Gallery: How the Hunger Games' Designer Built Its Epic Dystopian World
Murray Close/Lionsgate01Mockingjay 2 Tigris's Shop
As Katniss and her fellow rebels move in on President Snow in *Mockingjay—Part 2*, they take refuge in the Capitol shop run by a former Hunger Games stylist named Tigris. The exterior of her shop (seen here as Katniss and Liam Hemsworth’s Gale leave it in disguise) is actually a location in a Paris suburb called Ivry-sur-Seine. "It was like a 1960s housing complex," says Messina. "What we’re trying to do is find variants on a theme. As we started from the outskirts getting to the center of the Capitol, we wanted the scale to grow as you get to the center. We found this complex, which is huge, for Tigris’s shop and I ended up building the interior on a stage. I built the basement that they go to \[to hide\] as a separate set piece, also."
Screengrab/WIRED02Mockingjay 2 - Capitol
In Collins’s books, the Capitol is described as sort of a modern, dystopic Roman Empire. But as he was designing his Capitol, Messina veered toward Communist, Soviet architecture from the 1950s, ’60s, and ‘70s. He also considered going for a Nazi Germany aesthetic, but opted against it. “I felt like we’d seen the Nazi stuff. That felt a little heavy-handed. I dissed Hitler and moved on to Stalin. \[Laughs.\] The thing about the Capitol was … it needed to feel oppressive," he says. "A bit oppressive but the people are dressed frivolously. So how do you reconcile those two elements? How do you make it imposing from those who are from the outside, but somewhat pleasant and not imposing for those who live in it?” To get that feeling he brought together the monstrous concrete look of Brutalist architecture and very ornate, delicate decorations and costumes.
Murray Close/Lionsgate03Catching Fire Snow's Mansion
One of the most imposing locations in all of the books and movies is President Snow’s mansion—a place that plays a huge role (no spoilers) in *Mockingjay—Part 2*. Throughout the films, two different locations have stood in for Snow’s chateau. The first was [Swan House in Atlanta](http://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/exhibit/swan-house) (above), which was used for the party scene in *Catching Fire* (above).
Murray Close/Lionsgate04Mockingjay Snow's Mansion
The second location used for Snow's home was this massive mansion outside of Paris. (Swan House got CGI extensions in the earlier film, so its smaller stature doesn’t feel incongruous with the structure in the *Mockingjay*s.) Both were far more ornate than the cold, modern look of the rest of the Capitol. On purpose. "I pitched to \[director\] Francis \[Lawrence\], 'What if Snow is kind of a bit more old-school and he has an elegance?’ He reserved the right to have his place be a little different. And Francis loved it," Messina says. “You'll see it in *Mockingjay—Part 2*, his house sitting like [Tavern on the Green](http://tavernonthegreen.com/) in Central Park. He has a lot of grounds, but he’s surrounded by the concrete walls of the city. It makes the world seem a little bit more real. Any time I can do that, I’m doing my job.”
Murray Close/Lionsgate05Mockingjay 2 Goo Scene
One of the most nerve-wracking scenes in *Mockingjay—Part 2* is what’s commonly called the "goo scene," where a booby-trap in the Capitol releases a black sludge that kills or harms everyone in its path. (You can see a tease of it in the trailer below.) The scene was filmed in a suburb of Paris called Noisy-le-Grand inside [a public housing complex](http://www.archdaily.com/774578/a-utopian-dream-stood-still-ricardo-bofills-postmodern-parisian-housing-estate-of-noisy-le-grand) designed by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill. “My first thought wasn’t to use it for the ‘goo’ scene,” Messina says. “I think in the ‘goo’ scene in the book it’s described as coming down the street or something. But \[director Francis Lawrence\] saw this location and he was like, ‘Oh, it’s like they’re trapped.’ We joked that it’s kind of like a toilet bowl, because the kids look trapped and it’s like they’re running away from it. It was one of those locations that really helped stage the scene, more than most places I’ve been to. It literally helped him lay out the blocking of the scene.”
Murray Close/Lionsgate06Mockingjay District 13
In the *Mockingjay* movies District 13 is essentially an underground bunker where rebels have been planning to overthrow the Capitol for years. Because of its off-the-grid nature, Messina wanted to create a world that looked like its technology had stopped advancing at a certain point. He also wanted it to have a very militaristic feel. So he took his inspiration from something very specific: aircraft carriers, which have to subsist as their own ecosystems for long periods of time.
