Written & directed by Scott Cudmore
Executive producer: Michael Leblanc
Produced by Erika Lobko
Photographed by Michael Leblanc
Art directed by Zazu Myers
Editing/sound design by Scott Cudmore & Michael Leblanc
Visual FX by Paul Binney
Steadicam by Michael Heathcote
Colour by Technicolor
Production company: Leblanc + Cudmore

“Being an Edmontonian, it’s impossible to understate the impact that the Tornado of ’87 had on the city of Edmonton. A Tornado isn’t something that typically happens on the Canadian Prairies, so at the end of that July when Edmonton was struck with an F4 tornado that killed 27 people, it was something that left a permanent mark on the city. In fact, many Edmontonians still refer to July 31st as Black Friday.

As an 8 year old at the time, I don’t know if I was able to truly comprehend the full impact of the event when it happened and looking back on the writing of this song, I sometimes feel like I approached it from a hypothetical perspective. However, after performing this song in front of thousands people and meeting scores of people who were touched by the Tornado, or a similar event themselves, I feel like I have a more mature appreciation of this song. Whether that’s a good thing or not I still can’t say, but it was definitely an unanticipated side effect when I was first dreaming of the song.”

— Nils Edenloff, songwriter

I’ve had the idea in my head for awhile to make a music video where the whole thing is just the band or the artist listening to the song that they’ve recorded. Not playing it, just listening to it. In this case I was sort of re-imagining the context in which the song would have been written…fictionalizing it and building a little miniature world around that fictionalized moment. In a way this video is my attempt at making something like science fiction.

The other thing with this project is that we wanted to make something that went a little bit beyond the traditional music video that lived somewhere closer to being a short film. I think there’s still a lot of room to move around in the format of the ‘music video’ and play with the ‘rules’ of the format.
– Scott Cudmore, Director

Tornado ’87 is from The Rural Alberta Advantage’s newest album, Departing