Chapter 2: Animate People Neighbours (1952) was born out of McClaren's experiences during a tumultuous time in history and had a decided antiwar message. In the film we see two neighbors living in simple cardboard boxes next to each other. Trouble begins when a small flower grows between the houses and the two neighbors fight to the death for the tiny bloom. Aside from using live actors as animated actors with Pixillation, McLaren also created synthetic audio by physically drawing on the film's soundtrack itself to create an oddly disturbing montage of sound effects to enhance the image. Neighbours--along with many other NFB animations--has no dialogue and takes advantage of the universality of visual storytelling to make its point. As a result, these films have become timeless classics that have global appeal. Other great examples of pixilation technique are Jan Kounen's Gisele Kerozene (1989) and the work of Mike Jitlov, The Wizard of Speed and Time (1979). Animating people is a great deal of fun and the results are captivating. Pixillation is one of the most physically demanding ani- mation projects you can undertake. I hope you have a lot of energy, because here we go. Setting up the Camera For this exercise, we will be using an older-generation digital video camera. The Sony TRV 27 is a terrific mini-DV camera that has a large number of outputs for you to connect with the computer. The main thing to remember when you are using a mini-DV or any tape recording device is to remove the tape. The tape is fragile and sensitive to the constant abrasion of the rotating tape head. To prevent damage, the camera has an automatic "turn off" circuit that will shut down the camera if you keep it on pause for too long. Because Stop Motion Pro (SMP) records from the constant feed it receives, there is no need to record anything to