Suzanna Collins was very supportive, but we very much wanted her blessing on casting. In production, she visited us once, but she really was not involved in the production process. She's seen the Hunger Games movie twice, in the post-production process, once as an early cut and then once when it was finished.

The hiring of Phil Messina, the production designer, was a big decision. He's so gifted, and his ideas were always so smart and rooted in American history and architecture. Nothing feels like it's not us, or couldn't be us, and I think that's very important.

I felt that there were so many things that could go wrong, in adapting The Hunger Games , and I had this fierce desire to protect this book that she had written. At that time, I read the second book, in manuscript form, and so I saw where she was going with the series. I was able to convince Suzanne [Collins] to trust me with the books.

Deb Zane, our casting director on the Hunger Games was very sanguine, from the beginning, about just blocking out what everybody else says that they want.

It's an exciting time, when you can make your movie on a cellphone. If it's good, it WILL get noticed.

Suzanne [Collins] was very involved in the development of the script. She wrote the first draft. She was very involved with Billy Ray, when he wrote his draft.

The most important part of filmmaking is the collaboration and the ensemble element of it. If you just all focus on the task and the work and try and make the best film that you can then people will come.