Working Equipment - Text 2
Whether in the writings of McLaren or in those of Pierre Hébert, this way of planning the work appears to have been unalterable. In order to ensure that the filmmaker’s lines are clearly visible, a lamp must be placed behind the workbench in order to light the film stock from behind. As Hébert explains, “it is preferable that you not place the light source directly beneath the glass, it’s more tiring for the eyes and, if you use an ordinary light bulb, it heats the glass.”[3] Hence the importance also of not having an entirely transparent sheet of glass between the film stock and the light source, but rather a translucent sheet of glass (composed in fact of two sheets of glass, “a solid sheet 1/4″ thick and an opaline sheet 1/8″ thick”[4]). This description suggests that drawing on film animation is necessarily carried out “on a sloping work surface,”[5] deriving from the principles described by McLaren in 1958. This sloped arrangement, however, making it possible in principle to facilitate the animator’s work (so that he or she is not constantly bent over while drawing), is not necessarily always adopted, depending on the method chosen to achieve a given visual result. For the films Lines Vertical and Lines Horizontal, for example, by Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart, the need to draw continuous lines the length of the film stock using rulers prompted them to work on a horizontal workbench.
