Highlights of Fiction2Film, The Hunger Games Conference in Chicago, via @HGGirlonFire

6/26/2012AppearanceTheresa

This past weekend Hunger Games stars descended upon Chicago as part of the Fiction 2 Film Convention.  Jackie Emerson, Dayo Okeniyi, Amandla Stenberg, Willow Shields, and more stopped by to answer fan questions and share their experiences working on the film.

HG Girl on Fire’s, Sheila was lucky enough to attend and has graciously agreed to let us share highlights of her experience with all of you.

First up, Katniss’ Prep Team as portrayed by Nelson Ascencio (Flavius), Brooke Bundy (Octavia) and Kimiko Gelman (Venia).

Q & A Panel Highlights:

• Kimiko says Donald Sutherland didn’t recognize her outside of her Venia costume.
• Nelson is excited to see how his character will be incorporated in Mockingjay
• Brooke says being in The Hunger Games has opened a lot of doors for her, but she still occasionally babysits. (Can you imagine saying Octavia was your sitter? )
• Nelson joked that Jennifer is a terrible driver and says that Josh is a sweetheart
• Kimiko wasn’t sure exactly how she would look as Venia till the day of the shoot.
• The design team will be back for the next movie!

You can read more from the Prep Team’s panel as well as see more photos here.

Up next…Willow Shields aka Prim

Q & A Panel Highlights:

• Willow says Prim is her dream role and is looking forward to filming Catching Fire and Mockingjay.
• She was in middle of reading The Hunger Games when she got the audition for Prim.
• Willow taped her audition and sent it by email. She later got a call back to audition in LA with Gary Ross.
• Willow admits she cried at the end of Mockingjay and for her character Prim.
• She is looking forward to Prim getting more tough over the course of the series.
• Her favorite part about The Hunger Games experience is meeting the fans, meeting friends like Jennifer and Amandla and just being part of the franchise.

You can read more from Willow’s Q&A and check out more pictures here.

Dayo, Amandla, Jackie and Eric after the jump…

Now, let’s hear from Dayo Okeniyi who portrayed District 11′s Thresh.

Q & A Panel Highlights:

• Dayo says the funniest part of filming was people face planting while running for the cornucopia.  When Gary Ross would do the countdown Jack Quaid (Marvel) would always take off at 2.
• For 3 months he was in the gym 3 hours a day 7 days a week and doing 1 1/2 hours of stunt training daily.
• Dayo says initially the script said” just this time 12 for her”, but later changed to “for Rue”.
• He honestly loves Thresh cause he is a complicated dude with a lot going on internally. He is a sensitive guy. Dayo even he made up a back story for him and what Thresh’s upbringing was like and how many times was his name in for the reaping.
• When the filming wrapped there was genuine tears from the cast. Dayo feels he will never be part of anything as special as this.

You can read more from Dayo’s Q&A and check out more photos here.

Jacqueline Emerson (Foxface) and Amandla Stenberg (Rue) tag teamed their Q&A session, and were adorable doing it.

Q & A Panel Highlights:

• Amandla said the most exciting scene was the Cornucopia cause it was so epic and shot during their first week together.
• Amandla didn’t have to do as much training as the boys, but they did use bench press her.
• Jackie said she had a stunt double in the scene where Foxface and Katniss collide in the forest.
• Amandla said it was so hard to lie still during Rue’s death cause bugs kept crawling all over her.
• Jackie says when she was playing dead Jenn poked her with a stick.
• When Jackie first saw the movie she felt like she was watching a documentary from the set.
• Amandla says when Katniss was putting the flowers around her it was hard to keep a straight face cause Jenn was making fart jokes.
• Jackie and Amandla favorite experience was the feeling of family. They call it Camp Hunger Games

You can read more from Jackie and Amandla and see more pictures here.

Finally, also in attendance at the convention was Eric Hennig who was lucky enough to be cast as a featured extra as one of the Game Center Techs for the film.

Q & A Panel Highlights:

• Eric says his fave scene was when Katniss volunteers for Prim at the reaping.
• He says the Hunger Games set was a big giant family and so cool to be a part of it.
• Eric says that Wes Bentley was so welcoming and friendly and just a really cool guy who treated everyone the same.
• He goes on to say that filming the Game Center scenes were so exciting and they had to imagine what was going to come up.

You can read more from Eric’s Q&A here.

Thank you again so much to Sheila and HG Girl on Fire for allowing us to share these highlights with you.  We’d also like to say thank you to them for their fantastic coverage of the event.  Wish we could have been there with you.