In 1998 Petty won a Dramalogue Award for his stage direction of The Midnight Court.
He produced a television pilot detailing his early experiences as an emigrant entitled Dot Ave, and a documentary about traditional Irish Ceilidh dancing called A Gathering.
He also made a short documentary, The Last Chance Saloon, which won an award at the VOV Film Festival in Los Angeles.
Petty made the feature film Manband!, a comedy on ageism, boy-bands and bad dancing which played at the Rat Powered Film Festival in Santa Ana, California,[1] at Chapman University in Orange, California and at the Glor Music Center in Ennis, Ireland.
[2][3] He created the first Irish Spaghetti Western with Sean Nós Dancing with the short film 'The Good the Bad & the Sean Nós Dancer' as a media prototype for his MA In Creative Media at the Tralee Institute of Technology in 2013.