I remember seeing my first McLaren film in the mid-1970s and was just blown away that somebody could have the patience and skill to paint directly on film to achieve such stunning results. The dedication to such tedium is impressive.
Really interesting guy. Directly painting onto the film is something that I imagine would be painstaking and a rather difficult method to produce animation. Traditional animation techniques allow animators to see the previous drawings beneath the current drawing, I'm not sure how of even if McLaren was able to do that. If not, the placement and size of each new drawing would have been maddening to get right. And the fact that he literally PAINTED SOUND onto film...this guy really was incredible. I'm glad his work is being preserved.
Well, finally a damn good essay! Congratulations! Love stop motion live technique like in the 'Neighbors", there's something funny and disturbing in it at the very same time. Later it was used in a great way in "Tetsuo, the Iron Man" by Shinya Tsukamoto.
My only piece of constructive criticism would be to lower the soundtrack slightly to make your voice more audible. Other than that, I thought this was well written and edited. It's the perfect length and packs excellent information.
Please help me there was this animator who was really good. And he painted 16 frames per second and it was so detailed, and he was going to make a movie The Magician's something but it got cancelled. Do you know his name?