clairejaygreen: 'Hunger Games' Burning Questions Answered!

Director Gary Ross leads MTV News through some of hot topics surrounding the highly anticipated adaptation.
By Eric Ditzian

Jennifer Lawrence in "The Hunger Games"
Photo: Lionsgate

If you thought our "Hunger Games" exclusives would end with the sneak peek Jennifer Lawrence introduced during Sunday's VMAs, you are in for a pleasant surprise! MTV News teamed up with director Gary Ross in order to shed some insight into the teaser trailer and his vision for the highly anticipated film. And although Ross couldn't reveal too much about his plans for Katniss and the Capitol, we were able to get him to answer a few burning questions:

What's the Status of the Score?
"T-Bone [Burnett] and Danny [Elfman] haven't really started working yet. We've all begun working together. We've all begun discussing music, pulling references, going through the initial process you go through. Music can actually affect the movie more than anything else. It establishes the tone. It literally can change the way you feel or perceive a movie. That's a very long discussion that happens between me, T-Bone and Danny, and that's already begun. Danny was out last week. T-Bone's been out three times. We've begun this conversation of trying to understand what this is musically. But that's not going to bear fruit for a while."

How Did Jennifer Train for the Role of Katniss?
"It's an intensely physical movie. Someone said Jen is in 110 percent of the movie, which is really true. She works every day, all day. It's a very physically demanding thing that she's doing. She did train really, really rigorously. She worked with an athletic trainer, someone who conditions athletes in Los Angeles. She had intense archery training. So she's had a very rigorous athletic conditioning program."

Watch an exclusive 'Hunger Games' sneak peek.

How Did You Create the 'Girl on Fire' Look?
"That's a really good question. There are some things you don't want to give away, and you wouldn't want me to give it away. I think it's going to be a fantastic moment in the movie. I could do that verbally, but it would wreck it for people. I'm going to resist the temptation to give a spoiler on my own movie."

What Scenes Are the Most Important to Re-Create Faithfully?
"There are many iconic moments in the movie. There are many moments that the fans gravitate to and that are tremendously important to them. [Spoiler ahead!] Obviously the death of Rue is something that fans picks up, and how emotionally powerful that is, how important that is to the movie [to] not pull punches but that it also be handled that sensitively and emotionally and honor the emotion of it. That was just a beautiful scene. T-Bone wrote a beautiful lullaby for Prim's lullaby that is eventually sung to Rue that is absolutely gorgeous. And Jen practiced and rehearsed that with T-Bone and sang it in that scene. That was a tremendously emotional scene for everyone to shoot and one that was tremendously important. I shot one yesterday, the moment before she goes into the games, and she's in that launch chamber and the tense moment with Cinna before she has to leave. Obviously the Tribute parade when she becomes the Girl on Fire and the flames are trailing behind her. I think everybody thinks about the berry scene with her and Peeta at the end and the fact that they would rather give their lives than take one another's lives, which I think is one of the most poignant and really powerful things in the book and something every fan gravitates to. Those are some of the moments, but they're all tremendously important. Suzanne wrote a book full of dozens of those moments. That's one of the reasons it's so popular. My job is to do justice to all of it."

Check out everything we've got on "The Hunger Games."

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