The Hunger Games: Official Illustrated Movie Companion by Scholastic, Kate Egan Page B

particular take. “Gary has such an amazing ability to feel the energy of a particular actor, to see the struggles you’re having at any moment, and to set you on the right path without you really knowing what just happened,” Bentley adds. “Gary understands the lens; he understands the performances; he understands the whole film as he’s putting it together.”
    Dayo Okeniyi agrees. “Working with Gary is amazing because he has a way of making the set very calm, of making the actors feel comfortable. It feels like an indie set, being on this movie, very homey and family oriented. Gary doesn’t put pressure on the take. He’s just very light with it.
Do this; try that; no, that’s not working, let’s try it again.
He’s very much like the script is the skeleton and as an actor it’s your job to put the flesh on that.”
    Ross’s approach set the tone for everything the actors did together. It could have felt arduous, but instead the shooting felt joyful and exciting. “It isn’t always the case where you’re in a constant state of laughter and merriment on a set,” says Woody Harrelson. “But it was on this one.”
    “We were avid readers on the set,” says Alli Shearmur. “Gary, Jennifer, Nina. Everyone. I bought Jennifer the collected works of J. D. Salinger for her birthday. There was a real family feeling there. Josh hosted Saturday night barbecues for the cast, and everybody was always playing basketball. One night, when T-Bone Burnett was there, Gary hosted a dinner for him. Jennifer’s assistant and good friend, Justine, brought her guitar, played it beautifully but kind of shyly, and, before you knew it, T-Bone Burnett was playing, too.”
    The actors playing the tributes developed a special bond. Leven Rambin says, “For a lot of us, it’s our first film. We’re in the trenches, we’re covered in mud; we’re fighting and sweating and we don’t even care. We’re just happy to be here.”
    After shooting wrapped for the day, the tributes spent time exploring nearby areas, or just getting to know each other better. “Most of us are in the same hotel,” explains Jacqueline Emerson, who plays Foxface. “We go out to dinner every other night. We go to movies together. The other night I spent three or four hours just walking around with Jack and Dayo. We went to this great little bookstore and just hung out there.”

    “When we’re doing all the scenes in the woods where we’re fighting, those other kids are actually our friends,” Josh Hutcherson points out. “You’re used to hanging out and laughing with them, so it’s kind of a weird transition when they say ‘Action!’ and suddenly there’s a giant bloodbath.”

    W hile the actors were exploring their characters and their new friendships, other teams were putting the pieces in place for the movie’s action sequences.
    Location manager Todd Christensen had found the perfect place to film the scene where a wall of fire comes at Katniss, cornering her. “DuPont State Forest let us do a controlled burn, not only on their forest but about a quarter of a mile from the ranger’s house. For Katniss to feel like she was trapped, they put in a tree that they ratcheted so it could come down, but then she also had to fall into a rock. We had the tree — not the rock — so they put a rock in to make the drama of the scene better.”
    Then special effects foreman Brandon McLaughlin rigged a wire to make it appear as if fireballs were shooting at Katniss. “It’s what we normally do when a director says, ‘I want this to go from Point A to Point B and hit it every time,’” he explains. “There’s a sixteen-inch cable right down the middle of the fireball, and we shoot it down a wire with what looks like a slingshot. The fireball itself was a steel apparatus — like a giant corkscrew — with a product wrapped on top of it that we could ignite and burn.” Any signs of the rigging would be erased in postproduction.

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