Tom Lawes
ECLECTIC ELECTRIC
Creating sound for the screen
Tom started his career as a live sound engineer, before a quirk of fate saw him behind a video camera, directing and writing music for his first low-budget horror film. In 2004, after 13 years of working with clients such as the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and SEGA, Tom bought and restored Birmingham’s derelict Electric Cinema.
This historic building now houses his recording studio and has also reopened to the public as a cinema.
Tom’s first slides showed the oldest photo of the Electric’s staff in 1911, the frontage of the cinema as ‘The Tatler’ in 1936 and later as a News Theatre, one of the Ushers in 1937 and a picture of the cinema looking very run down in 1999.
Many people remember seeing, around this later period, the mannequins that were positioned in each window frame. This was apparently an artwork titled ‘Thatcher’s Children’ by John Buckley, but the visual effect perhaps only served to make passers by think that the cinema catered exclusively to a rather unsavoury audience. It took Tom a lot of hard work in the first few months of his residency to restore the Electric’s frontage to its former glory. He continued to carry out much of the remaining building work himself. Running his recording studio on site in order to maintain an income as the cinema side of the business was further developed i.e. by securing a liquor licence and being marketed as a ‘boutique cinema’.
With his ancestors hailing from Glastonbury, it’s fitting that, at a relatively young age, Tom left home (with his guitar) to pursue his musical ambitions and by the age of 18 he was a live audio engineer at Earth Studios in Lozells, Birmingham.
It wasn’t until 1991 that Tom had the opportunity to use a video camera and worked on his first film. We were treated to a glimpse of this fledgling career with clips from ‘Camping in Hell’ and ‘Hover Homicide’. A co-conspirator was Adam Trotman who worked at the BBC’s Pebble Mill and it wasn’t long before Tom was also working there, composing music for TV Dramas.
Any spare time was spent making more films, such as ‘Rhino Bitch’ (shot on Hi-8). To start with, in 1994, soundtracks were produced using an Atari Falcon. In 1997, Tom embarked on his first and only feature length film ‘Demagogue’. This was the first such film to be shot on Mini DV and then edited offline on Beta SP during Pebble Mill downtime. The sound was completed over a nine month period using only a 1GB hard drive, costing £1,100, to mix 8 audio tracks. In total the film took 21 months to make at a total cost of around £3,000. It was released commercially on VHS in 1998.
This led to employment at SEGA, where Tom’s music and video expertise was employed on Games such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Banzai and The Weakest Link. He also produced music for slot machines, using just one synthesiser to create complex tracks that sounded like a full orchestra.
Working as a freelancer from 2002, at his house in Kings Heath, Tom annoyed his neighbours with his mixing desk and large numbers of performers recording material around the clock. Two years later The Electric Cinema came up for sale and the initial attraction for Tom was that it would provide a premises more suited to his sound studio requirements.
At first, only one screen/stage space was used as a cinema and the other as the sound studio but now Tom has moved his studio to the basement in order to maximise the number of seats available. With the recent opening of the Electric’s Screen 2 cinema, the midlands first all digital screen, the cinema is regularly busy and turnover is increasing steadily year on year. There is now 15 staff employed by the company. The interior design of the sound studio was inspired by the St Paul’s Gallery in Birmingham and the set from 2001 A Space Odyssey; Tom showed us how lighting is employed to change the colour and appearance of the windowless basement room. The studio is constructed with super dense ‘fermacell’ boards and high density rockwool insulation material.
The next clips we saw were examples of the studio’s output and demonstrated a variety of applications. There was the soundtrack for an animation ‘Reshaping the Railways’, some of the ‘BBC Local News’ rebranding trailers and promos for ‘Children in Need’. One particularly effective piece was a commercial for ‘Radio Solent’ for which Tom was asked to create a track that sounded like ‘Hawaii 50’, where the trick was to match the beats of the original score. Another example was music for a ‘Balfour Beatty’ Ad where the request was for it to sound like the ‘Vision On’ theme – the challenge being to recreate the many types of instruments and sounds used in such a jazz ‘feel’ track.
Using a DM2000 Mixing Desk, Tom is able to record audio and mix at the same time, an example was the mock up Orchestra score he produced for the ‘Trans Pennine Express’ Ad. Mixing in 5.1, a track can be laid with effects that make sounds the way you expect them to be – matching the visuals. The fashion in films has previously been to make things sound much bigger than they actually are, although Tom explained that the current trend is heading towards a more realistic sound that is a bit grittier.
Tom also works as a Critic for Radio WM, Film Critic for the BBC Asian Network and writes for magazines. He’s recently reviewed Baz Luhrmann’s latest film ‘Australia’. Another strand of his work involves the ‘Electric Orchestra’ which has grown from 5 to 22 members, regularly giving live performances. We heard their version of ‘Live and Let Die’ which was clearly a stunning performance and a superb recording. No wonder Tom wants to expand the work of the Electric Orchestra in the future, we look forward to seeing and hearing more from these outstanding musicians.
There followed many questions from the audience and Tom continued to amaze us with his breadth of knowledge and experience. The discussion covered equipment details, hardware and software used, running costs, charges for sound mixing, the percentage of original composition work against pastiche tracks, future revenues and convergence.
Tom spoke with pride about his achievements and quite rightly so, it’s the cinema’s Centenary next year and when New Street Station is redeveloped its main entrance will be directly opposite this icon of Birmingham’s heritage. The future looks bright for the Electric Cinema and Sound Studios, so much so that in addition to thanking him, we must congratulate Tom for the BCC Creative City ‘Outstanding Business Development’ Award he received at the ICC just two days after taking the time to speak at our event. It’s well deserved and great to see his efforts acknowledged and rewarded in this way. The Electric’s contribution to Birmingham’s status as a Centre for Creativity and an Industry Hub is an example and an inspiration to us all, long may it prosper.
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