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.

You're not doing the scene exactly the way it is in the book [The Hunger Games], but the intention of the scene is there.

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.

I felt that with each movie, Gary [Ross] adopts a different style. He doesn't have one look that's the Gary Ross look, and I thought that was important.

There is a young fella who works for me, named Brian Unkeless, who's very smart. We're a very small company that has been Brian and me and two assistants, although we're growing a little bit now. He read the [The Hunger Games] book and loved it, and told me I should read it. He had been a fan of the Gregor books. So, I read it and couldn't put it down and couldn't stop thinking about it. I really became obsessed with the thought of producing it, and was completely bothered by the idea that anybody but me could produce it.

When fans get very passionate about a movie, they just want you to do it well. They don't want you to screw it up. Their idea of doing it well might be different than yours, but ultimately, they really just don't want you to mess up the thing that they love.

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