Marco Beltrami

Beltrami studied composition formally at the Yale School of Music and Royal Conservatory of Music before breaking into film scoring through the horror genre, giving him an unusually rigorous classical grounding for a composer who'd become known for genre work.

A Scream and horror-scoring veteran, he folded Brad Fiedel's original Terminator motifs into a full symphonic apocalypse for Rise of the Machines. His formal training set him apart from many of his genre-scoring peers, and his work on the film deliberately expanded Fiedel's minimalist synth themes into a much larger, full-orchestra register befitting the story's higher stakes.

He went on to become one of the more prolific and respected composers working across horror, action and blockbuster genre films in the decades since.