Animated Motion: Part 1

Considering the work of McLaren its hard to believe that the same man made this set of short "educational" films about the process of animation.

The subject would have been interesting if it did not have the look of a public service announcement gone wrong, a painfully slow 10 minutes and a wasted opportunity. I first saw these in about 1982, and they looked from another era, a bad one to be more precise.

This is a very dry educational film by Norman McLaren and Grant Munro--both Canadian animators. As I said, however, the film is VERY dry--with extremely dry narration and a style that could have been a lot more interesting. It consists of the narrator showing the various types of movement that can occur in an animated film--and how increasing the number of frames will impact the smoothness of an animation. For the amateur animator (particularly the old style non-CGI ones), it's a great film to watch. However, for the average person it's like an eternity in Purgatory--even though this film is only about 10 minutes long. So, unless you are such an animator or unless you want to torture someone, I wouldn't recommend this one.