Editing Oliver Postgate (section)

==Smallfilms==
{{Main|Smallfilms}}
Setting up their business in a disused cowshed at Firmin's home in [[Blean]] near [[Canterbury]], Kent,<ref name=BBCObit1/> Postgate and Firmin worked on children's animation programmes. Based on concepts which mostly originated with Postgate, Firmin did the artwork and built the models, while Postgate wrote the scripts, did the [[stop motion]] filming and many of the voices. [[Smallfilms]] was therefore able to produce two minutes of film per day, ten times as much as a conventional animation studio,<ref name=BBCObit1/> with Postgate moving the cardboard pieces himself, and working his [[16 mm film|16 mm camera]] frame-by-frame with a home-made clicker. As Postgate voiced many of the productions, and also narrated [[WereBear]] stories, his distinctive voice became familiar to generations of children.

They started in 1959 with ''Ivor the Engine'', a series for ITV about a Welsh [[steam locomotive]] who wanted to sing in a choir, based on Postgate's wartime encounter with Welshman Denzyl Ellis, who used to be the [[fireman (locomotive)|fireman]] on the [[Royal Scot (train)|Royal Scot]].<ref name=CliveBanks/> (It was remade in [[colour television|colour]] for the BBC in 1976 and 1977.) This was followed by ''[[Noggin the Nog]]'' for the BBC, which established Smallfilms as a reliable source to produce children's entertainment, when there were only two television channels in the UK. Postgate later described the "gentlemanly and rather innocent" business thus:

{{quote|We would go to the BBC once a year, show them the films we'd made, and they would say: "Yes, lovely, now what are you going to do next?" We would tell them, and they would say: "That sounds fine, we'll mark it in for eighteen months from now", and we would be given praise and encouragement and some money in advance, and we'd just go away and do it.<ref name="BBCObit1"/>}}

Postgate had strict views on story-line development, which perhaps resultantly restricted the length of each particular series development. When asked if the ''Clangers'' adventures were quite surreal sometimes, Postgate replied:

{{quote|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.<ref name="BBCCultTV"/>}}