In what represents a new start for 19-year-old New York-based Sutcliffe Music & Sound Design, the company has relaunched itself as Wax Music & Sound Design and has formed an affiliation with Multi Video Group, the parent company to a number of production/postproduction-related businesses.
Gary Sutcliffe, who had served as president/executive producer of Sutcliffe Music since he founded it in’81, now assumes the CEO title at Wax. Although the music house will retain its home base in the Flatiron district, plans call for Wax to open a branch studio at Multi Video Group’s 42nd Street facility within the next few months. Another full-time producer will be hired to run that office.
Via the affiliation, Wax will now have the opportunity to collaborate on projects with other companies under the Multi Video Group banner, including Rhinoceros Editorial & Post; Rhinoceros Visual Effects & Design; Cool Beans Digital Audio; and film/video HD production company Wall To Wall Films, all of which are New York-based. Multi Video Group also holds a minority ownership stake in Oberhausen, Germany-headquartered visual effects/ design shop Digital Renaissance. Additionally, Multi Video Group has an association with Tel Aviv-based visual effects/design company Gravity.
At press time, Wax was working on a Wall To Wall project for the Bridgestone tires spot "Mall Granny," via Tokyo-based Dentsu. The ad, helmed by Wall To Wall director K. Doran Smith, is slated to air in the Japanese and European markets.
"People on the supplier side always talk of [their desire] to get involved with the creative product earlier in the evolution of a project," said Sutcliffe. "This gives us that opportunity."
David Binstock, president of Multi Video Group and Rhinoceros, said, "I think [Wax] is a pretty dynamic little group. [Their addition] rounds us off as a full-service organization to the commercial world. We’ve always had editorial, we have graphics, film transfer—just about every component that could possibly go into making a commercial. Now we have music and sound. This will be another important step in our growth. Our plan is to go global."
According to Sutcliffe, the affiliation with Multi Video Group represents a "tremendous opportunity" for the music house, which also includes composer/sound designer James Wolcott; composer/producer Ed Turbin; Wax producer/composer Tara Gregory; head of production/chief engineer Chris Arbisi and studio/business manager Callie Janoff.
"The thing that attracted me the most to the Multi Video Group of companies," explained Sutcliffe, "was their desire to do things aggressively and in a very creative fashion. Both of us had a lot of interest in the other because we have a lot of similar goals, in terms of business and creative."
Sutcliffe began to seriously consider his options a year ago after having open-heart surgery on Jan. 14, ’99. "I’d not been feeling well for about six months [before surgery], and the health situation was definitely something that contributed to my wanting to do something very different. Even prior to that time, we’d been [looking at] the range of technology, industry changes and creative opportunities. It was a choice between retiring—and I’m not at the age to retire—and analyzing what I’d do if I were to take a clean piece of paper and start over again. I decided to go in a whole new direction, and to do that, you can’t just change the name. You have to start over, so we did."
Although the alliance with Multi Video Group officially went into effect last month, Sutcliffe said he had started affecting changes over the past year. Chief among them was his decision to move away from composing and to add new talent such as Wolcott, a specialist in electronica and experimental music, and Turbin, a DJ/trance music aficionado.
The music house has also established an international network of recording artists and independent record labels, which Wax will be able to access for original compositions or music licensing. Gregory said that this worldwide roster of artists is also available to collaborate with Wax’s composers on projects.
