When Katniss Everdeen rises from an underground elevator into the arena in Hunger Games: Catching Fire, IMAX viewers will see the film's visuals dramatically change.
The 50-minute arena sequence in this Hunger Games sequel has been formatted for IMAX, resulting in an immersive, larger aspect ratio. Instead of a typical widescreen image, with black bars on top and bottom, the IMAX image expands vertically to fill the entire screen when Katniss (played by Jennifer Lawrence) enters the battlefield.
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The first few minutes of the changeover are particularly captivating, as water violently splashes around each character. The trees come alive in both color and movement, and you can see the sweat collect on the tributes' faces. The encompassing experience makes viewers feel as though they are in the arena, which is terrifying.
"When I signed on to do the movie, I knew very early on that the arena portion would work very well with IMAX," Catching Fire director Francis Lawrence told Mashable. "The switch to IMAX hits you hard. It's stunning."

While a home HDTV image has 1,920 pixels, an IMAX frame has about 18,000 pixels of horizontal resolution, which highlight the smallest details in each frame. To capture this, Lawrence used three IMAX high-resolution cameras on set in Hawaii. They are highest-resolution cameras in the world and have only been used by a few filmmakers, including Christopher Nolan in Dark Night Rises and J.J. Abrams in Star Trek: Into Darkness.
The filming process presented difficulties for the film crew and actors.
"It was technically challenging," he said. "The noise of the camera invades the scene — it sounds like an old projector and there's lots of clicking. The actors had to perform normally and then after the shoot, we brought them back in to do the dialogue again . That way we could have a nice clean version that would match the lips."
Though IMAX cameras are much heavier than standard cameras, Lawrence still wanted to use handheld rigs to follow the actors as they ran through the rainforest. The cameras are built to withstand harsh environments, from the Antarctica's cold temperatures to Mount Everest's high altitudes. They have been sent to space 24 times with NASA astronauts.
Filming of the franchise's third movie, the second-to-last one in the Hunger Games film series based on the book trilogy of the same name, is under way, but it won't be captured in IMAX, Lawrence said.
"There will be more technology used in the third film, but there won't be IMAX scenes," he said. "We are shooting the third one digitally because there are more claustrophobic, underground scenes that won't be suited for IMAX."
Catching Fire shows a glimpse into the future, with televisions that project onto walls and in the air as well as hologram simulations used for weapons training. The third film, scheduled for a 2015 launch, will show more of District 3, the high-tech living sector in the nation of Panem, he said.
But for the latest installment, tech takes center stage in the way the IMAX experience unfolds during the most action-packed, and sometimes deadly, scenes.
"Not every theater is IMAX, but that format is the real way to see the movie," Lawrence said. "If you watch it in a standard theater, you won't see it the way it was truly intended to be seen."
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