Now Is the Time
1951 · 3m · Canada
Directed by Norman McLaren
Genres: animation, experimental
Paper cutouts and drawings made directly on film are animated in stereoscopic 3D in an experimental work created for the Festival of Britain.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
McLaren's basically making a 3D light show out of paper and pure stubbornness in 1951—rejecting animation as narrative entirely and just letting the form become the whole point. It's the kind of formal vandalism that would've been dead on arrival at any studio, which is exactly why it matters.
The stereoscopic 3D treatment isn't gimmickry but a considered extension of McLaren's direct-on-film practice—a deliberate conversation with both avant-garde cinema and the Festival of Britain's modernist moment, executed with the precision of someone who understands exactly what animation can be when liberated from story.
The decision to hand-draw directly onto film stock and then render it in 3D creates a texture that can't be faked—every line carries the physical trace of the gesture, and the depth effect doesn't smooth it out but amplifies how much is happening in those three minutes with essentially nothing but paper, light, and radical constraint.