Did you use any locations you had used on the previous Hunger Games films?
We did shoot a little bit of the Mockingjay movies in Berlin and there was one building that we shared with this film, but we used different rooms. Having been there on the Mockingjay movies, I had certain places in my head and then we started working with Uli Hanisch, the production designer, who is Berlin-based. When we started research where we thought we could find the places we needed, we discovered that Berlin had the perfect things.
How much of the film is locations and how much is set builds?
99 percent is [real]. We built the Snow apartment. We shot in it a few times, so we had a pristine version for the end of the movie and more dilapidated versions. We also built an exterior set, which was the zoo where the tributes are held.
That wasn’t a real zoo?
It was not! We shot it in [Britzer Garten], a park in Berlin. We found this great roundabout that was part of a little road and we took it over and fenced it all in and made a backing. It fully looked like an old animal enclosure. It felt so real. Most of, if not all of, the cast thought it was actually part of a former zoo. They thought we had lucked out and found this old abandoned zoo.
Why was Berlin right for what the Capitol looks like during this particular era in Panem’s history?
The story is a period piece [in relation] to the other films. It’s not long after the wars that created everything about [the society in] these books and movies. We knew the Capitol was in a reconstruction phase, so we looked at the reconstruction era of Berlin from the mid-1940s after World War II to the early 1950s. How long did it take to rebuild the classic buildings and to start to erect new buildings? What was the look and feel of that? The technology in the story is still somewhat rudimentary. We also looked at that era for car design, hair, makeup, and wardrobe.
