BBC Four: It's interesting that you take the propaganda as a starting point rather than the children's programmes. Why do you think that the British government was so quick to use animation?
Tom Ware: Several reasons. One was the novelty value. We're talking about the very early days of animation when it would capture the imagination of an audience seeing it in the cinema. It's also a very condensed medium, because it's so painstaking you can't afford to be obtuse. Also, during World War II, when the government propaganda films showed middle class people telling working class people what to do, suddenly you had a different way of telling the story. It's essentially classless, so although they might have working class or middle class voices, the animation doesn't have the same baggage as the people.
BBC Four: Was animation driven by commerce rather than the art world?
TW: Yes, I think that the Eastern European émigrés who set up the two early pioneering animation houses in Britain brought an entrepreneurial spirit with them. They were successful because they saw an opportunity and gave their patrons exactly what they wanted. Of course they also came out of an artistic tradition of Expressionism, a very different tradition from Disney.
BBC Four: But this commercial drive doesn't seem to have hampered creativity...
TW: It's actually been an engine for creativity, particularly after the beginnings of ITV in the 1950s. Instead of making 10 or 20-minute films, which were basically early corporate videos for companies like ICI or the government, you've got to sell meat paste and only have 22 seconds to do it. You've got to arrest an audience at home who've perhaps been watching television for three hours. Animated commercials absolutely fit that brief because one person with a good idea can just go out and make it and they're not reliant on loads of committees or focus groups.
BBC Four: Your second programme seems almost to go to the other extreme, concentrating on animation from the counter culture...
TW: That was a deliberate idea to show the other side of the story - while animation has always been a perfect propaganda tool, it's also almost the perfect satire tool. For the same reason that one can also make very pointed films relatively easily and cheaply.
BBC Four: Part three concentrates on children's programmes. Do you think that the programmes that today's children will look back at with affection in 20 years time will be British animation or imports?
TW: British-made animation has never been commissioned in the quantities that some of the important stuff has. If you look at things like Transformers, or The Simpsons, they are commissioned in such large quantities. When Postgate and Firmin first made The Pogles in 1965 they made six and then the BBC said "They're quite good, can we have another six?" And that's what British animation has always been up against, that kind of funding. But if you look at something like Bob the Builder or Postman Pat you can see that they're very successful: they have a commercial potential, but they also have a longevity that stands up with the best animation produced in America or the rest of the world.
BBC Four: Do you think there's still a strong animation tradition in Britain?
TW: We asked Andrew Ruhemann, who's produced a lot of animation at Passion Pictures, when was the golden age of animation and he said it's now. Half of the top British animators are working in Hollywood. Tim Burton has just produced an animated film in the UK [The Corpse Bride], the new Wallace and Gromit film is coming out this autumn and you've got lots of British animators doing CGI effects. There's a sense that creativity is at an all-time high.
BBC Four: But do you think that the big studios are mopping up?
TW: Quite the reverse actually. Oliver Postgate is considered to be one of the most influential British animators ever but he was still making five-minute films 30 years after he started. It didn't matter how good Noggin the Nog or The Clangers were, the money was only there to finance short films. Now, Nick Park's budget for his latest film is something like £70 million. If an animator is good and their ideas are popular, the Hollywood radar is such that you can see that people are going places. Also, the patronage of pop stars and television provides animators with careers, whereas once they would have only been working in very small teams reliant almost exclusively on merchandising. I can't think of the last big budget Hollywood film that didn't use CGI - they all now employ effects that were once the preserve of animation. And away from Hollywood, lots of films are now being made by animators and swapped on the internet - you don't have the same restrictions that you have with broadcast.
BBC Four: Do you think there is a common character or thread running through British animation?
TW: There is a whimsy, almost parochialism to British animation - it's difficult to imagine The Clangers or Paddington being made anywhere else. I don't think there's a tradition, it would perhaps be pushing it to say that British animators see the world completely differently from French or German animators, but in the same way there is an identifiable British sense of humour, there's definitely some of that suffusing British animation.
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