Visit her website at peggysillustration.com.
In lockdown, under a stay-at-home order … what’s a family of five going to do? If you’re part of Joel Sutherland and Colleen Morris’ family you dress up in costumes, head to a park and act out scenes from big movies. And it’s hilarious.
Jurassic Park is the family’s latest re-enactment. They started early on in the pandemic by acting out the opening credits from the Simpsons.
“We’re just using our family Hallowe’en costumes from years past—and in some cases squeezing into them!” says dad Joel Sutherland. Last Hallowe’en, they trick-or-treated around the neighbourhood in their dinosaur costumes, playing the theme from Jurassic Park on a loop over a Bluetooth speaker.
The kids, Charles (11), Bronwen (9) and Fiona (4) are “obsessed with dinosaurs,” says Sutherland, so they played the dinosaurs in the movie, as well as some of the human characters. Sutherland says he loves the Jurassic Park movies and even saw it five times the summer it was released. He’s also read the book a couple of times.
Colleen Morris turned the kids’ wagon into a jeep like the one in the movie, adding a license plate and Jurassic Park logo.
They filmed it in a nearby soccer park on their phone, shot-for-shot like the scene in the movie. “Then I edit it on my phone,” said Joel, who attended York University for film production.
The best way to watch these re-enactments is either to watch the original scene first or—better yet—watch them side-by-side, like we at TKN did.
The family’s first parody, the Simpsons credits, went viral and currently has more than 2.8 million views on Joel Sutherland’s YouTube page.
What’s next for the parody-making family? It will depend on what Hallowe’en costumes they’ve got lying around, said Sutherland. “We could probably find something from Star Wars that we could do. The kids are asking to do The Guardians of the Galaxy. There might be a bunch of superhero stuff coming down the road.”
Enjoy this One Good Thing and stay tuned for the Sutherland/Morris family’s next parody. When they post it, we’ll include a link here.
Thank you to the wonderful Peggy Collins who, on very short notice, created the fun “kid dinosaur” illustration for this article. Visit her website and buy her books at https://www.peggysillustration.com/.
In addition to being a movie parodist, Joel Sutherland is an author. Check out his website for more information or to purchase his spooktacular middle-grade book series: Haunted Canada and Haunted.
Thank you also to CANSCAIP for your encouragement of TKN’s One Good Thing project. If you’re a Canadian children’s author or illustrator, or aspire to be, they’re an organization you will want to join!
