PanemPropaganda Wed, January 22, 2014 
You saw it at the end of Catching Fire, now it's been released in it's full glory! The official Mockingjay Part 1 logo and first poster! What do you think?? Let us know in the comments below!
Molly Tue, January 21, 2014 The Hunger Games UK posted something VERY interesting on their twitter this morning:
Will we finally find out the release date of the Catching Fire DVD? Is it going to be our first look at Mockingjay Part 1 via magazine feature, logo reveal or stills? Stay tuned here on FRIDAY to find out!
Molly Thu, January 16, 2014 
Producer Nina Jacobson confirmed today on twitter that it's Buttercup's big day on the Mockingjay set! Apparently, they're filming the "Crazy Cat" scene in District 13 today. For those of you who don't know who Buttercup is - and if you don't this whole website must be thoroughly confusing - it's Prim's beloved cat, who is barely tolerated by Katniss.
Prim and Buttercup. Image courtesy Seventeen
In Mockingjay, Katniss devises a game of "Crazy Cat" to entertain the citizens of District 13 while they're confined *SPOILERS* because of a bombing. Katniss shines a flashlight around the compartment and Buttercup tries to catch it. It later becomes a metaphor for how Katniss is feeling about *SPOILERS* Peeta's capture and torture, so it's a pretty important scene and one we're thrilled is staying in the movie!
Molly Wed, January 15, 2014 
The Hunger Games director Gary Ross brought Phil Messina on board as Production Designer, and he remains with the franchise, creating the world in Catching Fire as well as both Mockingjay movies, currently in production. He recently spoke with FlickeringMyth.com about the films, some of the challenges, and what it was like working with Francis Lawrence who "has become a dear friend of mine."
How it all started:
Gary called me which was in the middle of night my time and said that he was going on this film called Hunger Games [2012]. I had never heard of it. Gary was probably the most excited about it than I had heard of any one director and he had the script emailed to me. I had to go work in the morning but I read it all night. Suzanne [Collins] was part of the process the entire time so there wasn’t a dichotomy between script and book. When questions came up in our work about how things were organized or what things should look it we often went back to the book. In fact we still do. I’m working on Mockingjay 1 [2014] and 2 [2015] right now so at the end of this I’ve would have done all four Hunger Games films. I have dog-eared pages of all three books in my office that we’re constantly referring back to try to keep it straight.”
Working with director Francis Lawrence on Catching Fire:
“When I found out about the second film Gary was going to direct it and he was the one who asked me back,” recalls Phil Messina. “When he decided not to do the film it was an odd couple of weeks where Producer Nina Jacobson was persuasive in saying, ‘We want the continuity since we’re bringing in an unknown entity at this point.’ They hadn’t hired a director yet. I was caught by surprise and they were all reacting in real time. I was literally reading the movie headlines a couple times a day to see who was in the lead to do our film. I had not worked with Francis [Lawrence] before nor had any contact with him. I took our first meeting as if I was interviewing for the job. If Francis wanted to go in a different direction or it wasn’t going to work out personality wise I would have bowed out. We had a wonderful connection and he has become a dear friend of mine.”
Photo courtesy litegear.com
On creating Panem:
“There are a lot of different ways you can go,” explains Phil Messina. “There is the Star Trek, Star Wars and Oblivion that's high tech futuristic which is an amazing look. But with ours it was important for it to be accessible, and feel like a world that could easily develop in the not so distant future. Suzanne described this world as having no satellites or Internet. It’s not so futuristic, but a parallel society that would have developed given a different set of circumstances. That’s what I found interesting in the world. How do things develop if XYZ...? Those are some of the factors that we’re dealing with every day.” Cities don’t grow from one place. What we tried to bring to it was a visual harmony of a singular idea but also things are built at different times. It doesn’t all go up in the same five or ten years. It had developed over a certain amount of time. In Catching Fire we have more of the Capitol shown than in Hunger Games, but in Mockingjay, especially in the second film, it's like being on the streets of the Capitol. We’re using some locations in Europe, especially in Paris and Berlin. We tried to use places that felt architecturally relevant to our film and also felt real. One thing that Francis wanted was to be on real streets; he didn’t want to be on the back lot with fake buildings so we are in a lot of real locations and I find that exciting.”
On the Districts:
“Every district has a specific purpose which has a specific resource that serves the capital,” states Phil Messina. “Katniss [Jennifer Lawrence] is from the mining district which Suzanne wrote as being in the Appalachian Mountains so we naturally drew from the coal mines from West Virginia." The production designer drew upon his own childhood. “For the textile district I grew up in a mill town called Lawrence, Massachusetts which at the turn of the last century was the textile centre of the world. In Catching Fire when we had to create the textile district for a brief scene I knew exactly where to draw from. The transportation district we used a lot of trains. We tried to stay mostly in the U.S. and not to draw from too many European influences. We tried to make it American feeling. Logging and lumber is from the Pacific Northwest. Suzanne had marked out a map of Panem where each of these resources came from and were based on American history. It became easy to think of the next step and start creating the visuals for them.” (insert personal freak out - WHERE IS THIS MAP??)
