Associate Company Director – TOM SMETHAM (Red Button Films LA)

Los Angeles based, British born and a huge fan of film and the arts, Tom began his career at ITV in 2001. There he formed a working relationship with Factory Records (Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays) boss Tony Wilson. Tom began to film Tony’s “In The City” music convention. In less than 4 years at ITV Tom had moved through the ranks to producer level, taking with him 2 Royal Television Society Awards on the way for “Best News Programme” and “Best Regional Programme”.

He went on to form Versus Cancer with The Smiths bass player Andy Rourke. Annually he has been able to set up a full outside broadcast unit and have up to ten cameras covering the event (see artists filmed by directors of RBF). The concert has attracted tens of thousands of fans to the MEN Arena in Manchester and has raised close to a million pounds toward fighting cancer.

Tom was headhunted by Tony Wilson to organise all the panels and daytime content for Europe’s largest city based music convention “In The City” attracting musical luminaries from all over the world. In addition to the panels, the huge annual event showcases soon to be famous unsigned bands. He manages all aspects of the event filming.

Now with ten years experience in all aspects of filming, Tom runs the RBF USA office and is currently working as a video games scriptwriter with Eutechnyx.