Parade

Parade is a short film created by French artist Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet made during his studies at Paris-based ENSAD (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs). It places a special emphasis on aesthetics, using a highly stylized, minimalist representation. Characters are portrayed as single eyes in a black world, the imagination of the different characters is shown as colorful characters that follow them. It’s through the imagination that the real, unseen world is exposed, using negative space.

This creative, obscured staging allows the author to play with all kinds of situations, which are represented in humorous ways, leaving a lot of room for the viewer to fill in the blanks and reconstruct the scenes. Off-screen space is usually used in filmmaking as an unseen part of staging, which is useful to hint, suggest and play with viewers’ imaginations. In the case of Parade, the author uses obscured staging to turn on-screen space into an unseen element. There’s also extensive use of repetition, so important characters in the film are identified by differences in their eyes (or through color and shape).

Parade also makes interesting use of sound and music, both for defining mood and rhythm, as well as for helping describe the environments and actions of the characters that cannot be seen in the image.