Suzanne Collins' bestselling trilogy turned box office movies is set in the Dystopian Panem. It is quite hard to imagine how one could bring a place so complex into life in the form of movie set and design. There are two entirely distinct environments in the series; the vivid and colorful Capitol for the rich and powerful people, and the bleak, colorless Districts for the rest of Panem.
Hunger Games' production designer Philip Messina shares how he interpreted these two. He says in an interview with Wired, "It's not a dystopian future like in some movies where it's this scorched-Earth civilization with destroyed buildings. The way I got my head around it is that I thought of it as an alternate universe. It really was up to us to decide what that world felt like."
Messina's take on the Capitol resembles that of a Communist, Soviet architecture from '50s to '70. He combined this type of design with very detailed and loud decorations and costumes to get the feel of being oppressed yet having the freedom to splurge with luxury, as how the Capitol people lived according to the book.
President Snow's mansion is one of the impactful locations described in the trilogy. Atlanta's iconic Swan House was used as the reader's chateau during the party scene in Catching Fire. The designer filled the façade and the stairway with vibrant and dramatic lights.
In Mockingjay Part 2, Katniss' team had to run from a fatal black 'goo,' which eventually trapped them in one of the desolated buildings. This scene was shot in a Paris suburb called Noisy-le-Grand. The housing complex built by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill really contributed to the staging of the scene, according to Messina.
The production designer stated that his goal is to show viewers something they have not seen before, but at the same time, also complies to the material. This is the beauty of the Hunger Games books, Messina shares, Collins' style of writing lets the readers' imagination fill in the blanks.