Oliver Postgate 12 April 1925 - 8 December 2008
It’s odd timing on this one again for me, because I had not all that long ago...well, my dad had rented Bagpuss, and then I made the connection that it was indeed made by Smallfilms...I only really knew of Clangers and had also seen Ivor the Engine a very long time ago, but, didn’t know it was all by the same people until i recognised the voiceover of Postgate on Bagpuss.
The staggering part here is...that the company was only two men...Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, however, the two men often collaborated with Vernon Elliott who was a british bassoonist, conductor and composer.
“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.”
It’s a tremulously inspirational story for me, and possibly the most inspirational story I know of. And I think about it every time I see a Smallfilms short.
Below is the first episode of Ivor The Engine.
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