Get­ting to Know You, Copenhagen!

Seri­al Eyes’ trip to Copen­ha­gen and to Den Danske Filmskole provided our par­ti­cipants with an amaz­ing over­view of the Scand­inavi­an TV industry. Den Danske Filmskole Dir­ect­or Vinca Wiedemann gave us a warm wel­come and hos­ted us at the gor­geous film school build­ing for the four days. Former DR pro­du­cer Sven Clausen star­ted us off with an intro­duc­tion of the ‘tri­ad’ col­lab­or­at­ive mod­el of pro­du­cer-head­writer-dir­ect­or. The spe­cif­ic DR devel­op­ment mod­el was fur­ther illus­trated with a vis­it to that ven­er­able broad­caster and a talk by DR head writer Jeppe Gjer­vig Gram, who is work­ing on the third sea­son of Fol­low the Money. HBO Nor­d­ic Head Hanne Palm­quist provided the SVOD per­spect­ive and dis­cussed the company’s stra­tegic vis­ion. Of course, a vis­it to SAM Pro­duc­tions couldn’t miss in our itin­er­ary. Head of Devel­op­ment Emilie Lebech Kaae, Asso­ci­ate Pro­du­cer Fanny Le Gall and Producer’s Assist­ant Nina Quist explained their work­flow in great details and expressed (luck­ily for us!) the interest to work with non-Scand­inavi­an writers. Coin­cid­ent­ally, SAM is pro­du­cing a series for HBO Nor­d­ic, The Con­quer­or, based on a series of beloved Dan­ish nov­els. A 20-minute train ride to the out­skirts of the Dan­ish cap­it­al brought us to Film City (Film Bien), headquar­ters of Zen­tropa, the pro­duc­tion com­pany co-foun­ded by Lars von Tri­er, and its sales arm, Trust­Nor­d­isk. Zen­tropa pro­du­cer Kasper Diss­ing and Trust­Nor­d­isk Co-Pro­duc­tion Man­ager Isa­belle Péchou wel­comed us and took us for a tour of the stu­dio lot. We saw the set of the 2016 police thrill­er Flaske­post fra P (The Con­spir­acy of Faith). It was excit­ing to walk through a typ­ic­al Scandi Noir police sta­tion! After­wards, Isa­belle dis­cussed the work of Trust­Nor­d­isk and explained the world of TV sales. On our final day, Anna Crone­man, Head of Drama at SVT, vis­ited us from Stock­holm and provided an intro­duc­tion to the Swedish tele­vi­sion industry. It was a great, in-depth look at the inner work­ings of the fic­tion depart­ment of a major European broadcaster.
All in all, it has been a great week of dis­cov­er­ies of all things Scand­inavi­an. Maybe the greatest dis­cov­ery was that Nor­d­ic TV may be open­ing up to col­lab­or­a­tions with inter­na­tion­al writers. Keep that in mind! And let’s not for­get the amaz­ing food at the Den Danske Filmskole cafeteria—something to chew on, DFFB!