he Lionsgate Publicity Page recently posted an 82 page document full of
hunger games scoop. This is a highlight from that document:
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Costumes,
Hair and Makeup
Equally key to Panem’s vivid reality is the work of
costume designer Judianna Makovsky, who has been a regular collaborator with
Gary Ross. Yet this film would take them places they’ve never before
explored. “This isn’t the type of design
we usually do,” admits Makovsky. “It gets into realms of fantasy fashion in the
Capitol, but we also wanted the look to be recognizable and relatable, taking
today’s haute couture a step further. For me it was a wonderful challenge. How often do you get the chance to do such
outrageous clothing, hair and makeup?”
Makovsky started with the vast, yin-yang contrasts
between the Districts and the Capitol: the former as rough-hewn and raw as it
gets, the latter with no limits to its excess.
“The Districts have very limited palettes,” she explains. “They’re gray and blue-gray. Then, when you get to the Capitol, we have
two palettes: one is bright pastels, with lots fuchsias and turquoises, and the
other is more acidic yellows and greens. There’s a meanness to the Capitol, so
we also decided to put a lot of black in there to mute the brightness and
outrageous colors.”
Katniss’ clothes also shift as she moves from District
12 to the Capitol. “The clothes in
District 12 are all work wear and Katniss has mostly hand-me-downs,” Makovsky
says. “On Reaping Day, she wears the
blue dress described in the book, and we found a great vintage fabric that has
the has the right kind of simplicity to it.
But when she gets to the Capitol, her chariot costume is a leotard and
tights with tall boots and it all has a very shiny, dramatic aspect.”
As for Katniss’ famed “Girl on Fire” dress, Makovsky
thought about the intentions of the man who, in the story, designs it: Katniss’ stylist for the Games, Cinna. “Cinna’s a very elegant man, so we thought he
would design an elegant dress, and only when it twirls would the flame within
the bottom of the dress suddenly become visible,” Makovsky says. “We wanted the
dress to feel more high fashion than ‘Dancing With The Stars.’ We added Swarovski crystals so it sparkles
when she moves, but when she’s standing still, it’s just a beautiful dress with
flame-like pleats.”
Makovsky approached one of the story’s most flamboyant
dressers – Effie Trinket – with care, talking at length with Elizabeth Banks
about her take on the character. “We
agreed that Effie is both a little prim-and-proper and outrageous,” Makovsky
says. “There’s a bit of ‘schoolmarm’
about her, but she’s also a bit sexy.
When she’s in District Twelve, she contrasts starkly with the people
there. But when she gets to the Capitol,
her look gets wilder and crazier. Her sleeves get larger, the colors get
brighter and she changes wigs with every costume, from pink to green to
lavender.”
Banks was thrilled with the process. “We all consulted over email back and forth,”
she recalls, “and I had many, many fittings. Suddenly one day it was like,
‘There she is! There’s Effie!!’”
Like Banks, Woody Harrelson had very specific ideas
for the look of Haymitch Abernathy. “You
might think he’d be disheveled, but my take on him was he’s a little bit of a bon vivant in dress,” Harrelson
says. Adds Makovsky: “With Haymitch’s look, there’s a sense that
he’s created an outward persona that isn’t who he really is – he’s putting on a
bit of an act. There’s this sort of
Edwardian dandy style to him. He’s
refined but also a little dangerously sexy.”
Most of the costuming details came straight from the
novels – from Caesar Flickerman’s blue hair and suit and Cinna’s gold eyeliner
to President Snow’s scruffy beard and the Peacekeepers’ gleaming white uniforms
which Makovsky wanted to be both of another time and recognizable as
police. “The Peacekeepers needed to
stand out enough to be scary, but I didn’t want them to look like they came
from another planet,” she explains. “The
uniforms follow the basic shape that exists today in motorcycle cops and SWAT
teams, but we take it a step further.
And since they don’t really have hand-to-hand combat but use electronic
wands, they can look very elegant.”
For the outfits worn by the Tributes, however, Ross
and Makovsky instituted a change. “In
the book, everybody wears exactly the same thing, but in a film you have to be
able to see the Tributes in the woods and know who each person is,” explains
the costume designer. “So Gary made the
decision that each District would have their own color jacket but everything
else would remain the same. For the jackets, we worked to create something that
looks high-tech but that would be lightweight and versatile, allowing us to
hide padding and harnesses for all the stunt work.”
The bold design extended to hair and makeup, with as
many as 80 hair and makeup artists working in a single day for the film’s large
crowd scenes. Lead makeup designer Ve Neill, a three-time Oscar® winner, says
THE HUNGER GAMES “is a makeup designer’s dream with everything from
high-fashion and avant-garde beauty to prosthetics and injuries, a vast scope
and challenge for any artist.”
Following the trajectory of the costumes, Neill’s
makeup work begins in gritty shades of beige in District 12 only to erupt into
a rainbow array in the Capitol where Neill attempted to straddle the fine line
between the playfulness of luxe fashion and outright comedy. “The idea was for the Capitol to be visually
stunning in a way very close to the book, but without looking silly. The men of the Capitol are extremely groomed
with colored hair and the women all have bleached eyebrows, giving them a very
austere look,” she explains.
Once the Tributes are in the arena, the makeup changes
again to become more stripped-back and real as the contest for survival starts
among the Tributes in the forest. “That
part of the film became about dirt and cuts and Tracker Jacker wasp bites,” she
notes.
Lead hair designer Linda Flowers felt liberated by not
having to comply with current trends. “There were no boundaries and nothing
holding me back from being creative,” she says.
“I loved that there were so many interesting colors and textures in the
hair for Panem. You don’t get that many
opportunities to do things like lime-green hair! But the big challenge was
finding the balance of creating interesting, original looks that you can also
take seriously, because the Capitol isn’t supposed to be whimsical. It’s a society with a mean core to it and that
has to come across.”
For Katniss, Flowers remained faithful to her
signature braid, creating a side-swept style that is practical yet distinctive
and took 20 minutes each day to prepare.
“We stayed very true to Katniss’ look from the novel, adding just a few
touches to make it more visually interesting,” she explains.
Other Tributes went a bit farther afield. “For Clove, I was inspired by those Kung Fu
movies with women in ponytails, so we made her a kind of tier of pony-tail
balls that really suit the character.
Glimmer is very glamorous so she has this pretty fishbone braiding. And Rue’s hair is very innocent because she’s
the youngest,” explains Flowers.
There were days shooting on the Capitol sets when the
hair and makeup teams had to oversee more than 400 wigs, 500 pairs of bleached
eyebrows and hundreds of extras flowing through the process of transformation
into the Capitol’s idea of style.
As with Messina’s work the bottom line was a sense of
reality – albeit an imaginative one.
“Judianna Makovsky and Ve Neill created a look that doesn’t feel
outlandish, but one rooted in the history of American customs,” summarizes
Jacobson. “One of Gary’s strengths on
this film was maintaining a consistent tone throughout, from the Capitol’s eccentricity
to the intense physicality of the Games, and the design team brought all the
right instincts to do that. It all feels
like one story.” " (Lionsgate)
