Norman McLaren's interest in static 3-D was primarily for its trompe l'oeil possibilities. One of the key people in the Telekinema venture was Raymond Spottiswoode who had worked at the National Film Board of Canada in the 1940s and was a friend of McLaren. He knew about McLaren's 3-D experiments and asked him if he could apply what he had learned from static 3-D drawing to 3-D motion pictures and make two 3-D films for the festival. They would be the first animation films in 3-D, and so McLaren would therefore be treading in unknown territory. McLaren said yes, made the two films in 2-D and transformed them into 3-D with an ingenious adaptation of animation and optical techniques. Now is the Time incorporated McLaren's famous technique of drawing directly onto film, and Around is Around is based upon filmed moving oscilloscope patterns. The sound for Now is the Time was created with McLaren's pioneering Animated Sound system, in which he photographed wave forms on the soundtrack area of the film--a way of making electronic music which predated the synthesizer. According to McLaren, the films were made in a mere five weeks.