Expression alumni, Andre La Velle won the 2006 Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) award for Best Arrangement of a Non-Original Score for his work on The Godfather game.  Now an audio specialist at Electronic Arts, La Velle began working on The Godfather game as an intern in May 2004 – just after graduating from Expression College. 

As an intern, La Velle did 5.1 sound design and music editing for pre-production game concept movies, created runtime proto-types of car engines for use in The Godfather runtime engine using Electronic Arts’ proprietary complex sound tools, and learned the Electronic Arts’ proprietary music tool and developed a proto-type of The Godfather runtime music engine. 

Because of his dedication, hard work and music degree, in July 2004, La Velle became the music supervisor for The Godfather.  In his new role, La Velle designed and created the logic system that ran the music engine, worked with composers to develop interactive music that plays in the game, edited the music for the in games movies and cinematics, did sound design and music editing for marketing trailers, and recorded dialog.

“Working on The Godfather at EA for almost three years now has been such a wonderful and satisfying experience for me because I was able to combine my passion and background in music with my love for gear and things technical.  Also, getting my head wrapped around the non-linear/interactive aspect of games really made me think about music composition and sound design in new and exciting ways that always stretched my imagination.  In addition, I feel very lucky to be working with such a great team and group of mentors at EA - as well as being a part of a very supportive interactive audio community with G.A.N.G.  I look forward to learning more about and continuing to advance interactive music and audio on future projects,” said La Velle.

The 5th Annual G.A.N.G. Awards were held at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA. The evening was hosted by G.A.N.G. Founder Tommy Tallarico and President Paul Lipson, and featured performances by industry veterans.

This year’s winners were voted and judged upon by the game audio industry and members of G.A.N.G.