Murray Close/Lionsgate07Mockingjay District 13 Control
The technology in District 13 was also important, and something Messina wanted to make sure to get right visually. "Their hovercrafts were two or three generations ago Capitol hovercrafts that they’ve modified for their own uses. We sort of hit on a *NASA in the 1960s* vibe," Messina says. "The architecture was a 1960s boxy look." To get that look, Messina built most of District 13—the command center (above), the living quarters, etc.—on soundstages and extended them with CGI. "And what I didn’t build from scratch, I pretty much used every viable parking garage in Atlanta \[to make\]."
Murray Close/Lionsgate08SS-D9-3816.dng
In the first *Mockingjay* movie Katniss shoots down a Capitol hovercraft while visiting wounded residents in District 8. That one scene was actually filmed in three very different locations: a rubber factory near Atlanta, a former train yard also in Atlanta (the yard was The Hob in *Catching Fire* and an ersatz hospital in this scene), and an old potassium factory outside of Berlin. "It’s all supposed to be the same place," Messina says. "It was amazing how we were able to stitch together these different countries months apart." (The scene above was shot at the old train yard.)
Murray Close/Lionsgate09Hunger Games Train
The trains that take Katniss to the Capitol are an interesting mix of super-modern maglev technology and Art Deco style. "We did a bunch of research on maglev trains, high-speed trains in Japan," Messina says. "But with the interior, I wanted to ease \[Katniss\] into the Capitol aesthetic. We wanted her to get to that world in steps. We wanted the richness of architectural detail for the interior of the train. That was the idea." But that doesn’t mean Messina got to build a whole train. For the first movie he just got to build Katniss’s bedroom, a dining car (above), and a small section of the exterior. For the second, he got to build the big observation car at the end of the train. Everything else was CGI.
Murray Close/Lionsgate10Hunger Games District 12
Outside of the Capitol and the arenas, Katniss’s home in District 12 is one of the most important places in the *Hunger Games* story. To get the look of it right, Messina had combine a poverty-stricken mining town feeling with a few modern things brought in by the Capitol. "\[*Hunger Games* director\] Gary \[Ross\] was very drawn to Depression-era Appalachia," he says, referring to the on-screen look seen above. "We purposely didn’t have any vehicles. Some of that was a cost thing, but some of it was that we had a lot of decisions to make. Did they have electricity? Yes. In the books it’s described as they only have so many hours of electricity a day. What we were able to do in *Catching Fire*—and we'd developed this somewhat in *The Hunger Games* it just never showed up on screen because she leaves District 12 so quickly—was show this large-scale mining equipment, and the idea was that the Capitol put all of their technology and resources into mining. People aren’t necessarily with pickaxes. They just choose not to give anything to people to keep them repressed."
Murray Close/Lionsgate11Hunger Games Cornucopia
Throughout the first two *Hunger Games* films, the Cornucopias, which hold massive stashes of weapons and tools for Tributes in the Hunger Games arena, played a major role. Despite their centrality, though, they aren’t very well described in the books. “It had the potential of looking really kind of goofy, in my mind,” Messina says. “I wanted it to be cool and threatening. It’s one of the first things you see in the arena, so it was loaded for me. \[For the first film\] I hit on this fractalized and sharp-edged sculptural piece and once I thought of it as a piece of public sculpture in a way, I was able to get over it and get through it. And then when I got commissioned to do the second one I was like, ‘Oh shit, I have to do another Cornucopia.’”
Murray Close/Lionsgate12Catching Fire Cornucopia
The Cornucopia for the second Huger Games in *Catching Fire* is situated in the water in the center of a clock-shaped arena with spokes of land running from the Cornucopia to the beach. And while the Cornucopia itself bears some resemblance to the one from the first movie (the first one was black, the second more silver), Messina put a lot of thought into making its surroundings unique. “We scouted on the Big Island \[in Hawaii\] and I’d seen a lot of his volcanic rock on the Big Island and I thought, ‘Oh shit, that should be what the island and the spokes are made out of for No. 2.’ Francis loved that,” he says. “It was kind of dark and foreboding. ... Looking back, that’s one of the pieces I’m proudest of.”
