With a year to go until the Toronto 2015 Parapan Am Games, the event’s organizing committee has launched a high-energy video campaign that challenges viewers to be prepared for the athletic feats to come.
Featuring an edited version of Ottawa group A Tribe Called Red’s song “Electric Pow Wow,” the video, directed by Vikram Dasgupta (Calcutta Taxi), pulses through innovative, intense training regimens of three Canadian athletes – swimmer Danielle Kisser, cyclist Jaye Milley and wheelchair basketball player David Eng (pictured).
“My idea was to show these athletes as the rock stars they are,” Dasgupta says, “to show them as the standard and for the rest of the world needing to compete to be that.”
The video debuted at the Rogers Centre in Toronto prior to the Toronto Blue Jays game on Thursday, marking the first big push ahead of the first Parapan Am Games to be held in Canada. The video will live on the organizing committee’s website and social media sites, and is being aired on Games broadcast partner CBC. A print ad appeared in the Toronto Star on Thursday, but the committee is relying largely on sharing via social to promote the Games.
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The 2:25-second video was shot in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal and features landmarks including Toronto’s Kensington Market, Vancouver’s Kitsilano Pool and Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.
All 15 sports at the Parapan Am Games are qualifiers for the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. Toronto will host both the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games in the summer of 2015.
