Hollywood's "The Hunger Games" is bringing in bigger audiences and more dollars. But a group of Charlotte teenagers still have bragging rights: Their "Hunger Games" movie came out first.
Beating Hollywood wasn't the idea, though. At the outset, the friends from Charlotte Country Day School shot one scene, just for fun. That grew into a 90-minute YouTube movie whose seven parts have totaled more than 1 million views.
"We never started this with the intent of going viral or becoming famous," Country Day junior Madeleine Moore said. "We made this 'Hunger Games' movie out of a love for creating and a passion for the novel itself."
Moore plays Katniss, the heroine of this story about a bloodthirsty future world. The group's other ringleader, Country Day junior Eddie Mansius, plays Peeta, Katniss' comrade-in-arms. Now that they've spent months seeing comments from YouTube viewers, they think their film is really about more than "The Hunger Games" story.
"People see these videos, and they want to do something like us," Mansius said. "That's part of what we're about.
"We're here to inspire people and show that you can create something great without actually having the resources to do it."
Fun action scene
In the fall of 2010, as Moore and Mansius began the 10th grade, they and their friends were immersed in Suzanne Collins' trilogy.
They also were interested in filmmaking. That gave them an idea: How about filming a scene from the book?
They picked the start of the actual games: The young fighters stand around a mound of supplies, grab what they can, and start their fighting.
"It was a fun action scene to do," Moore said. "But we weren't really taking it seriously."
In fact, at the end of the sequence, they let themselves diverge from what Collins wrote: Katniss, after surviving the bloodshed, received her bow and arrow earlier than in the book.
"We get like 20 comments a day," Moore said. " 'This is all wrong. Did you even read the book?' "
Surprise response
But comments were still in the future. To enable all the friends to see what they'd created, Mansius uploaded it onto a YouTube channel some of the friends had made in middle school. About a month after the filming, they got a surprise.
"We woke up," Moore recalls, "and Eddie said, 'We have, like, 1,500 hits on our "Hunger Games" video!' "
A "Hunger Games" fan site, mockingjay.net, had linked to their video.
"The comments were like – 'Do more, finish the book.' So we agreed that we'd do more," Mansius said.
During the following year, the group worked on their film. While everybody pitched in on everything, Mansius was the main screenwriter, director and cameraman.
"Filmmaking is a hobby of mine," he said. "But through this process, I've realized that it's a very expensive hobby."
One of Mansius' money-making projects was selling Christmas trees with a friend, handling everything from passing out flyers to cutting down trees. The budding filmmakers – after starting with "our parents' video cameras from the '90s," Moore said – asked for high-definition cameras and editing software as Christmas presents. They eventually had two cameras to work with.
The project was still a juggling act. Occasionally, someone would bail out on a shoot because of schoolwork or family obligations. Once, Moore and Mansius had to shoot a Katniss-Peeta scene by themselves, with no one behind the camera.
Just a kid
Last Halloween, exactly a year after the friends began, the last scene was shot. Some of the parts that have been online longest have racked up hundreds of thousands of views. One segment just passed 500,000.
Moore and Mansius have gone on to make a video about drunk driving, which they've submitted to a youth film festival in Connecticut. But they aren't finished with "The Hunger Games." While they won't tackle full-length versions of the sequels, they're planning to create mock trailers. And they're still receiving responses to their movie.
"Whenever I respond to fan mail," Mansius said, "they're like, 'I can't believe you responded. It's like I'm talking to a celebrity.'
"I'm like, 'No, I'm not a celebrity. I'm just a kid who likes filmmaking.' "
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