I had the pleasure of making 3 low budget films in Greenland. Right now I am the owner of the Greenlandic film company, Tumit Production.

About the films.

Hinnarik Sinnattunilu - (Henry and his dreams) in 2009 the first film we made had basically no budget, if you dont think about our own salary wich we had funded ourselves for a half year. It was a comedy about a character who was not totally normal and all the fun stuff about how he sees the world and his dreams. We used only around 75 dollars for buying some sodas and some other small requesisions that we needed. Our director who also was the main actor Angajo Lennert-Sandgreen was working freely with no salary. He was living off of his parrents to make the whole thing work. And a couple of months before shooting we sat in our living room writing the script. We were basically 3 people in the crew. We filmed the film for about 3 weeks and edited it in about a half a year. Our producer Aka Hansen, the cameraman Malik Kleist wich is me and our director and main actor Angajo Lennert-Sandgreen. We started up with just with a camera, a microphone and an imac where we could edit the film. The movie was a small succes. Released in 2009 and around 4.000 people saw the film in Greenland. It´s also on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/34220 

Qaqqat Alanngui - (Shadows in the mountains). The year after, in 2010 we wanted to raise the bars, we got an idea for a action thriller film were the story was going to be about the Greenlandic myth called ”Qivittoq” and we had a little more money after people started knowing who we were and ordered commercials and other media projects with us. This made us able to buy new equipment so our productions could look a bit more professional. We were also aiming for a more professional film in the sense of the drama in the film. And a bigger crew, when everybody was together at the same time we were around 20 people or so. I Malik Kleist sad for 2-3 month and wrote the script while our producer was fundraising a preparing us for filming. We filmed the film for 2 months and edited it for a year. The budget for the film was also much bigger, still a low budget film though. Our Producer Aka Hansen had raised around 240.000 dollars but we were still short in our budget so we used our company Tumit Production as leverage and had 75.000 dollars on credit in the bank. If the film would have flopped we would have been screwed big time. So in total we had 315.000 dollars for the film. For people who doesn´t really know anything about the movie bussiness this is really small money. Because you have to think about everybody in the crew needs to get paid and a lot of requsitions needs to be bought and other million stuff.  It was really well received, it was a big succes in Greenland. In 2011 around 19.000 people saw the film in Greenland. That pretty good when you think about that there are only around 56.000 people living in Greenland. People thought that it was too scary to just be a action thriller so everybody was calling it for a horror film, we ended up calling it for a horror film ourselves. We have also shown the film in Iceland, Canada and Alaska. We even got fan mails from Canada, Nunavut. You can rent this on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/30721

Unnuap Taarnerpaaffiani – (When the darkness comes) After the succes we were trying to find another idea to make a film. And I was thinking about how the people had made our action thriller into a horror film, so I thought maybe I should give them a real horror film. So in 2013 i started writing the script for our next film. Because I also was the producer of the film I thought that it should be a small production and try to keep it as simple as possible but also as scary as possible. We were a crew around 5-6 people and the budget was much smaller, I got fundraised 113.000 dollars for the film and we filmed the film in around 4 weeks and edited the film for around 9 months. Most of the story is happening inside of a house wich was haunted in the story of the film. And it was the first film we released with a bunch of special effects and we were really happy about the film. In 2014 the film was released and around 10.000 people saw the film in Greenland, it was a succes. But some people thought it was too scary and didn´t dare watching it. That´s why it didn´t do as well as the last one.   

The best advice I can come up with if you want to make a movie and can´t really get through to the big companies in hollywood is, don´t give up. No matter how hard it is don´t give up and don´t just wait for the opportunity to come to you. You have to make the opportunity because only very very lucky people gets discovered. And if you keep working your ass off and show that you really can make something out of nothing it should come someday. But I mean even if it you don´t get discovered you will be pretty satisfied about your life and will be able to say, I did gave it a shot and I was fucking great and I am a bit sorry about that the world didn´t got to see what I was able to make, but hey that´s they´re loss. I will die happy some day.    

My background for making film is that I was educated as a tv technishian, that means that I worked with cameras and sound and lighting and editing. So it was not so difficult to move from tv making to film making becuase the digitalt world kind of has melted the 2 of them together, eventhough it is a bit different from one and eachoter. But that doesn´t mean it should stop you from making movies, today you can learn a lot from youtube and other place on the internet and I know a lot of people who has just learn all of those stuff by them selves, so it is possible. And don´t be scared about making mistakes or fail, those stuff are going to be priceless for you cause you learn from your mistakes and they make you better. I mean if Peter Jackson can go from making b-movie splatter horror films wich he learned to do by himself and then years later become the director of one of the biggest franchises in the world Lord of the rings then why shouldn´t you be able to eather.  I think the biggest mistake you will ever be able to do, will be if you listen to the little voice in your head that says no you can´t do it. Cause you can if you really want to.    

Right now I am preparing 2 films in the future and if everything goes after the plan we will shoot the first film next year in 2018 and another film in 2019. I really hope that is possible because it it very hard to try to raise the money for them. And just trying to survive in the meantime you are not making the movies is really a struggle. 

     
Techincal stuff. 

We shot the first film (Hinnarik Sinnattunilu-Henry and his Dremas) with a simple Sony HVR-Z1E and the quality is really not that good, but hey we had the will to do it and even though the picture isn´t that good we made a film.

The Second film (Qaqqat Alanngui-Shadows in the mountains) we filmed with a Canon 5D Mark II and that was a big step up in the quality, even though it isn´t the best today.

The third film (Unnuap Taarnerpaaffiani-When the darkness comes) was filmed with a Canon 5D Mark III with a Ninja atomos attached recording in Apple Pro res HQ. So you can see that we are slowly evolving. And we just have gotten a chinese camera called Kinimini 4K wich can film in raw. We are aiming to do a much more professional job for our next movies. Maybe filming with Arri og something like that and get the film made in a big postproduction company.