Interview: Erica Procunier Discusses Her Music for Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go!

Thomas and Friends recently underwent a reboot titled Thomas and Friends: All Engines Go! which currently plays on Cartoon Network in the U.S. and Treehouse in Canada. The new series has been approved for 104 episodes, all of which will be scored by Erica Procunier of Ghostwriter fame.

ComingSoon reached out to Erica to discuss her work on the project and the composer discussed everything from her influences to the challenge of creating new music for the beloved Thomas character.

Erica has also scored for critically acclaimed films such as the misfit comedy Don’t Talk to Irene directed by Pat Mills and Thyrone Tommy’s anxiety-ridden drama Mariner, both of which became official selections at the Toronto International Film Festival. Erica was commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Toronto International Film Festival to compose the score for DAM! The Story of Kit the Beaver, a live film-concert for the celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday. The film premiered live in concert with the TSO and toured to orchestras across Canada.

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Jeff Ames: How did you get involved with film and TV composing? What led you down that path?

Erica Procunier: I think I just decided one day that this was going to be my job. I got inspired and then I did everything I could possibly do to become a film and TV composer. I think a lot of people do a lot of other things and then happen upon scoring. I got inspired by Rachel Portman at the academy awards, and I thought, “Oh, that’s a job that I can do and I think I’d like to do that.” I was super into movies and I would go and watch a movie and then come home and play the music that I heard in the movie on the piano. It was a natural thing for me, I guess.

I like that you mention Rachel Portman because I do remember watching the academy awards and I heard her music for The Cider House Rules and I immediately went out and bought the soundtrack the next day. That was my first introduction to her music. I can understand how you would be inspired by that.

They used to do this thing where they would dance at the Oscars and they would dance to the scores. I was a dancer at the time too and it was the embodiment of everything that I dreamed of! They don’t do the dancing anymore, unfortunately.

The last time I saw that was when they did clogging to the soundtrack of Saving Private Ryan, which was kind of weird.

A little bit interpretive, I guess!

I hear what you’re saying, I think that kind of stuff was great. Did you ever come up with your own dances for the soundtracks you would listen to?

I wasn’t that creative at that age, but I should have!

You have been working on short films and tv shows since about 2006, so how has your music or your approach to music evolved over the years?

I think I am still very focused on melody and there are a lot of scores nowadays, the latter half of this decade. There is a trend toward more atmospheric scoring and I have always been more heavily focused on melodic scores. You can get something really catchy or really embody a character using a melody. Then, I do find myself doing a lot more atmospheric stuff lately, I think that is my progression in my scoring style. I always come back to catchy melodies or those motif-style musical scores. I like having people come away with something memorable. Thomas does have melodies a lot of the time. I am getting to do a lot more suspenseful stuff and darker stuff. And then I have this other side of me that is working on children’s stuff, so I have this dual personality thing going on right now which is kind of interesting.

You have a style that you enjoy using, but then there is a matter of if it fits the project or not. So is it a matter of you applying yourself to a show, like Thomas or Ghostwriter, or are you adapting your style to the show?

I think, in terms of my own personal sound, I can’t be anyone other than myself. So I can never fully blend into a new style of a show or genre of music without myself peeking through that. There is always going to be “Erica” in the score. I do have many facets to my sound, but I don’t try to be somebody else. When it comes to coming up with a sound for Ghostwriter or Thomas, I’m just being me but also wearing that sort of costume. The Ghostwriter stuff was really interesting, it was still really melodic and something that I would totally do, and then it just so happens that I added these mysterious elements to it.

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How much time do you have to work on these projects? Do you get a lot of time to experiment, and work with sounds that you may not be used to doing?

Not really, specifically for the sound of Ghostwriter, the sound was kind of determined in the demo that I submitted. I wrote a theme and it just landed with the showrunner and we hit it off and the aspects of my sound serendipitously gelled with the sound of the show at the time. I assume if I am not the right person for the job, then I won’t land the gig. I end up on shows that really benefit from something that I can bring to the table. I could be super chameleon-like but then again, you never really know what people want in the end anyway. I think they like hearing the individual composers’ voices come through.

With something like Thomas, with 13 episodes and I assume it will have a lot more, and Ghostwriter with 23 episodes, how do you keep it interesting for yourself? The show has to follow the same style but you also don’t want to just keep making the same tunes over and over again, I assume.

With Thomas, specifically, I don’t have to come up with everything from scratch all of the time since some of the cues get reused throughout the show. Whenever there are new characters, I come up with the themes and I write on every single episode. I don’t ever want to re-hash anything. I am always trying to get a brand new idea going, a new musical texture or something we haven’t heard yet in a new style. Oftentimes, every episode is different and it demands new material anyways. For example, I just did this great episode with a Calliope and, if you are familiar with what a Calliope is, it’s this steam engine train but musical instrument all in one. I had to come up with a tune for that but then also the trains themselves decide to use their own whistles to play the Calliope’s tunes. That is a one-off episode, that’s not going to happen again in other episodes. They will travel to a new location and I am writing stuff that is highly specialized to the new place they traveled to.

So there are a lot of ways that you can play with the sound a little bit and keep it interesting for you as well.

Oh yeah! And I actually push myself on purpose and I am not going to copy and paste things. Although, when characters do return it is nice to come back to their original themes that I have established to come up with this cohesiveness. It is also a part of the Thomas canon, where each of the characters have their own theme and I want to continue that.

Speaking of that tradition, did you find it daunting to jump onto something like Thomas and Friends that has this long storied history? Was it nerve racking for you or were you able to jump in there and offer a fresh take to the franchise?

When I knew that we weren’t using the old music, I kind of put that thought out of my head. I grew up watching the show, so I knew all of the music. I specifically did not go back and listen to it, I have gone back and listened to it since then, but I wanted to avoid it because I did not want to have any of that when I was coming in. I am scoring an entirely different show because it’s not model trains, it’s animation. It is a different pacing and energy. The characters move differently so it lends itself to a completely different approach when it comes to the music. I needed to avoid revisiting the old stuff for that particular reason, even though the old stuff is amazing.

What is your reaction when you hear your music on a TV show like this? Has the novelty worn off or is it still exciting?

I think it is still sinking in that I am taking part in this iconic franchise, it only just premiered but I hope that people end up liking it. I hope the new Thomas fans that are growing up now will end up liking it. I think it will sink in when I hear reactions from people about what they like or if it meant something to them. Specifically, with Ghostwriter, I was getting emails from people around the world telling me that they wanted to play the music on the piano. I think that is amazing and I hope that young people really latch on to it and that it makes them happy.

Who knows, maybe in 20 or 30 years, however long the original was on, there will be a new composer that is trying to mimic your style or trying to distance themselves from your style in some way!

Yeah! You never know, right?

Good luck with that and I hope that is a big success for you. Do you have any other projects that you would like to talk about?

Yes, I worked with an actress turned director named Laura Vandervoort, she was on Smallville and Bitten. She directed a short film that is coming out and it is this fantastical horror-leaning story. It is like a magical fantasy world that she is delving into. I had a great time working on that and that will be in festivals coming soon. The name of the film is My Soul to Take.

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