The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 Production Notes

Taglines: Fire burns brighter in the darkness.

Katniss Everdeen finds herself in District 13 after she literally shatters the Games forever. Under the leadership of President Coin and the advice of her trusted friends, Katniss spreads her wings as she fights to save Peeta and a nation moved by her courage.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’s family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins’s groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about movies of the year.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is an American science fiction adventure film directed by Francis Lawrence with a screenplay by Peter Craig and Danny Strong. It is the first of two cinematic parts based on the novel Mockingjay, the final book in The Hunger Games trilogy, written by Suzanne Collins, and the third installment in The Hunger Games film series, produced by Nina Jacobson and Jon Kilik and distributed by Lionsgate Films.

Our Leader The Mockingjay

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is the highly-anticipated third installment of the blockbuster phenomenon that blazed across movie screens around the globe. The story now accelerates to new, exhilarating levels as the futuristic chronicle of Katniss Everdeen enters into a new realm. The Games may have been obliterated for good, but the fight to survive is about to intensify. Faced with the most daunting odds – and watched by the eyes of a hopeful nation – Katniss must put into motion courage, strength and empowerment against the all-powerful Capitol. This is the moment when she realizes she has no choice but to open her wings and fully embody the Mockingjay symbol. If only to save Peeta, she must become a leader.

The story begins again as Katniss has just been rescued from the destruction of the Quarter Quell. She awakens in a shocking world she didn’t even know existed: the deep, dark underground of supposedly annihilated District 13. She quickly learns of the devastating reality she must face: District 12 has been turned to rubble; and Peeta is being held, manipulated and brainwashed by President Snow in The Capitol. At the same time, Katniss’s eyes are opened to a secret rebellion rapidly spreading from District 13 throughout all of Panem – a rebellion that will place her at the center of a daring plot to hack into The Capitol and turn the tables on President Snow.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 dives further into the fabric of Panem and into the story’s most powerful emotions as Katniss and the nation enter a harrowing but transformative time. Explains returning director Francis Lawrence: “Emotionally, Katniss is like a foreigner in a strange land as this story begins. This is the time when she realizes she can’t stand by and do nothing. There has been too much deception and the people Katniss loves are in danger. She will do whatever it takes to keep them safe.”

The director continues: “The stakes have always been high in The Hunger Games but now the entire world opens up. The Games themselves are gone, but threat of oppression now permeates all of Panem. This chapter gave us a chance to reveal entirely new locations with amazing action sequences. It’s a gigantic movie.”

In her third and most poignant turn as Katniss, Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence relished the chance to portray the character at this heightened juncture as she emerges from distress to take her first steps into leadership. “I was excited for Katniss to come into her own as a leader, but she’s still a very reluctant hero,” Lawrence observes. “In the first movie she wanted to save her family. In the second, she tried to save her friends and herself. Now, she starts to realize the impact she has on the wider world and that she has a choice to lead this battle for what is right.”

That choice does not come easily for Katniss, who recoils at nearly every element of her new life: the militaristic order of District 13, the pressure to perform on cue, and the heart-wrenching reality of war. Katniss remains hopeful that becoming the Mockingjay might truly change things. “As an actor, the challenge was having Katniss wake up in a brand new environment, where she has to rebuild herself from nothing. Katniss has not only left behind her old life as a District 12 victor, she has entered a world unlike any other. Says Lawrence: “She has to get used to a new way of life in District 13. Everything is deeply unfamiliar and it’s all underground, so she can’t even go outside or hunt.”

Lawrence continues about approaching Katniss: “She felt almost like an entirely different character because she is so stripped down and feeling so empty. It’s something that truly does happen to people after traumatic events like she’s been through. Katniss still has the same core, but she’s in a completely different place inside and out.”

As Katniss takes on the public role of the Mockingjay, she is asked by President Coin [Julianne Moore] to appear in a series of “propos” – viral propaganda videos that District 13 uses to communicate with and inspire rebels across Panem.

“She goes into the propos feeling like a pawn, like the Mockingjay is just a symbol she’s not connected to or passionate about,” Lawrence says. “The whole idea of the propos is to get people fired up, to band together – so Katniss faking at being something that she’s not doesn’t work. It’s only when she sees the human cost in District 8 that a true spark is ignited. The more she sees, the more it becomes a personal fight for her.”

