How did Clement earn the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) award for Most Performed Underscore for TV and Film in 2000, only 5 years after being in the film scoring business?

Clement had a slew of heavily syndicated prime time hit shows on ABC, NBC, Fox, WB, and UPN; which included "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "The Man Show," and every reality show with the words "World's most", "World's Deadliest", "World's Wildest" or "World's Scariest" in the title. "Part of it is luck," said Clement, "because you don't know how often something is going to play on TV. Everything I was doing got really high ratings and kept playing. At the time those were the only existing reality shows."

Clement continues to score music for TV shows, video games and movies. In ten years he has accumulated over 130 show credits on his resume.

Clement is very fond of scoring music for video games. He did his first video game in 2000, "Donald Duck Goin' Quackers." Never having played games, he bought his first Playstation 2 and became hooked himself. "My wife and I were addicted to the game," Clement said. "We lost so much time playing the damn game. But it was totally cool."

When he scored "Donald Duck" the only reference he had was some pictures of worlds and rough animation of Donald Duck walking. "When I saw the finalized game it was amazing because I had never seen any of it," Clement said. "'Open Season' was a lot further ahead. I got to see a lot of the maps and rough animation. I got to play some of it"

Clement has also scored music for "The Sims 2," "Batman's Vengeance" and "Rise of Sin Tzu," "Tarzan Untamed" and the upcoming "Kim Possible: What's the switch."

Comparing video game music to TV and film music, Clement said, "In a score it's background music. In a video game it's the focus. All you've got is your game playing and the music."

An even bigger difference is the puzzle of interconnecting cues that have to be created. Said Clement, "It has to fit the mission your playing, but it also has to loop. It also has to be able to transition to another cue and not sound weird. When I did 'Donald Duck' you'd have a map with this mission. But within that mission there were four different cues. Once you got past a certain point in the map it would switch to the next cue. You don't know how long it takes the player. So you design the cue so that when a mark is hit it would go to a short phrase, transition to the next cue, and be seamless."

The other difference between video game music and TV or film music is the time pressure put on Clement. A typical TV show demands Clement write, record and produce a score in three to five days. A video game can take 6 months to a year as he writes to the pieces of games as they are being created. "With a TV show they say 'yeah, yeah, come back in three days with a score' but with a video game they really talk about it. They're really into it," said Clement.

So how much work goes into writing and recording a minute of music? "Not all minutes are created equal," said Clement. "One five-minute tune is easier than writing five one-minute tunes because those are five mixes, five setups, five times the amount of work. When I did 'Open Season' I did about 250 cues, but a lot were five or 10 seconds long. At that rate getting a minute done a day is almost impossible." When Clement scores a one-hour TV show with 20 to 25 minutes of music he records 5 to 8 minutes of music a day.

The typical work day for Clement starts at 10 AM and ends at 3 AM. It goes even longer on more demanding projects. In 2003, when he scored "TV Guide's Greatest Moments" for ABC, he was given four days to do 90 minutes of music. Clement was up for four days straight until the music was finished. Because the picture was not "locked," an editor had to work alongside Clement to fit the music to the constant new edits of the show that kept showing up during those four days.

Typically Clement only works to a locked picture. When a director wants to edit film that has already been scored Clement said "You have to re-make the music. You have to re-record it. It's a much more involved process. It's like having to go and re-shoot the scene."

Referring to music's role in supporting a movie Clement said, "Watch a thriller without the music and nothing's happening. Put the music in and it's creating all the mood." Clement has described music as a narrative character in the film. But can music hurt a film? "A bad score can ruin a movie. Music in the wrong spot can ruin a scene." What if the film is a stinker? "A good score might not help it. If something's bad it's just bad." When a poor film tries to mask its quality with wall-to-wall music Clement said "the music serves no purpose because it's continuous. It doesn't have any highs or lows. It has no impact."

Clement has been careful to maintain the rights to any unused cues from a TV show or cues from independent films. This work compiles the massive Clemistry Music library which he supplies to recent shows like the hits "American Idol," "So you think you can dance," and "America's got talent."

Because of all the "Police video" shows and "World's most" shows Clement has earned a reputation as the TV reality show king, a label that is a blessing and a curse. "You would think it gets easier as you move up the ladder and it just gets harder. You're judged by the shows that you did. You can't pick what you got. It limits you to what you're gonna get. It's based on a lot of luck. You gotta meet the right person that understands what you do and agrees that it fits their project." He has scored films such as "We Married Margo," "A fate totally worse than death," and the animated "2004 a light knights odyssey" as well as a host of independent films. Recently he has done more reality TV shows like "Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica" and "Are you hot" and other shows like "Queer eye for the straight girl."

The film composing world is a highly competitive business according to Clement. "It's a very political business. It's a dog eat dog world. Everybody wants your job. There's thousands of composers now. With technology almost anyone can have a home studio. With all these cable channels they think there's all this work." But most of those jobs are not the big-budget jobs a new composer thinks they are going to get, he said. Most of those jobs are dominated by the same established composers. Once a person decides to be a film composer "you gotta really commit" said Clement.

Clement, a Berklee College of Music alumnus, stresses the importance of learning all different music styles to be an effective film composer. "In film scoring you've got to write so many different styles of music. It's ridiculous. You've got to study what makes a style a style, so that you can write in that style and be convincing." he said. About Berklee, Clement said, "It gave me a groundwork for understanding theory, harmony, and counterpoint in a way so that when you're writing it's second nature to you." He said the greatest education for him was the caliber of players he was exposed to from around the world.

A typical composer like Clement writes and records in their own studio using primarily all synthesized parts, supplemented by a few live instruments depending on budgets when scoring TV shows or independent films. Very few shows like "Lost" , “The Simpsons” & "Alias" use a live orchestra. Can anyone tell the difference between Clement and a full orchestra? "I've fooled all kinds of people. The average listener has no idea," said Clement referring to other composers and directors. Few projects can afford an orchestra and even big budget films with an orchestra are supplemented by synthesizers according to Clement. To be a film composer he said "You've got to know production, recording, how to get the sound you want, and how to orchestrate the synth world. To get the results on synth the rules are not the same as with live players."

Clement uses SONAR Cakewalk software to operate his PC-based studio. Carl Jacobson, of Cakewalk, said "Shawn is brilliant with the sounds he creates. He knows what to do intuitively." The easy-to-use SONAR software allows Clement to spend most of his time writing and recording without being slowed down by the technical aspects of the studio equipment. Jacobson called Clement the most prolific film composer he knows of, who gets orchestra-quality recordings in record time due to his "impeccable work ethic."