Simple Stories By Prada
Director Barry Jenkins takes this core narrative and, through the universe of cinema, creates a series of stories wherein actors like Chen Haoyu, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Hunter Schafer, and Troye Sivan mine gold through their respective settings for instances that are emotionally charged. Each still image is treated like a scene from a film, a visual representation of brief but meaningful occasions presented like vignettes. These are moments that have been privatized for the sake of capturing the feelings embedded in them to the fullest.
The video component of the campaign is grounded in restraint, presenting windows into the lives of a band of characters without over-revealing itself. Actors pull on telephone cords, prompting viewers to wonder about who is on the receiving end, and philosophically question the concept of which messages go through and which don’t. Troye Sivan appears emotionally, caught presumably in the midst of a plot that is taking place offscreen, Hunter Schaefer rips handwritten pages out of a diary with passion and fury in her hands. The short is a representation of how valuable contrast and balance are. The inundating world works best when met with fashionable moments of simplicity.
