Norman McLaren was born in Stirling, Scotland, on April 11, 1914. As a high school student, he developed a particular interest in painting. At the age of 18, he entered the Glasgow School of Art to study interior design, but he did not earn a diploma. His enthusiasm for student filmmaking prevented him from completing assignments. Although he was a moviegoer, it was not until McLaren was at the art school and joined a film society and saw the Russian films of Eisenstein and Pudovkin that cinema took a new place for him in the cultural hierarchy. That was 1934.I thought what a great medium! It was exciting and I said if you can do that, why bother with drawing and painting. They’ve been around for two thousand years at least, but here is a new art, just begun, which is the art of today – and painting is the art of the past.In the same year, McLaren saw an abstract film by Oscar Fischinger, the German animator, which was also a revelation for him. McLaren used to see abstractions in his mind as he listened to music. With film, he realized he could make these abstractions visible. His mind was made up and he joined a newly formed filmmaking club at the art school. He became the mainspring of this club, and he displayed an original and indefatigably energetic talent which, apparently, ran his co-workers off their feet. His student films were mainly live-action; he was fascinated by the movie camera and sought to exploit it to its maximum.