Concept and creative process
'Parasol' was a one-off musical based on the 'Anatol' dialogues by Arthur Schnitzler. Roy Laughton took his cue from the title and photographed the open parasol from above and also photographed a model posing in period costume with the parasol. These shots were used to accompany credits during the title sequence. The lacy pattern of the parasol was printed as a still, cut up into blocks and re-assembled piece by piece under the camera on a film rostrum table. The white titles were double exposed in a separate camera pass on the remaining black background surrounding the blocks of pattern. The spin from full screen was made by rotating a cut-out top shot photograph of the parasol on the rostrum camera table, matching the end of the zoom to the pararasol held by the model in the first still of the stills sequence. Everything was shot in-camera, so no editing was required.