Jo Willems

1. coming up with shots is a collaborative process where each member has some input from concept to execution. The actors block the scene and then we discuss how we are going to shoot the scene. We then make a list of what we want to achieve. 2. I know that Dave prefers hand holding an Alexa camera. If you ever get a chance to lift an Imax camera you will understand. The picture of myself online lifting an Imax camera was the only time I ever lifted an Imax camera ! 3. Yes the were Hasselblad lenses. 4. Not sure why there would be so much 'talk' about that shot. The tunnel behind him was real but the deep back ground was blue screen and was a VFX screen. We wanted the feel of a very bright exterior behind him. 5. The first job I ever did with Francis was P.O.D, Alive. 6. My method for backlighting is that if it's not motivated by anything I don't add fake back light. I'd rather create contrast or separation with tone and light values rather then putting something in that looks artificial. If we are shooting outside I'll always try and shoot the scene backlit. It really depends on the situation how I create a backlight. I'll rarely use a raw light. I'll either diffuse or bounce. The only times I used raw backlight was with real sun or on the tv stage with the tributes presentation. 7. The shafts of light were made by real sun and smoke. Again, if I didn't have sun I would not try and create fake beams of light in the jungle. First of all we like shooting fast and with natural light. Adding a ton of xenon lights on condors hidden in trees would just slow down the process and would at some point look artificial. But when we did have sun, we'd just put some smoke in and find the right angles to shoot.

Digital Imax is always better than the film print for all non-Imax originated material. The technology is just older to make these film prints and can at times be disappointing. You also get more vignetting with the film projection in comparison to the digital prints. We timed the film IMAX print different from the original 35mm print to deal with this. Also, 35mm film just does not hold up to being blown up to 10 times its size and projected on a massive screen where the audience sits so close to the image. It just falls apart and does not resolve. Those theaters were made to show IMAX. There were only 20 film IMAX prints made world wide. When I was prepping Catching Fire I went to see the film IMAX print of Dark Knight Rises and I had the same experience. The IMAX original material is incredible but then some of the 35mm stuff that was shot at night and is dark at times it looks like Super 8 with grain as big as golfballs. It's just the limitation of 35mm film shown in these conditions. Day exterior and close ups are more forgiving. For some reason the digital IMAX has a better way of dealing with all of this. I loved the way the digital projection looked for Catching Fire, a few minor issues but great overall. My guess is that there won't be a lot of IMAX film projectors left soon.

I just wanted to chime in and give some of my thoughts on the choices we made while shooting Catching Fire. It was a clear choice from the beginning we wanted to shoot on film and with anamorphic glass. Francis has shot all of his films on film and anamorphic. The thought of doing IMAX was there from the start. Who wouldn't want to shoot IMAX at least once in their career !? It's big and epic and nothing has more resolution. Rather than jump around in aspect ratios the way other films have done in the past between IMAX and 35mm, we wanted a consistency and not jar the audience. We decided to shoot the games in IMAX. When we shot a scene within the games on 35mm we would shoot spherical and retain the IMAX aspect ratio of 1:1.43 for regular IMAX and 1:1.9 for digital IMAX. Of course we still had to think about the 1: 2.40 aspect ratio for regular theaters. The process that IMAX does for the digital blow up is pretty amazing. It takes a bit of testing and choosing different options of how heavy they go with the noise reduction, but they did an amazing job. Colorist Yvan Lucas from Efilm followed this process all the way through to the final prints. It's important for a DP to be able to trust someone to follow this process. We were already in prep for the next 2 films when all this was going on. Putting together an anamorphic package is an art in itself. I had Gregor Tavenner with me who put together a great set of lenses. Anamorphic has become so popular with digital capture these days that it's not that easy to put together a good set of lenses. At the start it wasn't even certain we could get our hands on any anamorphic lenses. It's not like Panavision has the inventory to provide you with two full sets of C's and two full sets of E's and primos etc... And even with a film the size of ours, you have to be responsible for the money you spend. I don't like using diffusion so I mostly used C series lenses. They work really well on skin and Jen looked fantastic with them. We loved doing close ups on the 75mm and 100mm. No diffusion. Just nice old glass. Sometimes we cross shoot dialogue scenes with a and b camera to give editorial both sides of the same performance. Jennifer Lawrence would get the C lens and one of the guys would get the matching lens from the E series. If we were shooting in very low light the odd time we'd use a primo to keep resolution. Shooting C series lenses wide open does compromise the overall sharpness and contrast of the image. In very overcast weather we'd shoot on primos sometimes for big wide shots. We decided to shoot on Alexa on the new films because a lot of the film is set underground and I want to light the sets almost exclusively with practical fixtures. It's possible to work in a very naturalistic style that way. That's all I can say about that for now. If you have any more questions I'll try and answer them as best as possible.