To celebrate the launch of a beautifully composed new book about the makers of children's classics like Bagpuss and the Clangers, we take you down memory lane with behind-the-scenes extracts and video clips...
For anyone who was a child in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s the work of Smallfilms will be etched in the memory — the mention of The Soup Dragon or Professor Yaffle and the words "once upon a time, not so long ago..." will bring a surge of memories of the TV programmes made by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin in a barn in the Kent countryside. The way these programmes were made — knitted, crafted, cobbled from bits and bobs, held together with the glue of genuine inventiveness and storytelling magic, is unimaginable today.
The latest book from Four Corners Publishing uncovers the archive of Smallfilms, and leads us into that grotto of tele-visionary folk art from the original drawings and scripts, to photos of ingenious animation and lighting rigs, to the the inner workings and handmade details of puppets. The book explores the inventiveness of Postgate and Firmin's collaboration over three decades. Postgate wrote, voiced (in inimitable tones that evoke a whole era of children's television) and animated, while Firmin was the illustrator and model-maker.
As a homage to Smallfilms and this beautifully compiled book, we bring you highlights from its contents, showing and describing the behind-the-the scenes world of Smallfilms, alongside clips from the blissfully nostalgic end-products.
The Clangers
"To create the opening sequence [of The Clangers], which pans across the distant reaches of space, old Christmas tree decorations were transformed into stars and Peter shaped plaster around a plastic football for the Clangers' planet."
"The Clangers themselves were knitted by Peter's wife, Joan, who also made their clothes. Inside was a skeleton... with a horizontal piece of wood in the middle to be used to hold the Clangers while moving and animating them. Around the skeletons are stuffed foam chips to bulk them out, while the hands and edges of the ears are made from pipe cleaners, as these could be shaped during the animating process."