Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Synchromy (Norman McLaren, 1971)

The pre-2600 of it's day!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

See, this is what happens when you promote the arts! WHY AREN'T WE DOING THIS???

-danno

Dr. Mila said...

You know, I thought about posting that one. I really did.

bahbugandhum said...

Never thought that Norman McLaren would be the originator of chiptune.

Unknown said...

!!! It totally is chiptune! I never made that connection before. Dang.

Chris Sobieniak said...

WHY AREN'T WE DOING THIS???

Because Republicans hate the arts!

It totally is chiptune! I never made that connection before. Dang.

Basically, it was a form of manipulating the soundtrack optically that created these noises. This technique practically goes back to the early days of sound recording on film. It basically involves creating patterns and shapes on a strip of film and then play it back through a projector to create the desired effect. McLaren approached this concept several times in his career, though Synchromy is probably his crowning achievement in that. Here's one link that talks about that...
http://www.umatic.nl/tonewheels_historical.html