Emmy Award-winning composer Bear McCreary was first launched into pop culture with his groundbreaking score to the hit series Battlestar Galactica, that was lauded by Variety as the most innovative music on TV today. He also scored “Intruders,” “Outlander,” “Constantine,” “Da Vinci’s Demons,” and “Black Sails,” as well as other productions shown on this page. Bear produces an informative video blog to chronicle the entire process of scoring. Below are videos from some of his projects.

In this “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” video blog, we meet a handful of the amazing musicians who play in the orchestra each week. Bear has worked with these players for years, and their sound is an essential part of how he expresses his ideas. “Super Musicians” is the second in a recurring video blog segment called “Agents of BEAR.”

Da Vinci’s Demons” is a fantastic re-telling of the young life of Leonardo Da Vinci, one of history’s most intriguing figures. Abolishing our image of Leonardo as a wisened, wrinkled old sage, the show depicts his youth as a dashing, arrogant adventurer. Caught between the warring nation-states of Florence and Rome, Da Vinci is swept up in a quest for the promise of ancient knowledge.

“In Black Sails I needed to revert back to a primal creative state: my goal was to create music that sounds improvised by an exhausted crew aboard a ship navigating choppy waters. I wanted the audience to sense dirt beneath fingernails plucking jangly mandolin strings, to feel urgent strains of a hurdy gurdy crank, and to smell stale air wheezing out of old accordion bellows. To achieve this, I had to rethink my entire creative process and unlearn the results of a lifetime of classical music study.”

As Bear began working with director Sebastián Cordero and the film’s producers, they realized quickly that “Europa Report” is not a typical “found-footage” film; it could not function without a score. The tension in moments of despair, the adrenaline-pumping pulse before the landing, the relief and joy of discovery, and the emotional bond between our characters all required musical threads to bind them together.
For more information, visit Bear McCreary’s website