Top: Phil Messina, production designer, arranges the food in the train car.
Below: Examples of Capitol food.
In the Capitol, though, he worked with fresh food and bright colors. “Blues, oranges, greens . . . but not any pastels,
not any earth tones. Nothing brown.” White’s job was not to make food that the actors would eat while filming, but
rather to make food that seemed right for the strange and luxurious world of the Capitol. “I have to make things that
could last twelve hours on the set. Showpieces, really. Israeli couscous — you can make that any color you want. And
quail eggs. Two seconds in a colored water and they come out looking beautiful.”
Food plays an unusually important role in The Hunger Games, since it’s one way the Capitol exerts its power over the
districts. People feast in the Capitol while they starve in the districts, and over the course of the book Katniss’s
experiences are reflected in the food she eats. “Before the Games, when Katniss is at home, she’s hungry,” says Jack
White. “She’s having to hunt for food, struggling to find something to eat. Then, as she’s on her way to the Games,
she experiences — for the first time — an abundance of food. It’s probably the first time in her life that she’s
seen that much, and it’s all available to her. Then, once she arrives in the Capitol, it’s completely over the top and
she’s not even sure what it is that she’s getting to see.”
As Collins lavished attention on the food in her book, Ross lavished attention on the smallest food details in the film,
working with Jack White to bring his vision to life.
Creating the bread of District 11, for instance, was a long process. White remembers, “In the movie, Katniss receives a
gift from District Eleven — the roll floats down to her in the arena. The director was very specific in what he wanted
that roll to look like. So I think we made about fifteen or twenty different kinds of rolls. They all had to be a
specific size and weight to make sure they would fit in the container. It ended up being a half-wheat, half-white flour,
so that gave it a nice color. We were stenciling the number 11 on, until the director asked us if we could try to burn
it in. So then that involved another company that did the brands for us. We had to find the right font for that. Then
they decided they’d like to see a ring around the number, so that was another step. I had the eleven burned right into
the center of the roll, but that looked too perfect — it needed to seem more like an afterthought, so the brand ended
up in the right-hand corner. And then I had to make seventy-five of those, because you can’t just have one.”
Likewise, a great deal of thought and effort went into creating the bread that Peeta throws to Katniss when she’s on
the brink of starvation. White says, “We went to a bakery in Asheville and we got several samples of different sizes of
bread to show Gary, and Gary picked the one he liked. In the scene, Peeta throws burned bread from his family’s bakery
to Katniss. So we stood with a blowtorch and burned roll after roll. They used two per take, and it was raining in the
scene, so we needed a lot of extras.”
White worked closely with other members of the design team to make sure that the food created a flawless look together
with the sets and the props. “Some of the food choices depend on what the set decorator, Larry Dias, does. For instance
I need to know what the plates look like before I know what sort of food I can put on them. On one of my first jobs,
they ordered lobster for the scenes, and the lobster was three times bigger than the plate.”
And when he cooked for the filming, he always cooked extra, in case something went wrong. “The suckling pig was cooked
with something in its mouth to keep it open. After it was cooked, we replaced that with an apple. We had to make three
pigs because if something happened while they were shooting the arrow into the apple, we’d be up the creek. Every take,
we put a new apple in there.”
The visual sense of the movie began with the locations and props, but soon extended to the characters at the heart of
the story.