We love it when one of our own hits the big time. Such is the case with music composer Matt Messina. Before he went on to write the soundtrack for last year's Oscar-winning Juno, Messina honed his craft at Atom (then AtomFilms), composing music for many of our short films.

But in a certain way it's like Matt never left us – he's still offering our creative community music for your videos (look under "Free Music Downloads"). So now you can say Juno's Matt Messina scored your flick too!

We recently met up with Matt to talk about the unique world of writing music for motion pictures...

How do you go about the process of scoring a feature film?
MATT MESSINA: Usually it starts with reading a script, then discussing ideas with the director. Then I head into my studio and start dreaming up ideas that will help the director tell their story. I come up with different ideas and as the film comes closer to locked picture we'll have a solid idea of direction and hit the ground running when it comes time to score the locked picture. Then comes the writing, the rewriting, and the rewriting. It's a process like any other creative endeavor. Sometimes you hit the mark the first time, other times it comes in version 14. My goal is to serve the picture and be felt more than heard. I play emotions, characters, places, energy, subtext, everything is thought out whether the output is a full orchestra swelling with emotion or a couple of jangly, barely in tune guitars playing the undercurrent of emotion.

Typically, how involved are the directors?
MM: Man, that one is all over the board. I find in the studio features, the good directors are very in tune with music. In some of my early independent films, some of the directors literally said, "You do that thing you do" and gave me all sorts of freedom. Although the directors I prefer to work with are the ones who don't necessarily have a musical vocabulary, but are willing to discuss music in the emotional sense.

When you scored Juno, did you know from the start that this film would enjoy so much success?
MM: I don't know if any of us had any idea that Juno would do what it did. In fact, before we premiered it in Toronto there was this sentiment of, "We made a really good art-house film!" But once we saw the audiences react to it at the different premieres, it became clear that people had a sincere affection for the story. Once the film went into the one of the top films in the world and our soundtrack landed #1 on the Billboard charts, it just started getting ridiculous. Ridiculous in the best way possible! The Oscar nominations left some of us jaw-dropped and the level of excitement of all of us involved with the film was about as high as I can imagine. All I know is I've been grateful and appreciative of being asked to write the music for such a beautiful story. My brother and his wife were adopting a child while I was writing the score (about Juno's story of adoption) and it was an incredible experience. That, and working with my friend Jason Reitman on fulfilling his vision for this film was an absolute blast!

Are you currently scoring any movies that you’re excited about?
MM: Yes, absolutely, but I can't talk about them until the trailers and announcements come out!