I don’t think that we’d seen anything but a few stills from the Snowman and no one had been very impressed, we’d all felt that they looked childish and a little sketchy. Derek in particular hadn’t for one minute, been prepared for the praise that staff member Dale Hemenway had heaped upon the title. So after a great deal of consideration and further enthusiastic persuasion from Dale and other 8mm collectors he’d telephoned producer, Iain Harvey, who was highly enthusiastic about a Super 8 release. To say that Dale was an animation enthusiast would be like saying that I ‘quite enjoyed’ Japanese Godzilla movies, and since leaving Derann, Dale has pursued a career in the world of animation, working on Bob the Builder for almost ten years just for starters. We had a special full colour label printed and orders for the 26 minute version far exceeded our initial lab order with sales continuing unabated until the negative began to show serious signs of wear. It’s popularity prompted Derek to issue a 200′ digest aptly entitled ‘Walking in the Air’, it only just fitted onto a 200′ spool. To say this was a success story is a little lame, it really was one of the most successful titles we ever issued and in all probability the best selling 600′ we ever issued.
…. to be continued.
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