I started a brief correspondence with the Canada-based animator Norman McLaren, then very advanced in years.

I wanted to tell him the pleasure his short animated films gave me and my senior school students studying film.

I think my first letter was sent to the National Film Board of Canada where he had worked and was forwarded to him because he'd retired.

We didn't write that often but he was gracious in his few responses.

And then in early 1987 I read that he had died.

His work was innovative, sometimes very pointed (the brutal, Oscar-winning Neighbours), sometimes beautiful (Pas de Deux) and most often whimsical, like this piece.

McLaren drew directly on to film sometimes, used stop-frame and for this one created cards with lines and spaces on them which he photographed then used the technique of storing the images on sound film.

Then the images were given sound, the result being a synchronicity of seeing the music and hearing the pictures.

McLaren first began experimenting with film at the Glasgow School of Art, making his own animation and was later in the British postal unit making films in the run-up to the Second War War.

He was a contemporary of Len Lye and influenced Chris Knox and many others.

His story goes on from there but my personal connection was life-changing.

After his death I approached the Herald (for whom I was writing live music reviews, mostly jazz) and explained who he was and asking if they would like a profile piece.

The features editor Jane Phare said, “that sounds like something for our new Entertainment section” and I said . . .

You can read the funny story of how I got the job at the Herald here.

Funny that a Scottish-born animator living in Canada could have changed the life and direction of a Scottish-born teacher living in New Zealand.

Thank you, Norman.

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For more one-offs, oddities or songs with an interesting back-story see From the Vaults.