It’s “Open Season” For Composer Shawn Clement

by Louis Bedigian

“If it's a TV show, commercial, whatever, I don't care. I still approach it like a film.”

Roughly 13 years ago, a young, aspiring composer by the name of Shawn Clement arrived in LA. He was on a mission: to break into film and TV. “When I first got to town I was still playing gigs and things like that,” he says, telling me a bit about himself before going into his latest project, Open Season. “I was playing in bands with movie stars turned musicians. I was playing with Don Johnson and people like that. It was interesting because it gave me an introduction to a lot of film people. [At the time] I didn't know anybody. I started doing that whole circuit, and I started off doing indie things or no money things. I worked in the mailroom at Sony Pictures. Through that I met a lot of people.”

His first gig landed him in the world of daytime television, taking on soap stalwarts like Days of Our Lives and Guiding Light. But his first really big project came in the form of a cartoon called Savage Dragon. “Right after that I got my first reality show. It was before 'reality' was even the term used.”

That show was the World’s Scariest Police Chases. “I came aboard, did that, and at the time it was Fox's biggest-rated special of all time,” the composer says enthusiastically. “Okay, we're doing another one. So we ended up doing six of them. Then that turned into a series, which ended up being three different series. [So] I got really caught up in that whole world. Now reality television is huge. It's a fluke.”

Fluke or not, it led to more work, which in turn led to more exposure. “A year later I ended up doing Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It just kept rolling and I kept getting show after show after show. Reality was new at the time, and any time someone was doing a reality show, I got the gig. I did a bunch of stuff for Fox, NBC, all that kind of stuff.”

But wait – how does all this fit into the world of gaming?

Shawn explains: “Now in the middle of all that the Hollywood Reporter (this is how I got into video games) was doing this thing called the composer registry. The idea was to have all the composers up on their Web site. The thought was that the entertainment industry goes to the Hollywood Reporter because it’s like the trade magazine. They thought this would be a one-stop shop for producers to look up composers. They kind of used me as a guinea pig because I’m really tight with a lot of people over there. They put your bio up, your picture, some samples of your music. The idea was that the composer would pay to be up on the site.”

The side effects of being involved with the Hollywood Reporter’s devious experiment? A call from Ubisoft. “This guy called me and said, ‘I think you’d be perfect for this game.’ They were doing a Donald Duck game. Donald Duck Going Quackers. And I’m like, ‘I don’t really know anything about games. Why do you think I’m right for the gig?’ Everything I had done up until that point had been really big horror/action-y stuff. And they’re calling me about a Donald Duck game.”

Though he tried, Shawn couldn’t fight the gaming community forever. They were going to get a hold of him whether he liked it or not.

“They sent me some things about the game and I thought, ‘Wow, this is really cool!’ It [turned out to be] a chance to write some really cool stuff. In film and TV it’s awesome, but you’re part of a bigger picture, so-to-speak. You play a part of it, but you’re not a featured thing. The cool thing about the video game is that now the music was a featured element. And they really care about it. In film and TV the schedules are insane. It’s like, ‘Okay, here’s three days. Come back with a score, we gotta get done.’ These guys [video game developers] are really into it. They seem to know about the music.”

The result: more gigs, more industry exposure, a brand-new audience, and a new venue for creative expression. “I got to write a lot of cartoony music. A lot of big-band stuff, which I don’t normally have the opportunity to work with.”

Next came two Batman games (“It was more in the style I’m used to writing, but more involved”), an outing with Tarzan, the World’s Scariest Police Chases (“A no-brainer because I had done the show and could bring those elements to the game”) and Need For Speed Most Wanted.

Next up: Open Season, Ubisoft’s adventure title based on the upcoming animated flick from Sony Pictures. 

Video games are starting to sound more realistic, but in the old days they used a lot of artificial sounds. Did you think about that all? What direction did you take?

Shawn Clement: Like I said, my background is not in video games. I know for a lot of video game composers that this is their whole world. I don’t approach it from a video game standpoint at all. I just go by my sensibilities as a film and TV composer. I look at the characters and say, “Okay, who are they, what is their focus and purpose in the game?”

You have to think about technical elements. What can we do in this game? What can we get away with? So it’s really – okay, a hunter shows up. What kind of hunter is he if there are different types of hunters in the game? Boog is supposed to avoid these hunters, scare them and whatnot. What kind of a hunter is this and what kind music can we associate with this type? That’s going to be his theme.

That’s how I approached it for the parameters they gave me. “It’s gotta be a 30-second clip, and it’s gotta loop.” Okay. “And it’s a confrontation with Boog.” That’s it, that’s the direction I got.

Stylistically, what did you end up with?

SC: The biggest difference on this project (and I think across the board for any project)… I have worked on a lot of different styles, and I get called for anything eclectic. I can change gears quickly. However, having said that, this game is, for lack of a better word, hillbilly and country-esque kind of music. I’ve done it before, but never on a big scale where we’re going full country on the whole project. This was kind of a first. But they didn’t really want to go hardcore country, they wanted to go folky. They also wanted to go rock, and they wanted to keep it contemporary.

I had to write a lot of music, about 150 pieces for this project. It was a lot of full-on banjo-picking. I’m a guitar player and I play a lot of instruments. I play the banjo, but I’ve never had to play that much banjo [laughs]. It was cool because a lot of the gigs I do are big orchestral things, and this got me back into playing my instrument. But it was also challenging.

What kind of visuals did they give you for Open Season?

SC: It was well on its way when I came on board. They had maps in place, things like that. They were able to send me QuickTime videos of some of the gameplay. It wasn’t final content, but you could see the characters moving around. So I got to see how the game looked.

