Dan McLaughlin
Directing
Biography
Dan McLaughlin was an animator best known for his work as head of the Animation Workshop at UCLA from 1970 until his retirement in 2007. He took over the program from Dumbo animator Bill Shull and in 1971, founded the school’s M.F.A. Animation Program. In 1968, McLaughlin’s student film from UCLA, "God Is Dog Spelled Backwards," which featured 3,000 years of art in three minutes, aired on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The experimental film was set to the instrumental piece “Classical Gas,” penned by Mason Williams, a staff writer for the CBS variety series. The guitarist asked McLaughlin to adjust his film, previously set to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, to the newly Top Ten hit. McLaughlin also did animation for Sesame Street, and contributed to the series Cartoon Sushi. Additionally, his 1963 film Claude was honored at the Chicago International Film Festival.
Known For
In this animated reverie, ambient sound and poetic narration evoke the experiences of a young boy in the forest at twilight. Accompanied by a friend, the boy walks past vigilant rocks and a sentinel tree, hears the grasses' silent plea ("don't tread on us, leave us be"), espies a spider in his web and two worms snug in their leafy bed. In the darkening sky, they watch clouds billow by tickling the snoring moon. Arriving home, the boy wonders where the path of the nearby river flows.
Twilight
Animation Workshop Color UCLA Student Film, Preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. A hand-drawn animation. Claude is a small and silent boy who carries around a box to which he keeps adding dials, antenna, etc. His parents are extremely rich, throughout the film Calude’s father keeps telling his son: “Claude, you’ll never amount to anything.” Mother several times exasperatedly asks him: “Can’t you do anything, Claude?”. Claude says nothing but, in the end, he has the last act: he twiddles the dials on his completed box and vaporizes both parents.
Claude
In a joyous tour de force, the world's greatest paintings -- all schools, all periods -- flash by at the rate of eight per second; yet we are able to recognize and retain most.
God Is Dog Spelled Backwards
Prehistoric man thinks ahead of his time.
No Idea
Newscast on Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin of Martin Luther King.
Nine O'Clock News
"A minimal experimental film. A moving painting that demonstrates the principles of fugitive sensations. Not for everyone"
Red/Green
The film artist's concept of a microsecond, produced under an IBM grant, utilizing both live action and animation techniques, including an exciting split image sequence in which the period of one day and twenty-eight centuries are shown as equal time through fast motion photographic techniques. [Source: Creative Film Society Catalogue, 1975]
Microsecond
A very fast paced montage of 3000 years of paintings and graphic arts, after the viewing of which the creator asserts the viewer is fully cultured.
Art
Sardonic riff on the US National Theme and the state of the nation.
Star Spangled Banner
A short history of gymnastics.