What’s So Great About The First Footage From The Hunger Games?

The first footage from Gary Ross‘ The Hunger Games was premiered during the MTV VMAs and has now arrived online in a nice, high quality version or ten. It’s nothing like a traditional trailer, and is quite specific in what it teases, but I think it’s pretty good.

Take a look.

Starting with two shots of the woodland, then going into the shot of Katniss’ feet emphasises the hunter-ness of what she’s doing - the stalking and the stealth – as well as providing a context, one that plays into known, accepted images of hunting. Immediately, people who don’t know much about the story are expecting something about sneakiness and danger.

Then we’re introduced to her bow which gets a nice close-up framing of its own. Chekov need not worry – this is not the last we’ll see of it. Introducing the bow before Katniss’ face also gives it significance and importance, and might hint at some sort of definitive relationship between the bow and her identity, at least on one level.

Then after two shots that show Katniss from a voyeuristic vantage point, highlighting how easily she might be seen, we’re into a sequence of her reacting, possibly to an ambush. She’s not vanishing into the background – she’s exposed and in danger and this implied voyeur can strike, suddenly.

But, as you can see, Katniss is alert. Though we can’t necessarily see anything for her to react to.

There’s then a voice over, provided by Liam Hemsworth as Gale. What we learn here is both his point of view and, because we’re likely to take it on face value, some information about Katniss’ predicament, and her chances of surviving it. The details aren’t full enough for the Hunger Games virgin the get schooled in the full set up, but the most important thing is giving us a girl in danger…

…but a girl who is going to fight back. That’s the basic hook here.

We end with more emphasis on the bow and arrow.

Perhaps what we’re hearing near the end is more interesting than what we see. There’s the amusing double meaning in Gale’s words, which place us, the audience in a complicit position and add some irony to the nature of the trailer:

They just want a good show, that’s all they want. You know how to hunt. Show them how good you are.

And you should also hear those four whistled notes. Meaningless until you know the story, these are a communication between another character and Katniss… but I don’t want to spoil it. Nonetheless, these could be to The Hunger Games what the bent-up When You Wish Upon a Star notes are to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

It’s a nice little simple teaser, and I think it does its job very well indeed.