“I think Glasgow is the best city in the world,” says Naysun Alae-Carew as he takes a chair at the heart of Blazing Griffin’s uber trendy offices in the city’s Portman Street.
"I’ve lived and worked in quite a few beautiful cities and am always relieved when I get back into a taxi on the way back from the airport and get to have a chat with the cab driver.”
He sits smiling broadly in the sandstone old schoolhouse, perhaps nostalgic looking from the outside, but is an interior decorator’s dream inside – all giant windows flooding in light to the stripped wooden floors, decades old tiling, high-tech kit and, uhm, bloody limb props that fuse together to make Blazing Griffin’s home.
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His colleagues are laughing in the background. They wander around in jeans and chinos. T-shirts and jumpers. Posters from their movies adorn the exposed brick walls, white is everywhere, expanding the space. If you want to suffer office envy, this is the place to come.
The company’s website promotes not just the appeal of the surroundings, but its family friendly values, work life balance and even veganism.
When shooting their award-winning zombie musical Anna And The Apocalypse, for example, one of those involved was waiting for the arrival of his baby, so the schedule was crafted around the big day.
When they captured a senior executive from Sky to be Head of TV, Lizzie Gray, a returning mother, they made sure the balance had to be just right.
“Welcome to a company that’s run by Millennials.” he chuckles, “It’s something that we’ve been really conscious of ever since we started, offering flexible working for those who have young families, or are coming back from a break from work.
“Having children, the film and television industry has traditionally been one where, especially as women, you can reach a certain point then, if you want to have a family, you have to choose between having a family and having a career.
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“When we ran Anna And The Apocalypse the film production itself was structured in a way that allowed people to come back from maternity breaks.
“I think for Lizzie Gray that was quite attractive. She just had a kid, working with her to figure out a way that would work for her as a person and us as a company was really important. She just relished the challenge.”
Its an ethos that runs through their work too, not least for the planet. He says: “I had to make a choice when I was at university whether I was going to try and pursue a career in film or in economics, and I had a conversation with a brilliant professor of mine who said: ‘Honestly, you can probably have more impact making films if you choose to do it a certain way, and that really stuck with me.”
In the midst of this zen-like atmosphere is a Bafta award-winning media entertainment firm. In truth, it’s Glasgow’s, and perhaps Scotland’s, greatest creative secret. But that’s all about to change. Big things are happening.
Over the past six years, this melting pot of three companies – film, gaming and post-production – have quietly been working away. In one room, final touches are being put to Guilt, the soon to be broadcast BBC drama starring Line Of Duty’s Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives, of Chernobyl and Game Of Thrones fame.
Across the way, and you might find clues to Murder Mystery Machine, the next big games project to be launched that is sure to attract the interest of global distributors. You get the feeling it already has, the grins speak without words.
Piles of DVDs from the successful launch of Runrig’s live Last Dance concert are ready for viewing, just as the firm’s first outdoor broadcast topped the charts in Europe.
And dominating, promo images from Anna And The Apocalypse, the zombie musical that won a deal with Orion in America, for a franchise already spanning film, music and books. Whisper it, but a TV and potentially games spin-off may be in the mix too.
“We’ve optioned a really exciting book called The Survival Game,” he adds. “That is an absolutely heart-rending story set in 2050 when the climate apocalypse has occurred, about two essentially asylum seekers coming from Sudan. One is originally Scottish and the other is Sudanese – two kids – and they are making their way on foot from Sudan to the Isle of Arran, where her family is. It’s about the world as it might be then, where you have
mass migrations of people as a result of vast swathes of the world becoming uninhabitable and what happens to people and communities when they come under that kind of strain.
“I think you can explore that through storytelling in a very powerful way, more powerful than documentaries because you really just want to connect with the impact on people. I think it is also relevant for right now.”
“It’s personal for me to become my mum Venus came here from Iran in the 70s, and she was stateless essentially for years when the Revolution happened. She never really knew she was stateless, until we talked it through. She was allowed to work, she was allowed to study, her family was fine and taken care of, never ostracised , I never experienced any racism growing up or anything like that.
“I just think my mum’s experience and my experience shows what is possible
if we just decide to do it in a compassionate way.”
And in work, as in life, its about relationships, he says. “It all comes down to people, ultimately. I think finding those you can trust to work with, knowing you are all aligned and pulling in the same direction, you can do anything, you can compete against the biggest companies out there with a small team.
“The degree of backing that we have had, mixed between private and public investment, has been phenomenal ... it’s the only reason we are here.”
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