How “Hunger Games” filmmakers built a post-war Panem for “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”
The Capitol and District 12 look a little different when the clock’s turned back more than a half-century — here’s how production designer Uli Hanisch reimagined that world.
When director Francis Lawrence began production on The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes — what he calls a "period piece" to the original Hunger Games films, as it takes place six decades prior — he kept returning to the idea of a city or country rebuilding itself after a great war, similar to a post-World War II Berlin. With that in mind, he hired German production designer Uli Hanisch and filmed largely in Germany and Poland.
"[The original movies] always had some futuristic elements, but they were almost contemporary in a way," Hanisch says. "If you turn back 65 years in our real history, you are all of a sudden in the late '50s, beginning of the '60s.... It's an interesting way to look at it."
Take a peek at what a mid-century-inspired Panem looks like.
The Snows' apartment
"It was a key element and the first thing we started to design," Hanisch says of Coriolanus's refuge, which the family has been desperate to maintain amid financial woes. "Keeping this apartment represents his struggle keeping up the status of this falling great family," Hanisch explains. For the layout the team took inspiration from the family moniker, designing the space like a snowflake, with a grand room in the center and smaller rooms and corridors emanating out. "If you walk through the actual apartment, which we built onstage, it makes you feel uncomfortable immediately," Hanisch says. "You could feel that it used to be great, but it was never meant to be a nice place for a family to live. It represented their place in society." As for that stained-glass window visage? It's a rather telling portrait of Coriolanus's late father. Says Hanisch: "He was so vain that he incorporated his own image into the interior architecture of the apartment."
Heavensbee Hall
Scenes set in the Academy's meeting place were shot on location in Berlin, with Hanisch's team embellishing the already existing interior with elements such as tall Gothic-style mirrors to create an imposing air. "We had this idea that it appears a little bit like a church...playing in between this kind of intimidation factor and seduction [factor]," Hanisch says. "And maybe intimidation is more important than anything else to make the students know their place."
Dr. Gaul's Lab
When it came to the Head Gamemaker's (and maniacal scientist's) lair, Lawrence had specific instructions for Hanisch: "Francis said to me — and I thought that was very important — 'Don't make it too sinister and mean, because it's important to understand she really likes what she's doing.'" So when designing the lab Hanisch aimed for a balance of "spooky and slick," creating one of the most modern-looking of the movie's set pieces while also hearkening back to art deco and Bauhaus by incorporating statuesque columns and gleaming glass displays for all of Gaul's creepy specimens.
Control room
With its large bank of retro-style television screens — which allow the mentors to track their tributes' movements in the arena — the Hunger Games' control room screams vintage '60s louder than any of the movie's other sets. And the space has a pretty cool history, too: Located inside Olympic Park, it previously hosted fencing matches during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. "That's why it has this kind of strange, round shape," Hanisch says.
The arena
For the Capitol's abandoned arena, Hanisch and his team turned to a very much still-in-use facility: Centennial Hall in Wroclaw, Poland. Designed by architect Max Berg and completed in 1913, the hall needed a bit of construction (and de-construction) — including new flooring, walls to keep the tributes inside, and all that rubble — to make it a believable location for a death match.
District 12
While Hunger Games fans are no strangers to the depressed landscape of District 12, Hanisch says he and his team took a different visual approach to the coal-mining area than that of the original films. "Here, again, if you compare our real history, all those coal mining, steel-factory, industrial places used to be so much more important in the '60s than now," Hanisch explains. "We wanted to turn them back into full motion with a lot of activity — make it a real heavy-working place all over the district. We made this aspect much stronger." Hanisch and his team found just the right District 12 stand-in in a town in Germany. "It used to be one of the highest industrial areas in Germany, and now, of course, it's all in a ruined state with very many abandoned factories...really great industrial ruin kind of locations for District 12."
The Hob
Within District 12 lies the Hob, which during Katniss' era serves as a black market for banned goods. In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, fans will see Lucy Gray Baird perform musical numbers there with her fellow Covey members. "It's almost like a half-interior, half-exterior kind of basement meeting point," Hanisch says of the space, also located in Germany. A former steel factory, the building is now part of what's called Landscape Park. "It's a huge estate," Hanisch says. "You can go there and walk around for, I don't know, two hours, and you haven't seen everything yet. It's a public space, and that's why it is in this preserved condition. It was really great to shoot there. I think it's a perfect surrounding for this new version of District 12."
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes arrives in theaters Nov. 17. You can buy Entertainment Weekly's The Ultimate Guide to The Hunger Games here, or on newsstands.
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