ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the use of sound and music in The Clangers, a twenty-six part series produced for broadcast by BBC TV in its late afternoon children’s viewing schedule between 1969 and 1972. 1 The series, produced as ten-minute long episodes, was made by Smallfilms, a company established by writer Oliver Postgate and animator Peter Firmin in the late 1950s. The company produced stop-motion animations made on 16mm film 2 and is best known for its popular children’s series Ivor The Engine (initially made in black and white in 1958 and remade in color in 1975). The Clangers addressed science fiction themes (and modernity more generally) through a combination of an art music-based approach to scoring and more whimsical explorations of sound and sound effects. Indeed, as this chapter will proceed to identify, The Clangers’ overall sonic design—and, in particular, its use of vocalities— was original, experi mental, and accomplished in a manner rarely seen in cinematic animation at its time of production (or, indeed, since).
