Grant Petty is the Aussie multi-millionaire with the humble background that not many people know – but his work powers some of the world’s most popular film and TV shows.
Game of Thrones, NCIS, Big Bang Theory, The Walking Dead. John Wick, Avatar, Men In Black and hundreds of other shows use production technology made by Petty’s Melbourne-based Blackmagic Design company.
And with an estimated 80 percent of all feature films now made using production technology made by Blackmagic, it’s no wonder the 52-year-old has made the Financial Review’s Rich list for the first time, with a net worth of at least $588 million
Started by Petty in 2001, the company now sells its products in 142 countries, employs more than 1000 workers and earns revenue of about $1.6 billion.
Petty’s wealth comes from his personal stake in Blackmagic.
Grant Petty, 52, was raised in public housing in regional Victoria before his stellar success
Amazingly, Petty had built Blackmagic without external investors, venture capital or debt.
It’s a stunning rise for the 52-year-old, who was mostly raised in public housing by a single mother on a pension in the small regional Victorian town of Numurkah, north of Shepparton.
‘I remember once even the Salvation Army came around with a food hamper,’ he told the Herald-Sun.
Petty’s Blackmagic Design production equipment was used on blockbusters like Avatar
Blackmagic gear helps scenes like this one from John Wick look sharper and lusher
Petty likes the idea of his product being used by Game Of Thrones as well as by Youtubers
Petty had recalled how the arrival of Apple 2 computers at his school, South Shepparton Technical, and a grant to build a small television studio at the school, changed his life.
Having taught himself how to use the computer from a book in the library, Petty was called on to help set up the TV studio.
‘To me it was the most amazing class-busting thing I had come across, because in country towns there is a class system.’
‘Here was the trailer-trash, housing commission guy but the teacher had to ask, ‘could you help us out in the computer room?”
Petty quickly decided television production would be an industry in which he’d never be bored, leading to work experience with local TV stations.
It was while fixing production equipment working as a production engineer in Singapore that the idea for Blackmagic came to him.
‘The thing that annoyed me in this industry was how expensive things were but also the quality level,’ he told DV Asia. ‘It was very frustrating [because] it my job was to fix them all the time.’
Petty started his new company with DeckLink capture and playback cards, which received information from computers and processed it for playback on monitors.
The success of the product funded his next major step. Petty’s masterstroke was buying a company called DaVinci, which made highly expensive equipment for making film and television pictures sharper and more lush for viewers.
The global financial crisis made such equipment too expensive for cash-strapped production companies. Petty and Blackmagic turned an $800,000 production suite into a $1000 software package, in one move opening up TV and film production to a new generation of creative people.
‘I didn’t like these closed ecosystems, I want everything to be open,’ Petty said. ‘I wanted something creative people could use themselves without needing an engineer to instal it.’
The philosophy of low-cost, high-function products was to ’empower creativity’, Petty said, allowing Youtubers and amateur film-makers to access professional level equipment.
Davinci Resolve is one of Blackmagic’s products favoured by both experts and amateurs
Blackmagic Video Assist 12G HDR, a product that adds professional monitoring and recording to any SDI or HDMI camera in the latest hi-tech video formats
‘All the films our products have been involved with have fantastic levels of workmanship, especially the ones that win Academy Awards,’ Petty told SmartCompany. ‘But the thing that always impresses me the most is when you see the 16-year-old kid who’s using your products to do a TV commercial with McDonald’s.’
Petty points to Davinci Resolve, the editing suite Blackmagic produces used to cut the majority of films, as an example of a product that can be downloaded and used by anyone as their first step into Hollywood.
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