Canadian’s video up for award

TORONTO — Vancouver-born director Miles Jay was on a fruitless pursuit of accolades before he finally realized his mistake.

Like many young filmmakers, he thought taking on projects that felt like guaranteed award winners would bring a future of trophies.

“I spent a lot of time in the early part of my career really wanting them and hunting for them,” admits the director, born Miles Jay Robison.

It wasn’t until he gave up the chase that recognition began to emerge.

Now the 27-year-old is directing major commercials — he shot two Super Bowl spots — and has a Cannes Silver Lion on his mantel. He could grab another trophy Sunday at the Grammy Awards.

His powerful visual take on the song River by soul singer Leon Bridges is nominated for best music video alongside heavy-hitters like Beyonce’s Formation and Coldplay’s Up&Up. The seven-minute clip focuses on the lives of Baltimore residents in the aftermath of protests over the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died while in police custody in 2015.

The video is mostly a fictional interpretation of scenes Jay witnessed. The director formulated his idea after wandering the streets of Baltimore in search of inspiration for a feature film. As a Canadian living in Brooklyn, N.Y., he wanted to better understand the simmering racial tensions within the city.

“I was much more interested in what people did when they left the riots,” Jay says of his approach to the River video. “What it was like to go home after a moment of police brutality, or a vigil.”

The video was filmed with a mostly Canadian crew, including cinematographer Chayse Irvin, who also worked on Beyonce’s Grammy-nominated music film Lemonade. They found inspiration in the work of photographer Bruce Davidson, known for documenting America’s class struggles while treating his subjects with dignity.

He expanded on his Baltimore memories with fictionalized stories, and residents were cast for the video’s vignettes.

Bridges plays guitar in a room while footage of the riots plays on TV.

Jay says he likes that viewers aren’t necessarily able to separate the truth from the fiction in his video.

“We all look at the world through our own emotions and experience,” he says. “That balance (of), trying to figure out if it’s real or not, I think that’s more what life is like.”