The new Hunger Games movie is bringing back a fan-favorite visual trick from Catching Fire. Director of photography Jo Willems explained how the team recreated and expanded on the approach for Sunrise on the Reaping’s arena sequences.
Why you need to watch The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping in IMAX
Director of photography Jo Willems revealed to Entertainment Weekly that Sunrise on the Reaping will use a full IMAX aspect ratio for its arena sequences. The visual approach shares a direct connection with 2013’s Catching Fire. Both films shift their frame size as tributes enter the arena.
“It’s gonna have the full IMAX screen where [as an audience] you’re more immersed in the whole thing,” Willems said. “We shot on IMAX cameras, but it’s not like we shot on IMAX film cameras. These are approved IMAX cameras that are shooting at a high resolution. So the size of the sensor can have a taller aspect ratio.”
Filming took place in a remote valley within Spain’s Cantabrian Mountains. The location required significant logistical effort from the production team each day. “We had to travel through these little villages,” Willems recalled. “Then we got to the end and we’d park all our stuff, we’d have to drag everything up the hill.”
A nighttime sequence involving two characters and squirrels tested the crew’s limits. “That’s a night scene. So it was quite complex,” Willems said. “It was literally a path 10 feet wide that we could just get [into]. It’s a dirt road. So all of those things are considerations for how to light it, and I had to shoot it and I had to make it happen.”
Shooting digitally rather than on film made these conditions possible. Willems admitted he “would’ve had to probably turn down the location” otherwise. “If this is the best location to do it, I’ll find a way,” he said. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping hits theaters on Nov. 20.
