Smallfilms: История британской студии детских мультфильмов

British television production company

Smallfilms is a British television production company that made animated TV programmes for children from 1959 until the 1980s. In 2014 the company began operating again, producing a new series of its most famous show, The Clangers, but it became dormant again in 2017, after production of the show was slightly changed. It was originally a partnership between Oliver Postgate (who wrote the scripts, animated the characters, and voiced many of the characters) and Peter Firmin (who made the models of the characters and drew the artwork). Several popular series of short films were made using stop motion animation, including Clangers, Noggin the Nog and Ivor the Engine. Another Smallfilms production, Bagpuss, came top of a BBC poll to find the favourite British children's programme of the 20th century.

In 1957, Postgate was appointed a stage manager with Associated Rediffusion, the company that then held the commercial weekday television franchise for London. to create the painted backgrounds. Postgate later recalled that they broadcast around 26 of these programmes live to air, a task made harder by the production problems encountered by the use and restrictions of using magnets. After the relative success of Alexander the Mouse, Postgate agreed a deal to make his next series on film, for a budget of £175 per programme (a minuscule amount even at that time). This was intended for deaf children, a distinct advantage in that the production required no soundtrack, which reduced production costs. He engaged a painter to produce the backgrounds, but as the painter was classically Chinese trained he produced them in three quarter view, rather than in the conventional Egyptian full view manner needed for flat animation under a camera. The series continued in production until 1962, with Postgate credited also as animator on the 1962 series. He also wrote serials for long running BBC children's programmes Blue Peter and stories for Vision On.

Postgate and Firmin recognised that their product was not sold to children, but to commissioning television executives. The only occasion that this informal arrangement caused any real difficulty emerged in the 1965 series The Pogles, which BBC management felt was too frightening for the intended audience, and led to their asking for a change of direction: resulting in a revised show, and a change of name to Pogles' Wood. Postgate had strict views regarding storylines, which perhaps limited the possibilities for series development. When asked if the Clangers adventures were quite surreal sometimes, Postgate replied: "They're surreal but logical. I have a strong prejudice against fantasy for its own sake. Once one gets to a point beyond where cause and effect mean anything at all, then science fiction becomes science nonsense. Everything that happened was strictly logical, according to the laws of physics which happened to apply in that part of the world". In June 2015, the BBC's Mark Savage reported: "Firmin said the Clangers surrealism had led to accusations that Postgate was taking hallucinogenic drugs". Firmin told Savage: "People used to say, 'Ooh, what's Oliver on, with all of these weird ideas?' And we used to say, 'He's on cups of tea and biscuits'". The Smallfilms system was reliant on the company's two key employees, Postgate and Firmin, and was devoid of modern considerations and essentials, as Postgate pointed out: "[We were] excused the interference of educationalists, sociologists and other pseudo scientists, which produces eventually a confection of formulae which have no integrity. No, the mainspring of what we did was because it was fun". However, in the event it was Smallfilms itself that returned the classic shows to production, agreeing a deal with the BBC in 2014 to produce a new series of The Clangers for broadcasting in 2015 on CBeebies, which the company also pre sold in the United States.