It’s “Open Season” For Composer Shawn Clement, Part 2

by Louis Bedigian

 

“It always seems to work out. It's still crazy, but there's a way to do it. You have to be very disciplined, and I don't sleep a lot.”

 

 

When composer Shawn Clement isn’t working on games, TV shows, commercials, or some other project, you might find his music in the independent film scene.

 

“I have a library that I own of about 1,000 pieces that I wrote,” he says. “All of them at one point were written for a project, but somehow I kept the ownership of them. As a library I license it out. It enables independent filmmakers who don’t have a budget to have a high production-quality score. It’s cheap for them to use, and it creates a new relationship with me and this filmmaker.

 

Regarding relationships, Shawn advices that you “always want to keep making connections with new people.”

 

What else has the film industry taught him?

 

“Ultimately what you do has to preserve what you see on screen. Whereas with a video game, now the music is more of a focal point. Because that’s really all you have. You’re playing a game and you have sound effects and music. You’re not backing dialogue and dramatic tension and things like that.”

 

He adds, “Reality shows are almost like a video game in a way that the whole thing, the whole drama, is being steered by the music. There is some on screen obviously, but it’s not like a regular drama where you’re getting into the characters. The music is a huge driving force.”

 

Furthermore, he stresses that working on Open Season was akin to his experiences with TV, noting that it was the same amount of work. “To me video games had tended to be easier because they had longer schedules. The amount of time you have to write isn’t nearly as grueling as it is on a TV series. With Open Season, because of the amount of music [needed], it really felt like I was working on a TV series.”

 

 

 

 

How was the score for Open Season pieced together?

 

Shawn Clement: Everything was done live except for the orchestral stuff. There was no budget for an orchestra. Everything else was done live, me pretty much playing everything, other than a few things here and there. I didn’t do any of the harmonica stuff. There was one track I didn’t play banjo on. A couple of tracks I didn’t play bass on. But predominately it was me doing everything, other than the orchestra which was done electronically with samplers and synth, things like that.

 

How many songs did that amount to?

 

SC: About 250.

 

How many are they going to be using in the game?

 

Pretty much all of them from what I understand. Another challenge about this project is that a lot of the cues are really short. Many of them are a minute long or two minutes long, or 30 seconds. But then there were a slew of 5- and 10-second cues. Which is really difficult because even though they’re short, you still have to write it, record it, mix it. It’s still the same amount of work.

 

What is the purpose of all those little cues? Are they used as sound effects and/or transitions from scene to scene?

 

SC: They do use them as transitions. Some maps start off with music, but they don’t necessarily want music playing through the whole mission. It’s interesting. I haven’t seen all sections of the game and I don’t know how all of them are being implemented. But a lot of the maps, you’re going to get into it and it’ll start with a little cue, and then they [the characters] are on their own. They’re doing their thing. Then the might be confronted with something and another song kicks in. There’s a lot of music that kicks in for different things. So rather than have a continuous cue, there’s more specified cues for certain actions. It’s almost like real-time.

 

You said that working on this was more like working on a TV show. Which is more difficult?

 

SC: I always say it depends on who you’re working with, but in general I think the hardest gigs out there are doing TV shows because of the schedule. Especially if you’re on an episodic television show because every week you’ve got to deliver a score. You spot the show on a Tuesday and you’ve got to deliver the score on Monday. Then you’re onto the next show on Tuesday. Sometimes you have to deliver it on Friday because they want to make changes over the weekend. You can’t screw up because it’s on the air the following week. So you’re on this constant, grueling schedule. You could have anywhere from five to 40 minutes of music each week and you still have the same amount of time [to work on it] regardless.

 

Movies tend to have more time, but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you get on a movie and you’ve got three weeks to deliver 70 minutes of music. So you could still have those time constraints.

 

However, with a movie it’s its own finite thing. You have certain themes you can carry over with the characters. You can. in a way, re-use some of the same things. With a TV show you’re doing that every week.

 

In a video game, when you have one project with carried over themes, it’s kind of link film. When I said this one [Open Season] is more like TV, I meant because of all the cues. I was on this thing 24/7.

 

 

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You’ve scored a lot of reality TV shows. The thing is, they’re supposed to be “real.” The drama is supposed to happen spontaneously. That seems like a strange thing to score. How do you work on something that doesn’t have a plan – well, something that isn’t supposed to have a plan because it’s—

 

SC: [Laughs] I don’t do as many reality TV shows as I used to. I try to get away from it. The way I approach reality shows is the same way I approach everything else. When I got into reality, at that time, they weren’t like they are today. Today they’re all relationship shows. And they are all scripted, they really are. They’re not reality. They kind of do ‘em like soap operas. They make up a library of cues and then a music editor goes in and cuts them together. They’re not done to picture. They’ll create a series of hits and place them in where they need it.

 

I don’t do that. I still say, “Give me the locked cut. I’m going to score it to picture so it’s like a movie.” That’s how I get around it. So when I’m scoring it, it is like I’m grabbing every emotion.

 

Doing that is a lot harder because they [reality shows] tend to go up to the last minute with their locked cuts. Sometimes I might only have two days to do 40 minutes of music. But I’d rather do that than be working with something that keeps cutting and changing, because I want it to be right [the first time]. Nowadays in the genre, as far as I know, I’m the only one who does it that way.

 

What are your next projects? Video games, movies, TV, anything.

