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CSI Files

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Brown: It's Still Exciting

By Rachel
May 19, 2009 - 5:12 PM

Composer Bill Brown used his talents to segue from video games to scoring every episode of CSI: New York.

When Brown joined the industry 12 years ago, he started out scoring video games and commercials. His commercial work allowed him to expand his resume. "I was meeting directors and getting into scoring films - starting with a short film by Jim Sonzero and a film for USA television directed by Deran Sarafian called Trapped," Brown explained to Game Hunters.

"It just happened that Deran was filming the pilot of CSI: NY a few years later and gave me a call," he continued. "I composed about 15-20 minutes of new music in a style that was inspired by the pilot, and put together a DVD with the music synced up to some aerial footage Deran had just shot of New York City from a helicopter, which we shared with the producers of the show. The next thing I knew, I was scoring the pilot and then the show."

"Five years later, we're wrapping up season 5 of CSI: NY and after 118 episodes, it's still just as exciting to work on for me as the pilot was," Brown revealed. However, writing for a television show is different than writing for a video game. "The main difference is that the action in a film or TV series is linear after the picture is locked - it's always the same," he explained. "With games, the action in non-linear - always changing. The challenge remains the same for both - to create music that is interesting, fresh, soulful, thematic and brings an added dimension to the scene or level that wouldn't be there without the music."

The original interview is from Game Hunters.

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