Respect The Gift: Music Video Nomination

Respect The Gift, the music video from Adrian Sutherland, has been nominated Best Performing Arts & Entertainment at the 75th Yorkton Film Festival – North America’s oldest film festival.

Produced by Sutherland’s manager RoseAnna Schick, and animated/edited by Justin Stephenson (Gord Downie’s The Secret Path), the super-cool music video crosses multiple artistic genres (music, dance, live-action, animation) and features five dancers delivering more than a dozen dance styles, all cut together into one sequence. It was the second music video that Schick, Stephenson and Sutherland have made together.

Stunning Animation Features Star-Blanket Design

In Respect The Gift, the dancers are presented in silhouette-style, framed by stunning animation inspired by 1970’s retro graphic designs – including a spectacular star-blanket that ‘bursts’ onto the screen. Star-blankets are significant to Indigenous culture, in that they represent the giving of gifts – making the star-blanket design the perfect choice for this video.

An interesting cross-country production story, too, the live-action dance sequences were shot at The Chroma Ranch in October 2020, a motion picture green-screen facility in rural Manitoba. RoseAnna captured the dance footage using a tiny Manitoba crew, with the five Winnipeg dancers brought in individually to perform their own choreography. Adrian worked from his remote location of Attawapiskat First Nation, and Justin worked from his home in Toronto.

The whole project truly was a labour of love, talent, and respect for each other’s gifts.