 

SC: Right now… I was juggling eight projects at once. I finally wrapped that stuff and am going on vacation [laughs]. I don’t have anything else that’s solid. I am attached to a bunch of projects. One of the projects that I’m supposed to be doing is a film called Shaky Grounds, which is Clint Howard’s directorial debut. He’s Ron Howard’s brother. I’m attached to that. I’m also attached to a film called Fairies, which is kind of a fantasy film. I was told last week that they have James Cromwell and Heather Graham attached to be in it. But all these things are in pre-production, so anything could change.

 

There’s an animated film, 2004: A Light Knight’s Odyssey, which I’ve been attached to for years. They gotta finish the animation. I’ve already scored most of it. That’s got John Travolta, Samuel Jackson, Christian Slater, Michael York, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Anne Archer and James Earl Jones.

 

Any more games in the works?

 

SC: Not yet. Just talking about some stuff, but nothing solid. I don’t want to say anything incase it didn’t happen. I just did Kim Possible 2, and I know that that company has an upcoming project that they want to talk to me about, but I don’t know what it is. It’s all hush-hush.

 

I worked on this season of American Idol, and that’s coming back around. I just did 26 episodes on Spike’s The World’s Most Amazing Videos. I think they’re gonna do another round of that.

 

Does Kim Possible differ a lot from your other work?

 

SC: I’ve done stuff like it before. It was more of a James Bond mixed with techno stuff. It was all very action-oriented. It’s based on the animated cartoon series, and it was a total last-minute gig. I got that gig at the end of May. I was starting to wind down Open Season and then that game came in. My agent called and said they were ready. Next day you’re on the job.

 

It was cool. A very quick project. Not a lot of music to be written. It was just lightning. They right away sent me some gameplay of the maps, a pre-description of what they wanted. They kept referencing Goldfinger, and the PropellerHeads record, they did a song called On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. They said they liked those elements and they wanted to make it very cinematic. They didn’t want it like the cartoon series.

 

That was it, all the direction I got. They were like Go, write these cues for this map. And they were just one-minute cues that had a loop. It was weird, ‘cause I was juggling that, and then doing the Open Season stuff, which was all this country and southern rock stuff. Then I was doing Most Amazing Videos, which was full-blown action music. Then cues for American Idol, which is more contemporary. And I was working on a couple of indie horror movies at the time. So it was just a little bizarre [laughs].

 

 

Kim Possible doing the impossible (that’s a big shark!).

 

 

How do you balance it all? Do you pick a day of the week, “Monday is this project. Tuesday is that project…”

 

SC: Kind of. It’s really about, I look at where everybody’s at with their schedule and what their deadlines are. Who needs what and when. Each day I make a chart of everything and say, “Okay, I’m doing this today.” And you just go in and do it. You have to re-focus that day on what you’re doing. It’s difficult. I’m used to juggling a lot of projects. I’ve been very fortunate that a lot of times when I get work I have a lot of projects at once. Either I got nothing, or I got four shows. It’s really bizarre. So I’ve been really good at being able to juggle.

 

Schedules always seem to work themselves out [for me]. You always get freaked out. “I’ve got all these gigs, what am I gonna do!? I can’t do it…” And always, someone calls and says they’re going to delay a project a week. It always seems to work out. It’s still crazy, but there’s a way to do it. You have to be very disciplined, and I don’t sleep a lot. There were times when you just have to sit there and go, “Okay, I’ve gotta stay up two days straight. There’s no way around it.” You have to, and you work very fast. At least I do. A lot of guys what they do, they’ll source a lot of stuff out. I don’t do that. There are times when there might be some unimportant cues on a project. Then I’ll bring in someone I know and I trust, and I know what they can do and I’ll give them a couple of cues [to work on]. But for the most part it’s just me writing everything. I’m a firm believer in that. It’s your name on it, so you should write the music.

 

Have you ever been in the middle of one score and thought, “Wow, this would be perfect for another project.” Or maybe that inspires something different for another project, and you’re kind of torn between which one you should work on?

 

SC: I don’t because usually when I’m on multiple projects each one is different. So that won’t work. And I really… If I was just writing and I didn’t have a gig that would happen. But if I have a gig, I get really focused and go just for that gig. If I get an idea I’m going to make it work for whatever I’m doing.

 

I might get an idea and think I can go in several different directions with it, but I won’t move it to a different project.

 

Have you been in the situation where you come up with something great, but that particular project is unable to use it? Are you able to save that music and use it elsewhere? Or does it belong to the company for that particular project?

 

SC: Every deal is different. My general deal across the board has been whatever they don’t use reverts back to me. But it very rarely happens. Very rarely does a cue get left over and not get used. If I’m on an indie film, I’ll cut a deal where I own all the music anyway, so I can use it wherever I want. I can license it somewhere else or not.

 

But working on a big game, or a show like Buffy, they own everything you do. And if they don’t use it I’ll ask that it goes back to me, but they end up using everything.

 

I don’t like to write a whole bunch of music for no reason, and with Buffy there were a couple cues that didn’t get used because they ended up cutting the scene out. Or at the last minute Joss would look at the scene and say, “Oh, you know what would be cool here?” Literally he would do that. “Let’s do this instead!”

 

Or at the spotting he might say, “I don’t know if I want music here, but let’s write something anyway.” And usually you know that if he says that it isn’t going to get used. So it happened a couple of times. With that situation it was a different time in my career, so they owned the music.

 

It’s unfortunate ‘cause those cues end up going absolutely nowhere. And they don’t reuse them. They don’t even reuse the music they have from their shows. You’d think they would, they’ve got this huge library of stuff, but they don’t.

 

Well hey, they paid for it [laughs].

 

 

Thanks for your time Shawn. It was awesome speaking to you.