Respect The Gift, the music video from Adrian Sutherland, has been nominated Best Performing Arts & Entertainment for the 75th Yorkton Film Festival (YFF) - North America's oldest film festival.
The super-cool music video crosses multiple artistic genres (music, dance, live-action, animation) and features dancers delivering more than a dozen dance styles, all cut together into one sequence. The dancers in silhouette-style are framed by stunning animation inspired by 1970’s retro graphic designs – including a stunning star-blanket that ‘explodes’ onto the screen. Star-blankets are significant to Indigenous culture and represent the giving of gifts – making the star-blanket design the perfect choice for this video.
The live-action dance sequences were shot at The Chroma Ranch in October 2020, a motion picture green-screen facility in rural Manitoba. Sutherland’s Winnipeg-based manager RoseAnna Schick produced the video, capturing the dance footage using a tiny Manitoba crew and five Winnipeg dancers brought in individually to perform their own choreography. Adrian worked from his remote location in Attawapiskat First Nation, and animator/editor Justin Stephenson worked from Toronto.
The whole project truly was a labour of love, talent, and respect for each other’s gifts.