Willow Shields gets direction during the shooting of the reaping.
The actors playing the tributes had already been through training together, but filming was a different kind of
experience, eerily reminiscent of the Games themselves. Producer Jon Kilik says, “Once the kids were selected and they
all came together, it was not so different from the Hunger Games. They were brought into this world; they were a little
suspicious of each other, a little competitive with each other. And they were performing. They had to survive. Then they
slowly started to work together, get to know each other, and they really embraced and embodied their characters
beautifully.”
The young actors filmed the first Cornucopia scene almost right away, and their training made it go smoothly. Their
moves were choreographed ahead of time, and stunt trainers were on hand if they needed them. Putting their training into
practice brought the group closer together, and made them think about the story, too.
Gary Ross and Jennifer Lawrence work on a scene in the arena.
One highlight of the shooting was a visit from author Suzanne Collins. The actors were overjoyed — and awed — to have
her on hand as they filmed one of the movie’s pivotal scenes. Collins recalls, “I was on the set for Rue’s death. The
scene’s so key, not only because of its emotional impact on Katniss — Rue’s essentially become Prim’s surrogate in
the arena — but because it has to be powerful enough to trigger the first rumblings of the rebellion. It’s very
demanding for the actors. All three of the kids — Jen, Amandla, and Jack — they gave terrific performances. T-Bone
Burnett had come up with this lovely, haunting melody for the lullaby. And Gary, who was, of course, masterminding the
whole thing, filmed it beautifully. There’s this one shot of Katniss cradling Rue in the periwinkle with the lush
background of the forest. On the monitor it looked like an exquisite portrait, like something you’d frame and hang in a
museum. I remember Amandla came and sat next to me between takes and she asked me, ‘So, what did you imagine it would
be like?’ And I said, ‘Like that.’ But really, it exceeded my expectations.”
Leven Rambin, who plays Glimmer, remarks on another notable aspect of the shoot. “It was an extreme experience to be
out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or Internet service or anything. It definitely felt like you were there
— like you were really there. We were really hot — just dying out there — and isn’t that really the point?”
“Our shooting schedule was crazy!” says Josh Hutcherson. “We were shooting three to four pages a day, which doesn’t
sound like much, but when you realize how many shots you have to have for each one of those things, it’s an incredible
amount.” Like the tributes in the Games, the actors were exhausted at the end of every shooting day. And then they had
to deal with the elements.
Amandla Stenberg perches in a tree with the help of a few crew members.
Summers in North Carolina are hot and humid — and wet. “We shot the arena section in state forests in North Carolina
during the rainy season,” Jon Kilik says. “It rained almost every afternoon but we rarely stopped. It was a very
physically challenging film.”
The crew shelters from the rain.
The crew preps for a scene in the DuPont State Forest.
Alli Shearmur remembers: “Joe Drake and I were there the day that Gary shot the aftermath of the tracker-jacker scene,
when Katniss thinks she sees Peeta, then hallucinates that she sees Caesar Flickerman. They were doing a tremendous
amount of work — and then the skies opened up. There was a torrential downpour. Everyone just stood around in their
rain ponchos, cheerful as could be, because this was happening to them every day, and they knew it would stop soon.
After the rain stopped, the mud was ankle-deep, and then it was like, ‘Everybody! Take your places!’ like it was no
big deal at all.”
Jennifer Lawrence comments on the heat: “My Games costume was great in the fitting. It was perfect. As soon as we took
it out in the hundred-and-something-degree weather, though, the leather jacket and the pants and the boots were quite
different.” Still, the team kept to a strict schedule, shooting through the rain and the heat and the mud — and
watching out for other potential obstacles, too.
“We had a snake wrangler — a full-time snake wrangler — on set,” Nina Jacobson points out. “We had a lot of bears.
One place we shot in — North Fork, North Carolina — has one of the highest per-acre bear populations of any place in
the United States.”
Not all of the animals were dangerous, but most of them were a nuisance — especially the wild turkeys. “We had wild
turkeys on the set where the Cornucopia was,” recalls Isabelle Fuhrman, who plays Clove. “We’d be in the middle of a
shot and the turkeys would come in and they’d send the ADs and PAs to chase them away. One day after work, we were
driving home and we saw the turkeys on the pedestals on the Cornucopia — like they were having their own Hunger Games!
”
Alli Shearmur remembers the experience of watching Ross shoot at night. “The woods where they shot the arena scenes
were pristine. Untouched. They hadn’t been used for a movie since The Last of the Mohicans. The crew would bring in
equipment on ATVs, sometimes put a scene together overnight. It appeared to be spontaneous, but there was an enormous
amount of effort behind the scenes. I was there the night they shot the scene with the mutts. In the woods . . . in the
dark . . . it was unbelievable.”
Ross spent time with each of the actors, digging to the core of their characters. As Ross knew, an actor who understood
his or her character could more easily be that person in front of the camera. The young actors, especially, were
grateful for his careful approach.
“We did the scene where I was dying,” says Amandla Stenberg, “and I was talking to Gary about it, because I thought I
’d be sobbing my eyes out. But he decided I shouldn’t be crying so much because my character was trying to be brave
for Katniss, and that was really the start of the rebellion.”
Jennifer Lawrence prepares to practice snares in the Training Center.
Wes Bentley plays Seneca Crane in the movie. He says, “When you’re playing a character that’s not as defined as the
others, you really look to your director. Gary and I talked about Seneca being this sort of cocky kid who’s never had
anything bad happen to him in his life. He’s just had success after success, climbing the ladder.”
After their conversations, Ross watched Bentley closely, trying to remind him of what they’d discussed without
destroying the momentum of any 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.”
While 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.