Doug is a curious young bot who senses there is more to life than just the facts. Every day he plugs in for his daily download… and that’s where we come in! We had the bot-tastic fortune of being cast as series songwriters for Doug Unplugs, the first ever collaboration between DreamWorks Animation and AppleTV+.
Our primary job is creating the music video songs that Doug downloads to learn about a topic. He then adventures out with his best friend Emma in search of real-world experience - adventures we’re lucky to score with our frequent partner David Butterfield!
Massive thank you to Aliki, Jim, Dan, Dionne, Alex, Frank, and Matt from DreamWorks Animation for having us on the show ❤️
Plugin Music Videos
The series is based on the book Doug Unplugged by Dan Yaccarino which opens with a similar setup to each of the 11-minute episodes.
In the animated version Doug encounters an object or word he is not familiar with, plugs in for an informational music video, then unplugs and asks a Big Question that only experience can answer. This ritual format is repeated every episode in a story pattern recognizable to our preschool audience.
Early ideas
We came onboard early in the pre-production process to help develop the sound and lyrical style of the plugin songs. Here are some of the original ideas we pitched:
One of the awesome things about writing for animation is imagining the boardroom of executives on the other side debating the merits of your jokes about gravity and ball games.
Pop Demo
The team wanted to move in a more current pop direction and the table tennis song became our focus over the following weeks as we zeroed in on the sound. Here are the roughs:
And here is the produced demo with vocals by Baraka May and Rich Jones:
Some of the repeating elements that came to define Doug plugin songs are bouncy Moog Sub37 bass, OP1/Rev2 pop synths, live acoustic instruments, unusual aux perc, field recorded SFX, and vox performed straight with top 40 production, even if there’s jokes in the lyrics.
Table Tennis Time
Below is the final music video with lead vocal by Mae Whitman, including the ritual moments that lead us in and out of the plugin.
Table Tennis Time music video!
Executive Producers Jim and Aliki talk with Niccole Mucci, lifestyle blogger and mom of two boys, about the music in Doug Unplugs.
Synth Orch Score
Around a year into working on the songs we partnered with David on the score for the series. The team wanted the music to help contrast the world of Rebots, the cool recycling-like facility where Doug and the bots live, with Mega City, the big warm world where Emma and the humans live. The team was also looking to differentiate the score from the the plugin songs by incorporating more traditional orchestral textures.
Here were some of our ideas of how to bring the their vision to life:
This was the first time we’ve had the responsibility for both songs and score for an entire series and there were heaps of suprising benefits.
We often repurposed the song instrumentals for montages and made vocal remixes for the wrap-up scenes and end credits. Sometimes the song inspired the palette of an episode, or we quoted the melody from the hook for Emma’s dialog runner. Or sometimes we even went back and updated the production of the song to match the score.
For me personally this series was a huge step up in leadership in songwriting and score spotting/directing after assisting in these areas on Fast & Cleo. I also got to help produce some of the musical sequences which is my absolute favorite thing to do.
On Ryan’s side, he’s always been an incredible music producer and composer and through Doug has been able to exponentially develop his multi-hyphenate abilities like vocal directing and singing. Also when Ryan was cast as the vocalist for the plugin songs he discovered he loved voice acting which opened up a whole new world and he’s now auditioning for voice roles totally separate to music.
Crew
Some credits related to music!
Series produced by: Aliki Theofilopoulos, Jim Nolan and Dan Yaccarino
Music supervision by: Alexandra Nickson and Frank Garcia
Music coordination by: Matt Manna (and Elliott-Ward Bowen for the first few episodes)
Executive in charge: Dionne Nosek
Theme song by: The Cut
Songs by: Ryan Lofty and Courtney Lofty
Score by: Ryan Lofty and David Butterfield
Additional music & music assist by: Brandon Liew
Plugin song vocals by: Ryan Lofty, Keeley Bumford, Michelle Gonzalez, Baraka May, Rich Jones and Courtney Lofty
Live instruments by: Ryan Lofty, Jonathan J. Golko, Daniel B. Hill, Christian Sedelmyer, and Brandon Liew
Post production supervision: Noelle Fuoco and Joshua McMaster
Sound services by Advantage Audio: including David Bonilla, J. Lampinen, Jesse Aruda, Patrick Spain, Michael Feldman, Robert Pratt and Gabe Gelbrecht
Highly recommend you check out the work of all these wonderful people and the many, many others that made this show.
Doug Unplugs is streaming now on AppleTV+!
This ending area of the blog is where we would usually put team photos and mementos from the crew screening, but alas…
If you are COP crew and reading this - we can’t wait to be reunited with you! Until then, here’s what our records look like in 2020!
Recording a plugin song with Keeley Bumford and Matt Manna.
Beep boop.