Concept and creative process
Opening titles for ‘When the Bough Breaks’, a series of programmes for and about parents who were concerned about the way they were treating their young children, presented by John Thaw. The idea of the mother reaching breaking point in her relationship with her baby was expressed in the title sequence through a sequence of still drawings of the family and their home environment. The illustrations were the work of Mark Thomas. They depicted how small domestic disasters can take their toll on a mother’s ability to cope with her screaming baby, and as a result fail to keep an eye open for potentially dangerous situations in the kitchen that could impact on her toddler. The drawings were cut out and mounted on cels in registration with one another and filmed as a sequence of dissolves on a rostrum camera together with the programme title.