Hunger Games

I did a cover of "Safe and Sound" by Taylor Swift ft. The Civil Wars, and again, Colin Hammond accompanied me. There are 2 versions as I was experimenting with the reverb. Here is version 1, and Here is version 2.

This is a very beautiful song written for the soundtrack for The Hunger Games movie. It strikes me as being very much a lullaby, however it is also very sad-sounding at the same time. The song is also very high-pitched. It was stretching the upper regions of my vocal range when I sang it. Honestly, I think it was stretching Taylor Swift's vocal range when she sang the original as well. It has a very raw sound that singers often get when they are just trying to reach the notes. That sound was very good for the movie though. For those of you who have read The Hunger Games or seen the movie, you know that the setting is post-nuclear war, futuristic. In one way, the civilization has regressed considerably, while being incredibly technologically advanced in other ways. Because of this, the raw, almost unpolished way that the song sounds reflects the raw, unpolished lifestyle that the common people in Panem lead.

Now on to my thoughts about the movie. Unlike most movie-goers who have already read the book in advance, I actually did like the movie. In fact, I thought that the producers and actors did a really good job.

See, the book is written in first person, and seeing as movies are not filmed by the actors themselves, they're pretty much limited to 3rd person. There are ways that films can be almost 1st person, but that requires a lot of voice-over narration by the main character, and that is not as fun as seeing it on screen. These sort of conglomerates wind up with mostly 3rd person movies with random narration by the protagonist as are present in the Twilight movies. Usually, when producers try quasi-first-person movies, fans think the movies are extra bad because 1st person books don't have little quotes like "death is peaceful. . . easy. Life is harder." like Bella Swan says in Twilight when she almost gets killed / turned into a vampire in an abandoned ballet studio. No, what books actually say are things like "we lapsed back into silence as we finished eating. He cleared the table while I started on the dishes." (Twilight, page 37). It's not the kind of dramatic thing that sounds good in a movie.

So, because they had to transition The Hunger Games to 3rd person, there are things that have to be explained another way than in the original book. For example, in the book, while Katniss is narrating, she tells the reader about how "tracker jackers" were created and why they were used, since they are brought back in the arena. In the movie, they choose to show this part of the arena as if you were a citizen of Panem watching the broadcast. This allows them to have a commentator tell the citizens about the different dangers since otherwise, without Katniss's narration, the viewer wouldn't know the importance of them. After all, none of us are citizens of Panem, and "tracker jackers" don't actually exist.

I thought the effects of the movie were incredibly good. Granted, the dogs they had in the movie were not exactly how I had imagined them. I had pictured them looking much more wolf-like. But still, overall, it was great. The various fires seemed pretty real. The injuries were very realistic.

I even think the casting was over-all pretty good. (My second cousin is one of the children in the "reaping" scene. Though, to be perfectly honest, I couldn't pick him out in the crowd.) I must admit though, I do not recall Rue being the particular ethnicity that they cast her as. I thought it was nice that they had a bit of cultural integration, though it could be viewed as a little bit racist that they cast African-Americans to play the roles of the tributes for the agriculture district. You know, what with Civil War era North America using African-Americans as slaves on plantations. . . Just saying.

It has been a while since I have seen the movie because I saw it the day after it came out in theaters, and it has been about 2 months since then, and I haven't seen it again since. Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion, or any other details you'd like me to address that you missed.

Also, if you have an opinion you'd like to share about my song covers, please tell me. Which version do you think sounds better? Do you even like them at all? Any suggestions? Whatever it is, I'd like to know. Thanks for reading, and thanks for listening!

P.S. To all you Twilight haters out there, I'm very sorry if I ruined The Hunger Games for you by making those Twilight references. Then again, I've heard that The Hunger Games is the new Twilight, but on the other hand, I heard that Twilight was the new Harry Potter. So, if you're a Harry Potter fan, it's all good, right?