Lawrence was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Julianne Moore in the role of President Coin. “When I heard she was going to play Coin, it was the most exciting, unbelievable news in the world. I think Julianne is one of the greatest actresses of all time, just absolutely phenomenal. She was even more impressive in person. She is such a sweet family woman and also hilarious. Working with her was a dream come true.”

While Lawrence and Moore got along, their characters have a cool tension between them. “Their relationship is complicated. They share similar ideals, but with all she’s been through, Katniss feels she cannot fully trust her,” Lawrence comments. “President Coin can see how important Katniss is to leading this rebellion, but she also doesn’t believe Katniss can actually do it. She’s still suffering from post-traumatic stress and President Coin is skeptical that using Katniss is something that she can actually control.”

Also rewarding to Lawrence was the chance for deeper interaction with Liam Hemsworth as Gale, who remains Katniss’s devoted friend and strongest link to her past. “Katniss and Gale have such a rich history,” she acknowledges. “There are so many complexities to it because before Katniss went into the Games, Gale was the only person who really understood her. Following the games, she and Peeta had this experience together that no one else, including Gale, could ever understand. She and Gale are in a very interesting place and it was nice to explore more of that.”

For Francis, one of the highlights of the entire Hunger Games series has been watching Jennifer take Katniss through a vast range of experiences, each one internalized into a character who is now thick with many layers. “It’s incredibly complex to track somebody who is going through so much emotionally,” he says. “Katniss has incurred a lot of damage, and now here she is trying to figure out where she stands in the world, whether or not she trusts the people in District 13, and whether she wants the responsibility of becoming a part of the rebellion. Jen has done the most amazing job with every nuance.”

In thinking about Katniss and reflecting on one of her favorite scenes, producer Nina Jacobson notes: “When Katniss goes to District 8 and says, ‘If we burn, you burn with us,’ for the first time she sees the impact that she has on people. Those moments – where Katniss owns what and who she is – really give me the chills.”

Jacobson says the films biggest astonishment may be how emotionally resonant it is – not just because the story is entering a time of war, with all its accompanying sorrow for the lost and hopes for the future, but because it is also a time when Katniss must change faster than ever. “It’s a very tense and powerful story and the emotions on screen are surprisingly deep,” concludes the producer. “It takes you to places you will not expect to be taken. It’s provocative, thoughtful and up to the last minutes of the film, the way it unfolds is shocking.”

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is such a fantastic epic,” she summarizes. “This part of the story is important to tell — about how powerful a person’s voice can be. It is always easier to follow the person in front of you, but I think we all have a Mockingjay in us. We all have the ability to make a stand and do the right thing.”

District 13 vs. The Capitol

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 reveals for the first time the most covert place in all of Panem: secretive District 13, where Panem’s rebels have carved out their own rigidly ordered society miles underground.

District 13 and The Capitol are mirror opposites in every way. The Capitol is sensationalist spectacles, over-the-top garish hues and gleaming lights. District 13 is steeped in shades of gray, claustrophobia, conformity and the stark reality of what’s happening in the Districts. While The Capitol has been living high on the hog off the people, District 13 has been biding its time, preparing for the day when they would finally take a stand.

Up until now, only The Capitol knew about District 13, having carved out a non-aggression treaty that allowed it to exist so long as it stayed underground. As rumblings of war begin in earnest, District 13 and The Capitol are pitted against each other in a battle of images designed to win support – and key to it all is the ultimate District 13 symbol and foe of The Capitol: the Mockingjay.

Francis notes that the history of District 13 makes it unique even in dystopian Panem. “What we discover is that 13 was bombed in the Dark Days 75 years earlier. It was a graphite mine with old nuclear facilities. There were survivors, and instead of giving up, they moved underground and created an alternative civilization outside The Capitol, hidden from view. They’ve created a very ordered, militarized civilization, where people are trained as soldiers from a very early age. All this time, they’ve been waiting for a rebellion to start so they could take back The Capitol.”

