“The Hunger Games” Jewelry Designer Explains Why It Took 'Months' to Design Real Mockingjay Pin for the Movies (Exclusive)

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Jewelry designer Dana Schneider opens up to PEOPLE about designing the iconic mockingjay pin for The Hunger Games films

Schneider says creating a real pin from the sketch on the novel’s cover took months

Schneider has also designed jewelry for The Matrix franchise, the X-Men films and this summer’s Superman, among many more

“When the costume designer called and said, ‘There's a pin,’ I knew immediately what pin they were talking about.”

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That’s how jewelry designer Dana Schneider tells PEOPLE she got involved with The Hunger Games films. In the original, best-selling novels by Suzanne Collins, heroine Katniss Everdeen (brought to life on-screen by Jennifer Lawrence) wears an iconic pin, with the fictional mockingjay on it, as she enters the arena. The pin was also featured on the cover of The Hunger Games book.

Schneider had read and loved the books, and she knew the job making the pin for the 2012 film came with “fan expectations.” “And I'm a fan. I want it to be good,” she says.

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Jennifer Lawrence in 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2' in 2015 wearing a black version of the mockingjay pin

But turning that cover drawing into the real pin only happened with a lot of hard work. “It really took a few months. At this point, I don't remember how many, but different models,” she says. She would fly back and forth from her home in Ohio to Los Angeles to show the movie crew the new versions of the pin until they landed on the perfect one.

“We tried to get as close to both the book and the sketchy 2D image on the book cover,” she adds, but notes the drawing version “makes no sense as a real piece.”

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“I had to figure out, ‘How does the arrow connect to the beak? Where does the pin back go so it doesn't show? Will this survive stunts, because of heavy action?’ ” she remembers. “It took a while, but in the end I think we were pretty happy with what we ended up with.” She was particularly worried about stunts and how the pin would work on clothing in action scenes without breaking or injuring someone. “You have to prepare for everything,” she says.

Jennifer Lawrence in 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2' in 2015

Schneider’s lips are sealed when it comes to what the pin was made of. The arrow itself was the hardest part, and the solution was “weird” and came from her background as a sculptor. The rest of the pin was sterling silver with an 18-karat gold metal plate; Schneider says she doesn’t make costume jewelry, but “real jewelry for costumes.”

Schneider ended up changing the pin in a subtle way for 2013’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. If you look closely, “the arrow is a tiny bit longer,” she explains, because director Francis Lawrence liked the visual better. “And it looked good.”

Katniss’ iconic pin wasn’t the first time fans recreated and wanted to own jewelry that Schneider designed for a film. Schneider says fans loved the jewelry she designed for the 2003 X-Men film X2, including chokers and belt buckles. Science fiction is her favorite genre to work in; she’ll “deliberately” contact costume designers whose movies and shows she wants to design for. “One huge highlight for me was going on the set in Toronto for Star Trek: Discovery. Those sets were so beautiful,” she says.

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But she thinks jewelry is an essential part of costumes across all genres, and her prolific work across categories is proof of that. “I tend to think some costumes look, in my opinion, dry if they don't have jewelry. That's the way I see. It's like jewelry gives it that little extra life,” she says. Some of her jewelry most recently made it to the screen in 2025’s The Electric State, 2024’s Drive-Away Dolls and 2021’s Free Guy. Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane will also wear a mixed-metal necklace Schneider designed in July’s Superman — though the project was so secretive that she didn’t know what movie it was when she first showed her pieces.

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The cast of 'X2' in 2003

Now when Schneider meets with costume designers, she brings new designs she’s made that haven’t appeared in anything else and will often end up making small changes, like carving new designs in them. A necklace she designed appeared in Game of Thrones season 6, on the neck of Natalie Dormer’s Margaery Tyrell. “That was one-of-a-kind that I had shown the costume designer,” Schneider remembers. It was a dendritic agate stone. “I like designing things that look like they have a history," she adds.She sells many of her designs on Etsy.

Schneider was always a crafty person, unafraid to try different art disciplines, but when she took a jewelry-making class in high school, she got a C- and thought it wasn’t for her. She trained in sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design, and after working at Tiffany & Co. after graduation, she realized, “This isn't me. I'm not a corporate person," she recalls.

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She decided to start her own business and use her art skills to make jewelry, partially inspired by working at Tiffany. But after years in the fashion world, “I ended up getting really bored," she says.

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“I wanted to design all these wild, crazy, really dramatic pieces,” she says. She was living in upstate New York when the trailer for The Matrix inspired her to pursue a new direction. “Right there, I decided I was going to go to L.A. and try to figure out how to make jewelry for movies. I said, ‘Even if I just make cuff links for the sequels,’ ” she shares. She took her portfolio of designs out there and felt confident in her years of work.

Her designs did appear in 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. “Going on the sets for Matrix 2 and 3 is still one of the real highlights of my career,” she says. “That was really just two years after I left, after I saw that trailer, and it was just unbelievable.”

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