''Synchromy'' (French: ''Synchromie'') is a 1971

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; ) is a Canadian public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and altern ...

visual music Visual music, sometimes called color music, refers to the creation of a visual analogue to musical form by adapting musical structures for visual composition, which can also include silent films or silent Lumia work. It also refers to methods ...

film by Norman McLaren utilizing graphical sound. To produce the film's musical

soundtrack A soundtrack is a recorded audio signal accompanying and synchronised to the images of a book, drama, motion picture, radio program, television show, television program, or video game; colloquially, a commercially released soundtrack album of m ...

, McLaren photographed rectangular cards with lines on them. He arranged these shapes in sequences on the analog optical sound track to produce notes and chords. He then reproduced the sequence of shapes, colorized, in the image portion of the

film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

, so that audiences see the shapes that they are also hearing, as sound. McLaren had experimented with this technique for creating notes through patterns of stripes on the soundtrack area of the film in the 1950s, working with Evelyn Lambart. Their technique was based on earlier work in graphical sound by German pioneer Rudolf Pfenninger and Russian Nikolai Voinov. The creation of ''Synchromy'' was documented by

Gavin Millar Gavin Millar (11 January 1938 – 20 April 2022) was a Scottish film director, critic and television presenter. Biography Millar was born in Clydebank, near Glasgow, the son of Tom Millar and his wife Rita (née Osborne). The family relocated ...

in a 1970 film called ''The Eye Hears, The Ear Sees''. In McLaren's production notes, he stated that "Apart from planning and executing the music, the only creative aspect of the film was the “choreographing” of the striations in the columns and deciding on the sequence and combinations of colours." The film received eight awards, including a Special Jury Mention at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

References

Terence Dobson, ''The Film Work of Norman McLaren'' (Eastleigh: John Libbey Publishing, 2006)

External links

* * 1971 films Films directed by Norman McLaren Visual music Animated films without speech National Film Board of Canada animated short films Quebec films Graphical sound 1971 animated short films Canadian animated short films Canadian musical short films 1970s Canadian animated films {{short-animation-film-stub