iN VIDEO: Kelowna musician wins international award for anti-bullying music video

With scant resources, a Kelowna musician has stretched her creative ability to make a music video during the pandemic and has been rewarded for her efforts.

Megan Freedman’s music video Perfect, which accompanies her song about bullying based on Freedman’s experience, recently won bronze at the Global Music Awards. It's not the first time she has won a global award, her last one was earned with her Roots & Wings music video in 2019.

“We were originally going to film the music video back in April but when the COVID restrictions came in, we obviously could not,” she said, adding the recording for the song was done in the summer of 2019.

“The original idea was a flash mob full with all different types of people because the song is about being who you are… so when COVID started getting tight we switched to having three or four different people and that switched to having just me and (the actor) Kailey Merkley and the two guys (Cary Missler and Evan Berg) who filmed it,” she said.

There were casting changes and they had to shoot the video in one day, which took a toll, but the crew was able to complete it by the end of August.

Freedman got news of the award about a week ago.

READ MORE: Impacted by the pandemic, visual artists take refuge in their work

At the beginning of 2020, Freedman was hit with COVID fatigue after her shows were cancelled.

“It’s nice that people are still appreciating music other than the big names. I know a lot of people are having creative blocks (or) they’re feeling super inspired and I’m feeling kind of in the middle right now,” she said.

Perfect was created out of her own experience of being bullied by a teacher in high school, she said.

Her next project will be releasing a lyric video in the spring for her favourite song she’s written so far.

To find out more about Freedman, visit her website.

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