Swan House Preps For 'Mockingjay' Return

Swan House stood in for President Snow's mansion in the Catching Fire party sceneAccess Atlanta's Jennifer Brett was on the Mockingjay set today and she spoke with Jeffrey Ellis of Atlanta Creative Studios, the team responsible for transforming Swan House into President Snow's mansion. Mockingjay will return to film at Swan House in the next week or so.

Workers are putting in long hours to ready Swan House for Mockingjay. All photos Jennifer Brett/AccessAtlanta

From Access Atlanta:

President Snow has some sumptuous accommodations awaiting him in Buckhead as Mockingjay continues filming in Atlanta.

The elegant Swan House, site of a good bit of filming for Catching Fire, is readying for the return of the Hunger Games series.

Catching Fire filmed in areas including the dining room, an outside courtyard and an upstairs room in scenes featuring Donald Sutherland's character, President Snow, along with lead Jennifer Lawrence's character, Katniss Everdeen and others.

This time, workers are prepping a downstairs room to serve as Snow's quarters. The room, normally stately and sort of subdued, has been rendered positively resplendent by Jeffery Ellis and his team at Atlanta Creative Studios.

Jeffrey Ellis preps a room in the Swan House for Mockingjay filming. Photo by Jeenifer Brett/Access Atlanta"We've been busting it," he said, and by that he means working long and hard hours. Initially he thought workers could spray-paint the ceiling and do the detail work by hand. But the Swan House and spray paint have nothing in common. All the work must be done by hand, to protect the interior of the home, on the grounds of the Atlanta History Center.

"They said, you're not spray-painting anything!" Ellis said. He also worked on Catching Fire, and other projects have included The Walking Dead, Zombieland, Stomp the Yard and a number of Tyler Perry productions. He also does corporate work but enjoys the hustle of movie-set design.

"The time element" is the biggest challenge, he said. "They keep changing it. You'll finish and they'll say, 'what about this?'"

There's a joke among folks in his line of work:

Q: How many artistic directors does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Does it have to be a lightbulb? Could we try something else?

You get the idea.

Mockingjay is due to return in the next week or so, and as Ellis' team works inside, a crew outside is prepping some of the exterior areas. The outside of the Swan House was featured extensively in Catching Fire party scenes but Ellis wasn't able to say exactly what will be going on this time. He did salute everyone at the Swan House.

"All the people here are great," he said.