Clangers Logo 'The Noise Machine'
by Oliver Postgate
Clangers

The iron chicken is on the Clangers' planet teaching her chick to fly and catch loose pieces of metal in space because this is their trade as celestial old-iron birds. The iron chicken sees something in space. She organises the Clangers up in their boat and they all go up and catch loose pieces of a machine which they bring down and assemble. It seems to be like an old-fashioned gramophone. It has a handle. The Clangers wind the handle. The machine makes a winding noise and produces from its horn a bubble which floats in the sky. The iron chicken pops the bubble and it makes a noise of winding. It is a bubble gramophone. It records noises in bubbles which release the noise when popped.

The Clangers play with this for a while and then carry a bubble in to Mother Clanger indoors, a bubble of music which pleases her. While they are indoors the baby chick, in her thirst for knowledge, investigates the gramophone. When the others come out she has vanished and they call her. There is a bubble in the sky. They pop it and it reproduces an agitated cheeping. The baby bird is obviously inside the gramophone. Instead of speaking into the microphone horn Major Clanger blows into it and the machine produces a cloud of bubbles, one of which contains the chick. The iron chicken pops it and down it falls.

It is time for the iron chickens to go back to their own iron nest. They take their leave. They wave goodbye and fly away.

Original Conception:
Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin

Scenery and Puppets:
Peter Firmin

Music:
Composed by Vernon Elliott

Filming and Editing:
Oliver Postgate

Film Company:
Smallfilms

TX:
30th May 1971 @ 4.40pm

Notes:
*This synopsis is the original outline written by Oliver Postgate for the BBC prior to production, and may differ slightly from the transmitted version.

*The Clangers voices were played on swannee whistles by Oliver Postgate and Stephen Sylvester.