Score composer Bear McCreary was born in Fort Lauderdale, FL, on February 17, 1979, the son of the writer Laura Kalpakian. He obtained degrees in Composition and Recording Arts from the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California and became a protégé of the film composer Elmer Bernstein, for whom he reconstructed and re-orchestrated the score for the 1963 film Kings of the Sun, resulting in the recording of a new album of the music. After scoring a number of short films in the late 1990s and early 2000s, McCreary was hired to compose the music for a new version of the television series Battlestar Galactica, which premiered on the Sci Fi Channel in 2004. Soundtrack albums of his music were released in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009 by La-La Land Records, corresponding to the four seasons of the series. In 2006, McCreary scored the straight-to-video film Rest Stop, with a soundtrack album released by PlanR. (He also scored the 2008 sequel, Rest Stop: Don't Look Back; it's soundtrack album was released by La-La Land.) in 2007, he scored Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, another straight-to-video feature, and La-La Land released the soundtrack album. In 2008, he provided music for the TV series Eureka on the Fox network, and there was a soundtrack album on La-La Land. The same year, the label released McCreary's score music for the Sci Fi Channel's series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. La-La Land also released his soundtrack album for the straight-to-video Battlestar Galactica prequel film Caprica in 2009; McCreary was hired to score the Caprica TV series premiering on the Sci Fi Channel in 2010.