On Catching Fire:
"It looks beautiful and the world looks real. The shot selections were great and it tells a story.” Messina adds, “I’m proud about the work I did with Gary on the first one and I’m proud of the work I’ve done on Catching Fire with Francis. I’ve seen Catching Fire several times already and it’s fantastic. I’m glad to continue to be part of this franchise.”
Read the rest of the really interesting interview HERE. Phil talks more about the Hunger Games weapons, working with CG and shooting in the jungle.
Molly Tue, January 14, 2014 
Photo thanks to Allure Magazine Makeup artist Ve Neill has served as makeup department head for all of the Hunger Games movie adaptations. Neill told EW that she’s consumed with work on the The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. “It’s going to be pretty spectacular. Julianne Moore is on with us now as President Coin and she’s great. We have quite a few new characters who’ve joined us,” she hinted. “They’re all wonderful to work with. Jennifer [Lawrence] and Josh [Hutcherson] are absolute dolls. It’s nice to have a group of actors who enjoy coming to work.”
What’s next in the Hunger Games movies and how do you help tell the story through makeup?
We’re going into the third book, which is when they go to war. You’re going to see a lot more wartime stuff. They’re going to go into district 13, which we’ve never seen and nobody thought existed. These people have been living underground, so you’re going to see a lot of that. Everybody is pretty plain. There’s not a lot of exotic looking stuff in the third movie. In the fourth movie, we go into The Capitol again and you’ll start to see some crazy stuff there. We’re really going for it on the fourth one. Part one is a wartime movie and we have four huge “prosthetic days” that include a hospital full of injured people who have just come in from bombings. They’re burned and missing limbs. We have a lot of distressed looking makeups as opposed to glamour.
How big is the part of the Hunger Games makeup department that you oversee?
We have three makeup artists who are on all the time and we have one make-up artist who runs our tech unit, who works with us concurrently doing interior and pickup shots. She sometimes has fifteen people working with her. Right now we’re doing stuff in District 13, so we have 20 extra makeup artists, and there are even more people in the hair department. We have a lot manpower because there are over 400 extras. They live underground, so nobody has tans. Everybody has to look sickly. Those are the types of makeups we’re doing — very simple, really pale.
What’s it like working with the stars of the movie?
They’re all wonderful to work with. They all have children… well Josh and Jennifer don’t, but a lot of our other adult principals have children and, of course, their kids are all really happy that their parents are working on the Hunger Games, so that’s fun for them. We have a terrific director and we don’t work hellacious hours. No 19-hour shoot days. They try to keep it to 12 hours so that everybody stays relatively healthy and rested.
Though you might have less work to do if the extras came to set already looking a little sickly.
We’ll just make ‘em look that way.
Neill talks more about her role as judge on the show "Face Off" in EW.
Molly Mon, January 13, 2014 It's Round 1 of the annual MTV Movie Brawl and Mockingjay Part 1 is up against Dumb and Dumber To. To vote go to MTV Movie Brawl by January 16th.
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Molly Thu, January 9, 2014 The Newnan Times-Herald is reporting that Mockingjay Part 1 filming has resumed at the Caldwell Tanks in Newnan, GA as of today.
The Mockingjay crew unloading equipment at Caldwell Tanks. Photo by Clay Neely
Just weeks before the release of Catching Fire, the film crew was at Caldwell Tanks building a coliseum set in the largest of the warehouse buildings. The first shoot began on Dec. 18, which only lasted two days. Today, the filming got underway again, though it is unknown for how long they plan to film. The set is obviously closed to the public.
Thanks to the Newnan Times-Herald for the info!
Molly Thu, January 9, 2014 There's a tiny snippet about Mockingjay Part 1 in Entertainment Weekly's 2014 Movie Preview Issue (it's the January 17, 2014 issue) but we couldn't resist posting it!
If you thought Catching Fire was dark, you ain't seen nothing yet. In Mockingjay Part 1, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) endures more violent loss and personal betrayal when she reluctantly becomes the face of the rebellion seeking to overthrow the Capitol. Director Francis Lawrence, returning for the two-part finale, is undaunted by the challenge of adapting the last book in Suzanne Collins' beloved trilogy. "Even though it may be the toughest, and people view it as the bleakest, " he says, "it's the story that gives meaning to all of them."