Creating this clash of two cultures – and dueling visions for the future of Panem – was one of the biggest and most exhilarating tasks of the film. “There’s really nothing in this movie that you’ve seen before of Panem,” notes producer Jon Kilik. “You’re immersed into District 13 – the one place no one outside has seen, the place no one except The Capitol even knew still existed. It’s a whole new journey for the audience. We’ve been through jungles and plagues in the Games but now to be living miles underground, things are even more intense and it puts an even greater pressure on the characters. It was also an incredible design challenge, and the result is a tribute to the skills of Francis Lawrence and our production designer Phil Messina.”

Katniss might not much like District 13, but she is their long-awaited ideal of a people’s hero, someone who isn’t in it for glory but is motivated by her own pure sense of right and wrong. “She is a simple girl from the lowest of the Districts, so the message of District 13 is that if she can stand up to The Capitol, anybody can do it,” Francis explains. “That’s why they want to use her in the propos. The hope is that if she stirs enough people up and all the Districts begin to unify; they could actually defeat The Capitol.

The Unseen Panem: Design

Bringing District 13 to life – and giving audiences glimpses into the turmoil catching like fire across Panem was one of the most intriguing tasks faced by Francis and his design team, headed by production designer Phil Messina, who also designed The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. The two envisioned taking the scale of the third film beyond anything they had done while relying largely on real locations rather than digital ones. In addition to shooting on soundstages in Atlanta the production went further afield to luxury chateaus and apartment complexes in Paris.

Messina began by turning Suzanne Collins’ flights of imagination into a detailed vision of District 13. He illustrated a series of shadowy, claustrophobic, bunker-style sets for this brave new world amid the rubble. A combination of factory locations and intricate soundstage sets produced the final results. “Our inspiration for the design came from 1960s and 1970s nuclear facilities,” he explains. “The idea is that District 13 has developed as a kind of closed-loop society. They have been completely cut off from The Capitol, so they’ve been adding on new technology on top of old technology. You will see analog push buttons next to high tech – and that mix was very intentional on our part.”

The set designs for District 13 were as desolate as the designs for The Capitol were lavish, transporting the actors into this very raw, austere reality. Says Julianne Moore: “It was rendered so incredibly beautifully. It made me think of what you imagine East Germany was like before the wall came down – very militaristic, really grey with people waiting for the moment of change.”

The underground city is laid out as a kind of multi-level maze that culminates in President Coin’s Command Center. “The Command Center is the brains of the entire operation where all the systems like water, oxygen and power are controlled. We organized it like a military hierarchy where above it all, Coin is at her post kind of overlooking everything,” Messina explains.

Another highlight of District 13’s design is purloined hovercrafts. “We liked the idea that the rebel hovercrafts would be an older generation of The Capitol hovercrafts, maybe something they had stolen previously. We had already seen a Capitol hovercraft previously so it was fun to generate something that was its antecedent and has a lot more texture,” says Messina. “The aesthetic was taken from WWII Russian planes, as well as some submarines and helicopters for cockpit configurations.”

The hovercrafts were hung off of huge cranes to simulate flight. “When we first started designing pieces of the hovercraft, we thought how much fun it would be to fly. It took a lot of calculations to make sure the crane would be safe. The Atlanta special effects department built a steel structure that they were confident about. It had to be rehung at different places and it was a huge pain,” laughs Messina, “but it really paid off with some fantastic footage that looks like a real craft landing from the inside.”

The idea was to use as many practical locations as possible. “Our practical locations give the movie a sense of scope and at the same time a groundedness so that it feels like it readily could be our future,” says Nina Jacobson. “If you tried to do that purely through digital magic you couldn’t get that sense of authenticity we wanted, where you see a real hovercraft land and your characters get out of it and interact with a real environment.” The actors also loved the sense of immersion. “Using locations that were so grounded in a sense of reality only made things that much more truthful,” says Ali.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 also hones in on the other Districts as unrest grows. “We wanted to show the consequences of Katniss joining the rebellion and how the propos start to inspire people in different Districts. So you see the lumber District start to rebel by propelling up trees and then you see the hydroelectric dam getting blown up in an extraordinary sequence. I think like you’re really able to see things in the Districts we haven’t seen before but in a way that is always connected to Katniss,” Jacobson comments.