'Hunger Games' Director Gary Ross Answers Fans' Burning Questions

[NelsonG]

[url="http://www.mtv.com/movies/person/96502/personmain.jhtml"]Gary Ross[/url] gets that you're excited for "[url="http://www.mtv.com/movies/movie/422817/moviemain.jhtml"]The Hunger Games[/url]." That's why he took some time off from filming to chat with us at MTV News about the questions you most want to have answered about the currently filming movie.

[url="http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2011/08/30/hunger-games-teaser-gary-ross-2/"][img]http://mtv.mtvnimages.com/uri/mgid:uma:video:mtv.com:686510?height=288&width=512[/img][/url]

What are the scenes that Ross is most excited to film? How much training did [url="http://www.mtv.com/movies/person/1015040/personmain.jhtml"]Jennifer Lawrence[/url] do to play Katniss? Will Ross [i]please[/i] dish on how they're portraying the Girl on Fire scene? And how big a part of the film is [url="http://hollywoodcrush.mtv.com/2011/06/29/hunger-games-score-t-bone-burnett-danny-elfman/"]T Bone Burnett and Danny Elfman's score[/url] going to be? He answered [s]all[/s] most of these in the above video, and we broke down his responses after the jump.

[b]The Music[/b]
"T Bone and Danny 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 almost more than anything else. It establishes the tone and it literally can change the way you feel or perceive a movie and so that's a very, very long discussion that happens between me, T Bone and Danny, and that's already begun," Ross said, adding, "That's not going to start to bear fruit for a while."

[b]The Training[/b]
"It's an intensely physical movie, first of all. Jen is in, someone said, Jen's in 110 percent of the movie, which is really true. She works every day all day and it's a very physically demanding thing that she's doing, and she did train really, really rigorously," Ross explained. "She worked with an athletic trainer, someone that conditions athletes in Los Angeles, she had intensive archery training, so she's had a very rigorous athletic conditioning program."

[b]The Girl On Fire[/b]
Sorry, fans, but Ross wouldn't spill the beans on this one. "There's some things you don't want to give away. You wouldn't [i]want[/i] me to give it away," he said. "I think it's going to be a fantastic moment when it happens in the movie, and I could tell you what that is verbally but it would kind of wreck it for people. I'm going to resist the temptation to give a spoiler on my own movie right here."

[b]Rue's Death[/b]
"I think there's many iconic moments in the movie. There're many moments that fans gravitate to. They're tremendously important to them," Ross said. "Obviously the death of Rue is something that every fan brings up, and how emotionally powerful that is, how important it is to the movie that you not pull punches, but that it also be handled sensitively and emotionally and honor the emotion of it. That's just a beautiful scene, and T Bone wrote a beautiful lullaby for Prim's Lullaby that's [url="http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1669184/hunger-games-jennifer-lawrence-soundtrack.jhtml"]actually sung to Rue[/url]."

[b]The Other Big Moments[/b]
Ross said there are many scenes that fans consider to be the most important, but there are a few that he considers among the most significant. He recently shot the scene where Katniss is about to enter the Hunger Games and has a "tense moment with Cinna before she actually has to leave." Then there's the tribute parade where she is revealed as the Girl on Fire, though Ross won't tell us any more details about that. And lastly there's the berries scene with Peeta at the end of the movie, which Ross thinks is "one of the most poignant and really powerful things in the book."

[i]What scenes are you most looking forward to seeing? Did you like the tease of the music revealed at the end of the trailer? Tell us in the comments section below or on [url="http://twitter.com/mtvmoviesblog"]Twitter[/url]![/i]



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