Interview - Tommy Tallarico

-You have worked, written and produced on many musical projects, from Hungarian National Symphony Orchestra to the band Fear Factory, what has been your favourite project that you have worked on?

From a straight composition stand-point I would say that working with the orchestra and choir on Evil Dead was definitely a high point! Creating music that you know a hundred talented musicians are going to be playing makes you push yourself to the max. You want every note to mean something. I've had more fun on projects like Earthworm Jim, Spider-Man and Tony Hawk Skateboarding but creatively I don't think anything has compared to the Evil Dead project. There was a lot more preparation doing the Evil Dead stuff. Once I was finished writing the music it then had to be properly arranged and orchestrated. Then sheet music had to written out as well as practicing with the orchestra before recording, then mixing, then mastering. The choir was done the day after the music, not at the same time. We did this so we could better control the volumes in the mixing process. It's also a lot easier just dealing with the music first and then the 30 people for the choir (there were 15 males and 15 females).

-Do you like Joseph LoDuca's work? (the music creator and composer for the evildead movies)

Yeah, I thought it was appropriate for the movies. The thing to remember is that the movies were funny, scary and deranged at the same, so the music has to reflect that. For the game I wanted to be a little more serious, haunting and tilted towards action and adventure. That's why I chose to write the entire score in Latin. It really gives you the sense of something evil going on.

-Did you meet Bruce Campbell?

We met Mr. Campbell when we did the voice-over recordings. The executive producer of the project (Scott Krager) is a huge Evil Dead fan! He was directing Bruce and I was there to help out. Bruce doesn't need much directing when it comes to Ash! By now he is so familiar with the character that he just needed to know the situation Ash was in and then he'd take it from there. It's so funny meeting him because he has the same mannerisms and says a lot of the same things as Ash would say ("Hey knuckleheads! How ya doin'.") Bruce was telling us that he thought it was kinda cool to get back into the Ash character after all of these years. It was the first time he was doing another Ash role in a long time.

-What did you think of him?

Bruce was amazingly friendly, hilarious and down to earth. Would love the opportunity to work with him again. A complete professional and overall nice guy.

-Do you have a favourite composer?

For orchestral stuff it would have to be Beethoven followed closely by John Williams. Next up would be Jerry Goldsmith and Hans Zimmer.