George Shaw

Beginning in the early 2000s, composer and orchestrator George Shaw channeled a childhood passion for cartoons, superheroes, fantasy, and science fiction into an expansive body of work spanning film, trailers, television, video games, live events, and numerous popular YouTube projects. His debut scripted feature, the horror film Marcus, arrived in 2006, after which he supplied music for series such as The Division, Film Lab Presents, and Escape the Night during the 2010s while also scoring independent features and many shorts, among them The Hobbit Games (2012) and Star Wars Musical (2014). Entering the 2020s, Shaw contributed to the animated feature Little Sorcerer and the television series Abominable and the Invisible City.

Raised in Houston, Texas, Shaw mastered several instruments and drew early inspiration from composers including John Williams, Alan Silvestri, and Alan Menken. Relocating to Los Angeles, he pursued studies in classical and film/media composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. He soon began orchestrating for pictures such as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Ghost Rider. Although he continued to score numerous independent features and short films, Shaw achieved his broadest early recognition by creating music for widely followed YouTube channels and creators, amassing millions of streams through partnerships with figures like Michelle Phan, the Fung Brothers, and Wong Fu Productions, as well as musical artists David Choi, Jason Chen, and Abraham Lim. He received sole composer credit on the 2003 documentary Missing Peace before making his feature-length horror debut with Marcus in 2006.

Among his notable later projects were the 2010 comedy short Agents of Secret Stuff and the 2014 Star Wars Musical parody. Subsequent feature scores included the comedies Baby Steps (2015) and Out of Your Mind (2016). During this period Shaw collaborated with Stan Lee on the song “Ode to Geeks,” written for Lee’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the first Geekie Awards, where Shaw served as music director from 2013 to 2015; he also composed for dozens of episodes of the Wil Wheaton-hosted game show TableTop (2013-2015) and the fantasy series Escape the Night (2016-2019). In 2019, Shaw, who is of Chinese descent, was selected for the Universal Film Composer Initiative, the first studio program dedicated to fostering diverse voices in film scoring.

To begin the new decade he worked on an array of projects, among them the 2020 video game Bounty Battle (credited as Adhesive Wombat), Alle Hsu’s 2021 short Unread, the 2022 animated feature Little Sorcerer (also known as Cinderella and the Little Sorcerer), and DreamWorks Animation’s Abominable and the Invisible City, released in October 2022.