Buffy The Vampire Slayer

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.”

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.