Nina Jacobson Quotes
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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.
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We didn't want to dilute or soften the material because that would really be irresponsible, in its own way. The [Hunger Games] books are very intense and very demanding of the reader, and the movie should be that too.
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The "If you build it, they will come" approach to filmmaking has always been helpful to me.
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You are there to support the vision of the people who you choose to excute the movie.
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We knew that we wanted TheHunger Games to be PG-13 because she wrote the book for readers 12 and up, and we wanted them to be able to see the movie. It's a movie that is meant to be relevant to young people, and not exclude them, in any way.
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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.
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I never had to put myself in somebody else's shoes.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Nobody roots for people who presume success. You have to earn success, and success is earned by making a movie that audiences like and want to see more of.
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I was focused on The Hunger Games movie with my director, with the studio, and with the cast and crew. We all just focused on making the best possible movie we could, and earning the right to do more.
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It was very important to me to choose a director like Gary [Ross], whose instincts come from character, who's a storyteller, and who puts characters first.
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It can really vary from movie to movie what the producer's role is and there are all kinds of producers. There are line producers who do a lot of the nuts and bolts work on the set.
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Little decisions were made, every day. In this movie [The Hunger Games], we really focused on Cinna and we didn't get time to focus on the other stylist.
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In the evolution of the [The Hunger Games] movie, Gary [Ross] and I talked a lot about tonal bandwidth and making sure that the look and feel and style and choices of the movie stayed within a certain consistent bandwidth.
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Being able to just stick to our instincts and honor the [Hunger Games] books and find a way to stay the course of trying to make the best possible decisions that you would make creatively on any movie, without having your head turned too much by all of the interest, has been a great challenge. It's the best challenge you could ask for, but that was a big challenge.
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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.
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[On the racial backlash about Hunger Games casting]: "People should have ignored the five racist idiots.
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Only audiences decide what's a franchise. Only audiences decide what's a hit. I have always been mindful of not wanting to be the Miami Heat of movies.
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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.
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Women are making strides in many areas and women have mentored and supported me along the way. I think that women are underrepresented behind the camera as directors.
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We both [with Suzanne Collins ] felt strongly that you wouldn't want to age up the characters, no matter the age of the actors playing the roles. They should be playing the age that they are in the [Hunger Games] books. It would let people off the hook, if you said, "Well, instead of 12 to 18, why don't you make them 18 to 25 or 16 to 21?" If you don't stay true to the horror of the fact that they are 12 to 18, you're not doing justice to the book.
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I think that one of the greatest perspectives that I have, from being a buyer for my whole career until I became a producer, is that I have a pretty good understanding of the buyers mentality.
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[On The Hunger Games success]: "It hit on the zeitgeist of the disparity b/w the haves and have nots.
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When you read a book [The Hunger Games], you create that tonal bandwidth. You set a tone for yourself, as you're reading it, in which everything exists within the world of your imagination. In the book, it's great when she can push a button and food comes up, as per your order.
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I'm an ardent fan. All I really had to do was put myself in my own shoes.
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There's as much great authorship in the filmmaker community as in the literary community, and I'd love to welcome more filmmakers into the fold.
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It's an exciting time, when you can make your movie on a cellphone. If it's good, it WILL get noticed.
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I am very filmmaker oriented, as a producer. I think the most important thing is that you have to really choose the players carefully.
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