Francis Lawrence on 'Mockingjay Part 1' in Sci Fi Magazine

Sci Fi Magazine's Tara Bennett interviewed Mockingjay Part 1 director Francis Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson for a really interesting feature in the December issue. The entire team has been SO tight-lipped about MJ1, this is probably the most anyone has gotten out of either of them about the film so far.

Francis Lawrence on their altered approach to Katniss' vulnerability in Mockingjay Part 1: 

We had already been shooting for about five weeks when Catching Fire was released, and you could see and feel the reaction people had to the end of the movie. It affected our approach to her character and her state of mind. Although she is damaged, it's about modulating the right kind of damage so you still have some of that fierce determination, anger, and suspicion. It's balancing all of that with fragility because there's not much fragility in that look at the end of Catching Fire, so it was about finding the nuance of her damagedness. I have to say Part 1 was probably one of the most complex movies I've done in terms of tracking a character's emotional state. It's so specific, and you have to be so careful not to go down the wrong path. It would be so easy for the fine tuning of the performance to go off - not because of anybody's fault - but it's literally making the right choices to go down the right path. But I think Jen did a great job and I'm really pleased. 

Lawrence on Suzanne Collins' complete approval and participation in any changes they made to the Mockingjay narrative:

We had to do a lot of Coin creation with Suzanne, the writer, and also with Julianne Moore. [Suzanne] is filled with tons of back story on people and mythological elements, so there's so much information. While I was shooting Catching Fire, she and I would sit down on weekends and go through [Mockingjay]. We broke out the book together and she wrote outlines while working with Peter Craig, who did the majority of work on the scripts. She's always up for the expansion, which is fun, and I think she gets a kick out of imagining things that are happening alongside the books." 

Lawrence is careful what he reveals about how much we'll see of Peeta and Johanna in The Capitol:

We played around a little bit with how much we see of what's happening to them. I think we've landed on something that feels right to me. We definitely shot more than we used.  

He's also - obviously - not going to give up where that MJ1 & MJ 2 split will happen but says:

[Both films] say something different and that's one of the reasons that the split works. I think they are two distinct stories within a larger story so thematically, each one's a little different. It was about figuring out where that end is for Part 1 that tells the story properly. That gives us a range and, within that range, we played around with where exactly it is, and for what effect, but I'm really happy with the way Part 1 ends.  

There's SO much more in the article, including what Nina Jacobson has to say, so be sure to go and pick up a copy! The December issue of Sci Fi Magazine is on newsstands now. There is no digital issue avaialble for Sci Fi - we found ours at Barnes and Noble.  

Comments

[kathy]

Amazing article! Francis and Nina are simply spot on!A must read!

[Carrie]

This may be a spoiler, so beware!!
I'm calling the split after the wedding talk at midnight (trying not to give too much away here), when Katniss leaves for 2.