Smallfilms

Several popular series of short films were made using stop-motion animation, including Clangers, Noggin the Nog and Ivor the Engine.

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.

[4] 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).

To gain experience, he accepted a contract as a television director in the BBC Children's Department in 1960, on a show entitled Little Laura, another animated series made on film, written and drawn by V. H.

Smallfilms was able to produce two minutes of TV-ready film per day, twelve times as much as a conventional stop motion animation studio,[11] with Postgate moving the (originally cardboard) characters himself, and working his 16mm camera frame-by-frame with a home-made clicker.

They began 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 was once a fireman on the Royal Scot.

This was followed, also in 1959, by Noggin the Nog, their first production for the BBC, which established Smallfilms as a safe and reliable pair of hands to produce children's entertainment, in the days when the number of UK television channels was restricted to two.

[14] Postgate described in a later interview the then "gentlemanly and rather innocent" business of programme commissioning thus: "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?'

[14] In June 2015, the BBC's Mark Savage reported: "Firmin said the Clangers' surrealism had led to accusations that Postgate was taking hallucinogenic drugs".

[16] 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.