American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 79

Unit photography by Murray Close, courtesy of Lionsgate.

Opposite and this
page, top: Katniss
Everdeen (Jennifer
Lawrence) leads a
rebel faction in its
strike on Panem's
Capitol in The
Hunger Games:
Mockingjay - Part 2.
Below:
Cinematographer
Jo Willems, ASC, SBC
(left) and director
Francis Lawrence
(pointing) confer
on set.

prepared for how he's going to shoot
and leads the team to what he wants to
achieve. Some directors thrive on chaos.
I've been in those situations and it can
be gratifying, but we shot about 250
days [on Catching Fire and the
Mockingjay films], and chaos would
have been very tiring."
Maintaining preparedness meant
storyboards and previs for sequences
featuring visual effects or elaborate
action, as well as for shots that required
digital extensions of production
designer Philip Messina's retro-futuristic sets. Indeed, the electrical department spent weeks setting up lights on
some of the larger sites. Lawrence
would go over his blocking strategy at
the start of each day, and the net result
of all this planning kept shooting days
that could have stretched to 14 hours or
more down to 10, which was far less
taxing on all involved - a particularly
important consideration given the overall length of production.
Part 1 and Part 2 were shot
largely back-to-back, with some overlap
to take advantage of common locations.
Willems had eight weeks of prep time
before cameras rolled in and around

Atlanta. The production crossed the
pond in April to continue shooting in
Paris and Berlin. The combined 150day shoot began in late September 2013
and lasted through June 2014, with a
break in November for the Catching Fire
release, during which further location
scouting took place.
The filmmakers had shot
www.theasc.com

Catching Fire on Panaflex Millennium
XL2, Arriflex 435 and Imax film
cameras, but switched to digital for the
Mockingjay movies. Despite initial
misgivings about creating too "clean" a
look, they wanted as much freedom as
possible when shooting in Part 2's lowlight sets, including the underground
District 13 and the sewers through
December 2015

79



http://www.theasc.com

American Cinematographer - December 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 2015

Contents
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 1
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 2
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - Contents
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 4
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 5
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 6
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 7
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 8
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 9
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 10
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 11
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 12
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 13
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 14
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 15
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 16
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 17
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 18
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 19
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 20
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 21
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 22
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 23
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 24
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 25
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 26
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 27
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 28
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 29
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 30
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American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 33
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 34
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 35
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 36
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 37
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 38
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 39
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 40
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 41
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 42
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 43
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American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 78
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 79
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American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 107
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 108
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 109
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 110
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 111
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 112
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - Cover3
American Cinematographer - December 2015 - Cover4
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