Manuals
Two kinds of cameraless cinema manuals exist: technical books for those already familiar with the basics of frame-by-frame animation; and introductory books for beginners.
Five manuals exist in French or English. Others may have been available, but either we are not familiar with them, or they do not have as broad a scope as the following:
- McLaren, Norman. Cameraless Animation. Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, Information and Promotion Division, 1958.
- Bourgeois, Jacques, Andrew Hobson and Mark Hobson. Simple Film Animation With and Without a Camera. New York: Sterling, 1979.
- Hill, Helen, ed. Recipes for Disasters: Handcrafted Film Cookbooklet, 2nd ed. Self-published, 2005.
- Woloshen, Steven. Recipes for Reconstruction: The Cookbook for the Frugal Filmmaker. Montreal: Scratchatopia Books, 2011.
- Woloshen, Steven. Scratch, Crackle & Pop! A Whole Grains Approach to Making Films Without a Camera. Montreal: Scratchatopia Books, 2015.
Note that Norman McLaren’s booklet, Jacques Bourgeois’ book and the most recent book by Steven Woloshen are available in both French and English. In addition, three of these manuals were initially self-published: the way they were published appears to correspond to the “underground” manner in which cameraless films are made, salvaging and reusing material from other films with no industry to support such experiments.
Two of these manuals take the form of cookbooks, suggesting a certain relation with the publication (which one reads) and the film (which one can create). Cookbooks, of course, are not addressed to restaurant chefs, but rather to regular people for practising at home. Such publications offer basic recipes, geared to the instruments, ingredients, dexterity and imagination of the chef and with the idea that users will come up with different results. In the same way, cameraless animation is not industrial and its mission is not to be repeated.
Nevertheless, we should distinguish these publications’ different readerships. Norman McLaren’s primary audience was seasoned animators who have an idea of how to make an animated film. This is why he does not suggest recipes, but rather the tools and reflexes necessary to adequately make cameraless animation. He does not go over the principles of animation, as Jacques Bourgeois does in his section of the co-authored book above, which takes an introductory or amateur approach. His manual begins by recalling certain general key points before focusing on cameraless animation and suggesting ideas and exercises. For the benefit of the general public, he nevertheless indicates that the simplest and least expensive way of capturing movement is to rid oneself of the principal equipment, in particular the camera and film stock that needs to be developed. A black-and-white film, a few felt pens, some paint or everyday materials for drawing on the emulsion, and the possibility of seeing movement from one image to the next by glancing at the previous drawing or drawings, are much more practical.
The two books by Woloshen also have a pedagogical aim, but as they were published in 2011 and 2015, when the digital was exploding, they urge readers to use materials thought to be destined to disappear and try as a result to raise their awareness of film stock, both its gradual disappearance and its specificities. These two books, although their technical approach is similar, were not written with the same readership in mind. The first, whose title pays tribute to the book by Helen Hill, explains the preparations required to create a series of films, although prior familiarity is necessary. Novices will not be at home here, but more experienced readers will find in the book an invitation to create their own recipes and to use Woloshen’s ideas to develop their technical imagination. For its part, Woloshen’s second manual is the general public equivalent of the first: its materials it recommends using is easier to obtain and fewer skills are required to use it.
Helen Hill, for her part, addresses those in the “handmade” film movement. Her publication, available online for download, is a booklet with creative recipes which various experimenters sent to her, by hand or machine, in varying forms, from the anarchical to the formal. It is interesting to note that Woloshen, who works as an archivist at the NFB, adopts a point of view similar to that of Hill, closer to experimental film than to animated film. The difference, as he remarks, may be that an animator is always focused on the finished product, while for the experimenter the creative process is fundamental. This is what gives these manuals their importance.
