Norman McLaren

Technical document for the film A Chairy Tale, directed by Norman McLaren and Claude Jutra. The document is a shooting script to help Ravi Shankar for the creation of the soundtrack.

"We went about it in this way. In advance, I prepared a chart of the whole film on square-off graph-paper, where each square represented one second of time. The duration of sequences, episodes, actions and gestures was indicated precisely on this chart, by the use of colours, diagrammatic marks, names and numbers.
I then spent an afternoon screening the film many times for Shankar and his percussionist. Between every screening we would identify each sequence on the chart. After about a dozen screenings, they were both thoroughly acquainted with the film and the chart as it related to the film. They required three weeks to evolve the music based on the chart." Norman McLaren. Technical Notes on A Chairy Tale, 1957.

The document is in English.