Clangers

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Clangers
Format Children's television
Created by Oliver Postgate
Narrated by Oliver Postgate
Country of origin UK
No. of episodes 26 (plus one special)
Production
Running time 10 minutes per episode
Broadcast
Original channel BBC
Original run November 16, 1969 – October 10, 1974

Clangers is an iconic British stop motion animated children's television series made by Smallfilms, the company set up by Oliver Postgate (writer and narrator) and Peter Firmin (modelmaker, animator and illustrator). Firmin designed the characters and his wife knitted and 'dressed' the Clangers. Music (which was often significant in the stories, as well as being theme and incidental music) was by Vernon Elliot.

Contents

[edit] Background

The Clangers originated in a series of children's books which originated from another Smallfilms production, Noggin the Nog. Publishers Kay and Ward created a series of books from each of the Noggin the Nog episodes, which were then extended into the series called Noggin First Reader, a series aimed at learn to read and initial reading skills.[1]

In the 1967 published story Noggin and the Moon Mouse, a new horse-trough was put up in the middle of the town in the North-Lands. A spacecraft hurtled down and splashed into it, and the top unscrewed and out came a largish, mouse-like character in a duffel coat, who wanted fuel for his spacecraft. He showed Nooka and the children that what he needed was vinegar and soap-flakes… so they filled up the various tanks up in this little spherical ship and took off in a dreadful cloud smelling of vinegar and soap-flakes, covering the town with bubbles.[1]

[edit] Storyline

In 1969, the BBC asked Smallfilms to produce a new series for colour television, but had no idea what the idea to be produced was to be. Postgate concluded that in light of space exploration being topical, the new series had to be set in space. Postgate adapted the Moonmouse from the earlier story, removing their tails as Postgate explained "because it kept getting into the soup, and wore armour against the space debris that kept falling onto the planet lost from other places, like television sets and bits of an Iron Chicken."[1]

Effectively an early version of a sitcom, Postgate described the Clangers as basically a family set in space. The Clangers were small creatures living in peace and harmony on - and inside - a small, hollow planet, far far away, nourished by Blue String Pudding, and Green Soup harvested from the planet's volcanic soup wells by the Soup Dragon. The Clangers looked similar to mice, anteaters and, from their pink colour, pigs. They wore clothes reminiscent of Roman armour and spoke in whistles. The word "Clanger" is said to derive from the sound made by opening the metal cover of one of the creatures' crater-like burrows. Each of these is covered with a door made from an old metal dustbin lid, which is there to protect against meteorite impacts.

During production, the Clangers grew in size from the first to the last episode, to allow Firmin to use an Action man model figure in "The Rock Collector."[1]

[edit] Production

The first episode was broadcast by the BBC on November 16, 1969 and a further twenty-five episodes were made. The twenty sixth episode was broadcast on November 10, 1972 and the final Clangers programme was a four minute election special on October 10, 1974. (This last episode has not been seen since its original broadcast, although it still exists in the BBC archive. A short clip is available at the BBC's website.[2])

[edit] Characters

The principal characters are:

  • Granny Clanger
  • Major Clanger
  • Mother Clanger
  • Small Clanger
  • Tiny Clanger
  • The Soup Dragon - A benign creature with a penchant for Green Soup
  • The Iron Chicken (a "bird" made of scrap metal - actually modelled from Meccano - which lives in an orbiting nest literally made of metallic junk found around the studio)
  • Froglets (small orange aliens with black stalk-like legs and large eyes who travel around in a top hat)
  • The Cloud (a cloud which floats over the surface of the planet with musical rain drops)

[edit] Music and sound effects

Clangers: Original Television Music
Clangers: Original Television Music cover
Soundtrack by Vernon Elliot & Oliver Postgate
Released 2001
Recorded 1969 - 1971
Genre Classical,Children's music
Length 47:00
Label Trunk Records

One of the most noted aspects of the programme was its use of sound effects, and a score composed by Vernon Elliot under instructions from Postgate. Although the series was scripted, most of the music used over the two series was written in translation by Postgate in the form of "musical sketches" or graphs which he drew for Elliot who would then convert the drawings into musical score. The music would then be recorded by the two along with other musicians, dubbed the Clangers ensemble, in a village hall where they would often leave the windows open leading to the sounds of birds outside being heard on some recordings. Much of the score was performed on Elliot's bassoon and also included the sounds of harps, clarinet, glockenspiel and bells.

