Why I moved from London to Edinburgh to make movies
Film producer Ken Petrie on blowing things up for Brad Pitt and finding 'the next Jason Statham'
It all began for Ken Petrie on a cold, wet day by the Shore in Leith.
The 11-year-old Ken was told to kick a ball against a wall behind the King’s Wark pub until a man came out and shouted at him. “I remember being bored,” he says with a smile. There can be a lot of hanging around when you are shooting a film.
This was his introduction to the movie business. After responding to an advert for extras, he got the smallest of parts in the screen adaptation of Isla Dewar’s novel Women Talking Dirty, as ‘boy upsetting the neighbours by playing football in the street’. His appearance didn’t make it past the cutting room floor, so there is no big screen debut alongside Helena Bonham Carter and Gina McKee to look back on.
What he did get was a glimpse behind the scenes at how movies are made - as well as £25 in cash for his trouble. He still has that cash at home, tucked away safely “in a brown envelope underneath a speaker”, a special memento of what would turn out to be the start of a career in films.
Not that the progression from film extra to film producer has been straightforward - what in life ever is? - but the experience in the 1990s kindled an interest that never entirely went away.
Petrie who grew up just a few miles from the Shore recently returned to Edinburgh after several years living and working in London and around the world with stars ranging from Brad Pitt and Ryan Reynolds to Prince and, very nearly, Michael Jackson.
The flourishing of the Scottish film industry in the years he has been away - including the opening of First Stage Studios just down the road in Leith by Jason Connery and Bob Last - is one of the reasons for coming home.
Having just made a film with David Parfitt, the Oscar-winning producer of Shakespeare in Love, you might expect his eyes to be firmly fixed on the bright lights of London or even the United States.
Basing his 27 Ten Productions company in Edinburgh, however, was seemingly an easy decision.
“I moved back around the time of the pandemic. I think that encouraged a lot of people to appraise their life and their plans a bit. I'd been in London for a long time, so it was partly about recalibrating my work-life balance, but also I'm Scottish and proud of where I come from.
“We're in a global business, but so connected through technology that you can be anywhere. So why wouldn't you want to be quote unquote home?”
Sipping a leisurely coffee in Contini’s in George Street ahead of his flight to project meetings in Berlin it is impossible to fault his logic.
He is not alone in taking this path. Fellow producer Amy Jackson, whose credits include Charlotte Well’s powerful debut Aftersun which took the Cannes Film Festival by storm, has also swapped London for Edinburgh. Both have been identified as rising stars of the industry by Screen Scotland’s Film FastTrack programme.
“If we can create amazing content based out of Edinburgh, then who knows where that can take us. Now is the time to do it, we know it's possible because its being done. There is some incredible content coming out of Scotland and top talent. We’re on the (global film) map in Scotland and there’s no reason why that can’t continue and continue to grow.”
Ken’s latest production Black Dog has just had its Scottish premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival ahead of its cinema release later in the year.
The directorial debut of rising star George Jaques, who also produced and co-wrote the screenplay aged 18, is a coming-of-age movie that packs an emotional punch.
It tells the story of two teenagers who are on the surface mismatched sharing a road trip from their homes in London heading towards Scotland. As the title suggests, Jaques and his co-star and co-writer Jamie Flatters do not shy away from raw and difficult subjects. Among the themes it touches on are mental health and exploring sexual identity.
“It's about two young people figuring out where they fit in the world as they grow from late adolescence into adulthood. As you know, life isn't always simple and straightforward, one of them's processing grief and the others trying to reconnect with family after growing up in the care system.
“So, they're kind of a bit of an odd couple on a quite short, but quite intense road trip, and they connect in the way that humans often do.”
It is the depth of the two characters portrayed on screen and the interplay between the two that gives Black Dog its emotional power. It is a work that has helped to cement Jaques’ reputation - he was only 22 when he made the film - as one of the industry’s rising stars.
Petrie was introduced to Jaques by film composer Blair Mowat - a friend since their days together at George Heriot’s School - when he was living in London.
The pair clearly get on well and hope to work together again in future. “It's such a competitive business that you can’t only be a great director anymore you have to have some sparkle, some sort of X Factor. George has it in bucket loads, and he's a lovely human being too, which I think goes a long way.”
Alongside the search for more indie hits, 27 Ten is also working from its Edinburgh base on unashamedly popular, mainstream projects, including action-based projects and thrillers. Part of its mission is to “find the next Jason Statham”.
“Part of our slate is focused on leaning into elevated genre type movies, crime, action, thrillers. What we've seen works extremely successfully is finding a smart, high concept idea, then pairing it with a talented actor who may not have quite got the recognition they deserve yet.
“We've seen that with Jason Statham's career and Liam Neeson's a little bit too. These are extremely talented actors, but maybe weren't thought of in the kind of thriller world. Pairing them up with a with a fantastic concept that we as audiences found extremely enjoyable have created franchises where people want to go on that ride again with that actor.
“Part of what my company's doing is trying to do is identify that talent and build projects with them, ultimately to entertain people.”
Exceptional talent is something that Petrie has seen at close quarters during his career to date. It was working in pyrotechnics that got him his first break into the industry.
After joining the National Youth Theatre’s technical classes at the age of 15, he got the bug for backstage work and took a technical and production degree at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.
From there he joined a pyrotechnics company, providing the “flashes and bangs” for Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture at the Usher Hall, then going on tour to do the same sort of work for some of the biggest names in the music business, before going into film special effects.
“I once saw Prince do eight encores one night in Paris. I was watching from the side of the stage and you do think to yourself I’m seeing something special here.
“You learn from working with a genius like that and seeing how they work up close. Every show he did, he clearly wanted to be the best that it possibly could be. That rubbed off on the people around him.”
Petrie also provided pyrotechnics for Coldplay, watching from stage side as they performed in front of 150,000 fans at Glastonbury.
His special effects film work included shooting World War Z with Brad Pitt - “extremely polite and respectful” - in Malta and Glasgow; the explosion-packed White House Down with Channing Tatum; and Safe House with Ryan Reynolds in Cape Town, South Africa.
“Yes, I did talk to Ryan Reynolds about Hibs,” he laughs, as I ask about the man behind the Netflix hit Welcome to Wrexham about the Hollywood star buying the Welsh football club. “He’s exactly what you see on the screen. An extremely warm, extremely generous individual. That entire movie was great fun and we were working for one of the best producers in the business, Scott Stuber, who went on to run Netflix.”
“People sometimes ask me why I stopped doing all that. You get to travel the world and work on so many exciting projects with some of the biggest stars in the business. I guess it’s like anything else when you are doing the same thing time again, you get to the point where you want to do something different and challenge yourself in a different way.”
Finding the next Jason Statham in Scotland? Well, that could beat the fun of blowing things up for a living.