There was a lot of talking with the creative team as far as what they wanted, like descriptions about what each character did. They associated instruments with the characters, which I think is what the movie did, and they wanted to match the movie as much as possible. However, when I came on board, there was no movie score yet. So it was a lot of guessing. They knew certain things, but the squirrels were Scottish, so we want to use bagpipe-type stuff. Boog they associated with bass. He’s the main character, he’s the bear.

That was really it. I didn’t see a script or anything like that. It was just me looking at some gameplay and dealing with the creative team. I had worked with Ubisoft before, so they knew my style. They wanted me to bring those sensibilities to this project.

How do soap operas differ from games, film and TV?

SC: That was at the beginning of my career, so I was taking any gig I could get. Doing soap operas was like putting together a library. I’m a very visual person. I prefer working with pictures. I like to write to a scene. Working on soap operas, they’d literally call me and say, ‘We need 10 mysterious cues.’ The parameters were that they had to be three to four minutes long, and they had to be done by the end of the week. They do the show every day, so there is no scoring to picture. Basically you write all these cues, and then their music editor or supervisor gets the episode and they’ve gotta piece together a score of all these cues. It was not the way I prefer to work, but it was a way into the industry.

What’s really interesting about the video game stuff is that aside from the cinematics, the way that kind of relates to soap operas is that I’m not writing to picture. A lot of it’s gameplay, and nobody can see imagery to get an idea of what the maps are like. I kind of used the same sensibilities that I had in the soap opera days, which was writing cues based on the emotion that they tell you. But [because of it] have this sort of creative freedom. Whereas when you work with picture you look at the film and say, “Okay, this is what I gotta do.”

So when you work on a movie, they always bring you in after it’s been filmed?

SC: It all depends. Everyone’s got their own process. They’re all different. They might send you a script. But I only start writing when I got a locked copy of the edit. When the film’s shot, that’s when I like to come on board.

I’ve worked with people who just have a script and they want me to start getting ideas. But I like to go with first impressions. I don’t like to look at the script and start forming ideas. Some composers do that and start writing melodies, and that’s cool.

The bands you played in before (with guys like Don Johnson) – how did you get involved with that?

SC: That was kind of a weird thing. When I first came to LA, a friend of mine (that I knew from Berkley) called me up one day. He was in the record business. He said, “Hey, I know you really want to get in the film and TV world. I think I have a way for that. I’ve got this girl, she’s an actress/model and she wants to have a record deal. She’s a country singer. I wasn’t into country but didn’t care, I’ll play anything. He said she’s connected, why don’t you come out here. “She’s got a bunch of showcases set up. You’ll play guitar, meet a bunch of people…” I said, “Alright, I’ll do it.”

So I did that, and I was in all kinds of circles of film and TV people. So I was just schmoozing, schmoozing, schmoozing. Between that, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, he’s a guitar player. He’s played with Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers., he’s played with everybody. When I was a kid he used to work at my dad’s music store back in Boston. So I didn’t really know him ‘cause I was a kid. Then he became famous and that was it. Well, when I was here in LA I said, “I’m gonna call Jeff Baxter.”

I called him and we connected, and he would throw me gigs. Through him and through this chick that I was playing with, I would meet people. At that time, all these guys had their own bands. They’d play at these clubs where you had to be on the list to get in. All the stars hung out there. They’d get up there and play a set. They were easy gigs, and I was surrounded by all the people I wanted to meet. I wanted to get into the business, and that’s how I got onto that circuit.

Before that, as a teenager, I had my own band. I had endorsements with different companies and play around the country. I’d be somewhere and play with BB King or Eddie Van Halen. And this was as a teenager. I ended up playing with all these guys. It was pretty amazing.

Ultimately I did not end up with a career as a guitar player. I tried, but I also wanted to be a film composer for as long as I can remember. Since I was 12. I wrote as much as I played. But I couldn’t see myself 40 years old and still playing games [laughs]. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not for me.

Tell us about your experience working on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

SC: It was great. Stylistically it was great for what I like to do. I like [create] more of a dramatic element. But Buffy was an interesting show because it wasn’t a scary show, it was a serious show with real drama. It elements of suspense, action, and thriller in there. You don’t get bored because you can do a lot of different styles. I like to move around the palette and do a lot of different things. That show was cool for that. In its kind of comic book world – kind of – you are able to explore many different avenues of music. Everyone on the show was top-notch. It was a great experience, and a great career move.

When did you start working on Buffy?

1997, at the beginning of the second season.

Were you the sole composer at that time?

SC: No. That season they alternated composers. The first season they only did 13 episodes, and they had a guy named Walter Murphy. By the time the second season came around they didn’t want to use Walter anymore. I don’t think that [series creator] Joss Whedon was very happy with it. I think he felt he was getting his standard TV music. Now I thought what Walter did was great. I don’t watch the show either. I knew nothing about it when I got the gig.

I think Joss wanted it to be more cinematic. I think the problem with a lot of composing is when people do a TV show they treat it like a TV show. When they do a film they treat it like a film. When they do a video game they treat it like a video game.

I approach them all the same way. I want it to be this big cinematic experience. If it’s a TV show, commercial, whatever, I don’t care. I still approach it like a film. I know Joss wanted Buffy to be more like a movie, and some how he heard that in what I had done. And all he had heard that I had done was literally a cassette tape of a piece of the score I did on that cartoon series I mentioned, Savage Dragon. From one episode. And that’s what he hired me from, which was bizarre because that music was like a Trent Reznor kind of thing. I don’t know. I guess he heard something in that, and thought it would work for Buffy.

Stay tuned for more with Shawn Clement about his work on Open Season and other upcoming projects in Part 2 of our in-depth interview.