Behind the Success of Scotland's Film Industry

In March 2023, St Andrews played host to Netflix’s Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy Award-winning series The Crown as the show sought to recapture the first days of romance between Prince William and Kate Middleton. The streets were barricaded, students posed as extras, Northpoint was transformed into a pizzeria, and camera crews swarmed the town for the duration of filming. It was a brief and exciting time — an instantiation of the Scottish film industry’s growing success.

Of course, Scotland was never a stranger to the big screen. After all, much of what the world knows about the country comes from films like Braveheart (1995) and (perhaps unfortunately) Trainspotting (1996). Throughout the years our beautiful wilderness and versatile cityscapes have served as backdrops for countless Hollywood films and TV shows, from Outlander to Avengers to Indiana Jones. Yet it was not until a handful of years ago that the industry really took off and became, according to one BBC article, a “Hollywood hotspot.”

So what happened? What is it that suddenly made Scotland so attractive to Hollywood? I’ve already given two possible reasons. The first, of course, is the natural landscape. Besides the obvious splendour which led to its being voted the most beautiful country on the planet in 2017, Scotland is in a unique position to the rest of the modern world in being mostly untouched by human hands. This is because the Highland Clearances — essentially the forceful eviction of crofters by wealthy landowners who desired the land for livestock — left much of Scotland uninhabited, and it remains as such today. This, coupled with the fact that almost everything is a short drive away, makes Scotland an ideal place for location filming.

The second reason, as I said, is the versatility of the cities — something which the Head of Screen Commission, Cheryl Conway, remarked to BBC Scotland News. Glasgow in particular seems to be the most versatile, doubling as various cities from New York to London. With its combination of beautiful old buildings like Glasgow University and not-so-beautiful industrial buildings, the city can play a range of characters from high-fantasy to dystopian (although Hollywood obviously seems to favour the latter, as evidenced by Glasgow’s roles in The Batman (2022) and World War Z (2013)).

The thing is, untouched wilderness and versatile cities have always been features of Scotland, so they do little to explain the film industry’s recent success. This, we must instead attribute to the establishment of Screen Scotland in 2018, an organisation funded by the Scottish Government and The National Lottery to drive the development of the country’s film industry. The organisation does many things for the industry, including providing funding to Scottish film and TV productions; providing training and development schemes, such as the Outlander Training Programme, to improve employment opportunities; and attracting international investment by promoting Scotland as an ideal location for filming.

Because of this, they have managed to make incredible progress in just a few short years. Between 2019 and 2021, they helped increase inward investment and HETV (High-End Television) production spend by 110 per cent, from £165.3m to £347.4m; they helped increase the total spent on “the production of film, TV, and other audiovisual content” by 55 per cent in the same period, from £398.6m to £617.4m; and they helped increase the number of full-time equivalent jobs (FTEs) in the production sub-sector by 39 per cent from 5120 to 7150. These factors and more mean that, in 2021, the screen sector alone contributed a whopping £627m in Gross Value Added (GVA) to Scotland’s economy.

But what does it mean for Scotland if this trend continues? At this point, it’s hard to say. Yet whatever the details, the general trend is a promising one: a stronger economy, a flourishing arts sector, and thousands of new jobs have already come as a direct result of Screen Scotland’s efforts over the course of less than three years. And now that they have published their strategy for 2030, part of which includes “an economic growth target of £1 billion,” all that remains is to wait and see if Screen Scotland can deliver once again. 

Image from Wikimedia Commons