"It really is its own genre," said Dan Carlin, chairman of the school's film scoring department. "It's also a booming business, and we just want to learn more about it and pass it along to students so they can go out and find work."
The game scores can be entertaining in their own right. A concert series called Video Games Live features songs such as the themes to Space Invaders, Halo and World of Warcraft, performed by symphonies and vocalists. It has been selling out venues across the globe since it debuted before an audience of 11,000 at the Hollywood Bowl in July 2005.
The concert's producers, Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, this summer put out a compilation of 11 songs played during their shows. Within a week, the album hit No. 10 on Billboard magazine's list of top crossover classical albums. Since then, Tallarico said, the CD has sold more than 20,000 copies.
If done right, game music can "turn a powerful experience into a sublime experience," said Ken Levine, whose Boston-based studio, Irrational Games, created the hit game BioShock.
Levine, BioShock's lead developer, was initially skeptical of how music could add to a game. While playing games, he would mute the sound and crank up his own albums.
But Schyman surprised him. In the game's first scene, players find themselves in a once-beautiful world that has slipped into decay as its inhabitants fall victim to a mysterious dark force. Levine said the foreboding score sets the tone for the horrors to come.
"He was able to project the grandeur and collapse of this city with music that had a certain longing in it," Levine said. "Now I can't imagine that scene without Garry's score."
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alex.pham@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Garry Schyman
Profession: Music composer for movies, television shows and video games
Location: Culver City
Age: 54
Education: Bachelor's degree in music composition, USC
Game credits: BioShock, Destroy All Humans, Voyeur, Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers
Film and TV credits: "Magnum, P.I.," "Father Murphy," "Rags to Riches," "Spooky House," "Lost in Africa"
Source: Times research
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About this series
The Work of Play is a series of occasional articles exploring some of the jobs created by the video game industry. For more stories, graphics, photos and videos, visit latimes.com/workofplay.
