Written Interview: Gary Ross (“The Hunger Games”)
An informative interview at /Film with The Hunger Games co-writer and director Gary Ross:
/Film: While HUNGER GAMES is three books, I sort of saw your movie as two movies, because you’ve got the pre-games and the games. Can you talk about how, if at all, you approached each part of the movie differently?
Gary Ross: I think it’s one integral narrative, to be honest with you. I mean I think Katiniss’s narrative runs all the way though. That being said, there are radical shifts in locale which is what I think you are talking about. In the filmmaking process it felt as if we were making several movies some times. When we are in the woods it’s one style of filmmaking where you are eighty feet up in trees shooting off of limbs and things like this. Just the experience of how you are shooting that is very different than moving into a studio environment. Also, when we moved to Charlotte we suddenly had all of these adult actors who I have always looked up to and wanted to work with my whole life, so there was this sudden kind of re-infusion in what it it. But stylistically I hope that you are invested in Katniss’s narrative the whole time anyway. Do you know what I mean? I hope that this is a first person narrative where you feel like you are walking in her shoes, because if you ever… One, we wanted it to remain totally real, like we talked about last night. Two, that it feel urgently from her point of view and that everything you’re perceiving, the ambiguities, even the uncertainties, even the lack of clarity about Peeta, you need to walk in her shoes. That’s probably the best example of what we were talking about yesterday in terms of shooting in a character’s point of view. You trust and you mistrust Peeta alternately along with her and you create and maintain a supertivity, so the styles I think feel different at times. I mean it feels very girthy in the beginning in terms of the seam and how depressed it is. It feels kind of like lured Roman excess in some ways when you get to the Capitol and then I think when you get to the woods it’s obviously a very different feeling, but I think the through line in all of that is it is a first person narrative on the part of Katniss.
For more of the interview, go here.