The distinctive whistles made by the Clangers, performed on swanee whistles, have become as identifiable as the characters themselves and are much imitated amongst viewers of the programme. The series creators have said that the Clangers, living in vacuum, did not actually communicate by sound, but rather by a type of nuclear magnetic resonance, which was translated to audible whistles for the human audience. These whistles followed the rhythm and intonation of a script in the English language. The action was also narrated by a separate voice-over from Postgate, however the series was shown without narration to a group of overseas students, who each felt that the Clangers were speaking their own language.

In 2001, a selection of the series' music and sound effects was compiled by Jonny Trunk from 128 musical cues held by Oliver Postgate who contributed act one, "The Iron Chicken and the Music Trees", of A Clangers Opera, with libretto, which he had personally compiled.

[edit] Swear words

The non-worded but scored script seemed to allow the Clangers to say almost anything, including swear words in the basic script.[1] As part of the production, Smallfilms had to send the scripts to the BBC, but on reading the script for episode three, they asked Postgate to remove some "Clanger-speak," explaining that although whistled: "you can’t say that on children’s television, you know, I mean you just can’t.” At the opening of the episode, after the opening where a rocket shoots down the Iron Chicken, Major Clanger kicks a door to make it work and his first words are "sod it, the bloody thing’s stuck again.” Postgate replied that viewers wouldn't recognise what was said, but the BBC said that “but people will know!” The offending Clanger-talk remained in the episode, and after the series became a commercial success and the Golden Bear Company became responsible for merchandising, the Clanger-talk they got for the talking-squeezable model was the same phrase.[1]

[edit] Track listing

  1. Intro Music and Dialogue from "Episode One"
  2. The Start Of "Music"
  3. From "Visiting Friends"
  4. "Clangers running around the planet!"
  5. From "Fishing"
  6. From "Treasure"
  7. "Some Musical Sequences"
  8. From "Goods" (This was used when the machine in the episode "Goods" went into continual production of various plastic objects)
  9. "An End Title"
  10. "Tiny Clangers Radio Hat"
  11. "Some Of Oliver's Special Clangers Effects including the Froglets"
  12. From "The Rock Collector"
  13. From "Glowhoney"
  14. From "Teapot"
  15. From "Cloud"
  16. From "The Seed"
  17. From "The Bags"
  18. From "Blow Fruit"
  19. From "The Pipe Organ"
  20. From "The Music of the Spheres"
  21. "A short, silent interval"
  22. "A Clangers Opera, Act One" "The Iron Chicken and the Music Trees" (Compiled by Oliver Postgate)

[edit] Episode listing

[edit] Series One (1968-1970)

  1. "Flying"
  2. "The Visitor"
  3. "Chicken"
  4. "Music"
  5. "The Intruder"
  6. "Visiting Friends"
  7. "Fishing"
  8. "The Top Hat"
  9. "The Egg"
  10. "The Hoot"
  11. "The Meeting"
  12. "Treasure"
  13. "Goods"

[edit] Series Two (1971-1972)

  1. "The Tablecloth"
  2. "The Rock Collector"
  3. "Glow-Honey"
  4. "The Teapot"
  5. "The Cloud"
  6. "The Egg"
  7. "The Noise Machine"
  8. "The Seed"
  9. "Pride"
  10. "Bags"
  11. "The Blow-Fruit"
  12. "Pipe Organ"
  13. "The Music of the Spheres"

There was also an election special produced in 1974 entitled "Vote for Froglet." Inspired by 1973's Winter of Discontent and Postgate's recollection of post-war Germany[1], the episode was broadcast on the night of the second election in 1974.[3]

[edit] Other countries

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation showed the series in 1970 and again in 1982, narrated by Ingebrigt Davik, a popular children's book author.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "An interview with Oliver Postgate". Clive Banks. March 2005. http://www.clivebanks.co.uk/Oliverpostgateinterview.htm. Retrieved on 2008-12-09. 
  2. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/clangers/clangers_v4.shtml
  3. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/clangers/clangers_v4.shtml

[edit] External links

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