Arctic Talent: Cameron Murton dreams of becoming educator after years of filmmaking

For a long time, filmmaking was just something Cameron Murton did with his dad.

“He was more focused on documentary filmmaking, and I was more focused on narrative,” recalls Murton, who lives in Iqaluit.

They both got into the craft as a source of comfort, a few years after Murton’s mom passed away when he was four years old.

Now more than three decades later, Murton is an award-winning filmmaker and a great fan of science-fiction — so much so that he chose to study physics at McGill University in Montreal.

Murton recently took time to talk about his eclectic career which has taken him across Canada and the world.

2002: While living in Vancouver, Murton’s Grade 6 teacher convinced him to take part in the Zoom International Student Film Festival. Students had 48 hours to make a film, so Murton took his Canon Z10 camera and made a five-minute “cautionary tale” of a guy smoking a cigarette and eventually “going off the deep end.” Did he win? “No, no, no… I was the youngest person, and it was probably the worst film submitted, but it was fun.” He went on to make a few more “angsty” short films in his school years.

2010: He moved to Montreal and started a music and video production company called Good and Shy with some friends from Paris. “We sort of cornered the low-budget rap music video industry in Montreal.” In just under a year, they made about 40 music videos.

2013: Murton wrote a concept of a TV series and a script for a pilot episode about five daughters of a retired CIA agent with the last name Rose. He called it The Roses are in Bloom. He showed it to a friend of a friend, one of the producers of the eight-season TV series Vampire Diaries. His verdict: Murton needed to move to Toronto — Canada’s filmmaking hub.

Cameron Murton, shown in 2014 while filming a drama about Zimbabwean Revolutionary War in the 1960s. (Photo courtesy of Cameron Murton)

2014: Shortly after moving to Toronto and spending a few months playing extras in series like Suits and Covert Affairs, Murton had to get on a plane again. He was hired to be a cinematographer on a historical war drama feature film about the Zimbabwean Revolutionary War in the 1960s. With his crew made up of 60 Zimbabwean soldiers, he worked for seven weeks on a project led by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp.

2018: A film written and directed by Murton won at the Toronto-based Hollywood North Film Awards for best cinematography. It was a short film called Hypostasis, which followed the struggles of a bipolar ex-athlete. The lead role was played by former National Hockey League player Richard Clune. They were able to crowdfund $35,000 to make the film and another $12,000 to donate to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

2022: Murton moved to Iqaluit to work for Atiigo Media as a videographer. During his time in Nunavut, he has made dozens of videos, photography projects, and delivered a summer film production workshop for Iqaluit teens.

2025: Murton believes that at a time of global uncertainty, Nunavut needs trained Inuit media professionals: videographers, filmmakers and podcasters, so that they can represent Inuit on the world stage. He hopes he can help with that. Murton is working to create an academic media lab, called Nu Media Lab, that would develop adult media literacy courses and partner with other organizations to deliver them to Nunavummiut. “Media arts education is a primary unmet need within the territory,” he says.

Tip from the trade: Don’t underestimate the power of YouTube. There are lots of things you can learn about filmmaking by just watching a few videos.

Murton’s Arctic talent picks: Videographer Daniel Tapatai, actor Ippiksaut Friesen and author Ashley Qilavaq-Savard.