WAMG: Speaking of animation, you wrote the music for Dreamworks Dragons: Riders Of Berk, which is based off of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON.

JP: Animation is one of those genres where you can still be extremely musical, still be extremely thematic. It’s a very unencumbered space for a composer. A lot of scores for animated films these days are very, very musical. When you’re doing live actions films, you try to work the music to scene. You want it to be felt and not heard. With animation music, you’re right up there with the characters. It’s walking hand in hand. I love the challenges of all the different genres.

WAMG: I love HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, especially John Powell’s score. How did you take someone else’s film score and make it your own?

JP: John Powell is a hero of mine. There’s no one better in animation than John. I got the job after a long audition process, consisting of demos and meetings. It’s DreamWorks first produced television series. They took their time with it. DRAGON was nominated for 2 Oscars and when it came time for the TV show, they wanted to stay true to the movie and what John accomplished with the music.

When I initially got it, my first thought was, “I’m so excited. I get to be like John Powell. I get to work with all this music that I love.” The next, immediate thought after was, “oh man, I have to deliver music like John Powell.” (laughs) It was one of those things – be careful what you wish for. John is such a talent and so amazing, and I wondered how I was going to live up to this?

The thing with DRAGONS: Riders Of Berk, we used John’s music as much as we possibly could, but with episodic TV, you have to be careful not to keep bashing people over the head with the same theme on a weekly basis. We used a score that was in the spirit of John’s music. The trick was to use those themes that were the fabric of the movie – Hiccup, Toothless, all the characters – and at the same time take the score in another direction and to different places. I think we did a good job in doing that. I’m very proud of that and we’re going into a third & fourth season right now. It’s moving to NetFlix and the next season looks absolutely amazing.

It just keeps getting better and better. It’s a lot of work, but I’m excited to be on it and it’s a fun challenge every week.

WAMG: Do you prefer the standard orchestra instruments like woodwinds and strings and percussion, over the “natural sounding” techniques you used in THE MAZE RUNNER?

JP: As much I love using a full orchestra, I use everything. I grew up with the classical, orchestral guys like John Barry, Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams and then as I progressed, I started listening to the modern predecessors such as Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman. They started incorporating more hybrid sounds and the more modern elements of music with the orchestra. To me, the orchestra is another color of the score, another tool to use to convey the story.

I don’t consider myself a purist by any means, but I do think the orchestra is an essential and major component of a film score. There’s no better group of instruments to convey human emotions than the orchestral instruments. It has such range, warmth and variety. Plus it’s a sound that’s so ingrained in people’s minds of what film scores sound like because it is such an intregal part of the score.

WAMG: Thanks for talking to us and best of luck with THE MAZE RUNNER and the third season of DRAGONS: Riders Of Berk.