Francis Lawrence's The Hunger Games: Catching Fire [Re-Up]

[Disclaimer] This is an attempt at re-writing this article. The original was eaten by the internet, and it will never be seen again. This is a re-imagining of the original article.

The Hunger Games excites me greatly. I am a fan of both the books and the movies, and I look forward to the new films just about as much as your average 14 year old girl. So getting the chance to explore how the sound for the film is created, and techniques used to push realism to its boundaries is something that I am happy to discuss.

For this film, we are going to explore how a hyper realistic sound track was created by pushing the boundaries of the background tracks and focusing less on dialogue and sound effects.

When creating the ambiance for Catching Fire, a great amount of attention to detail was used.  During editing, all of the vocal tracks and music tracks were muted so an immersive ambience could be created. This means that each and every location in the film was given unique and special treatment to ensure that they all were sonically different.

The Jungle Arena where the main action takes place. Lionsgate.

Catching Fire was mixed on Atmos meaning that the sound mixers could make use of an overhead array of speakers.  Seeing as a large portion of this film takes place within a jungle arena, a lot of care was given to make the audience feel as trapped within the jungle as the characters were. Every time the jungle appears on screen, all overhead speakers are filled with the sounds of canopy to enclose the audience in and give a sense of containment. This was meant to cause feelings of uneasiness and claustrophobia.

There is also juxtaposition between the sounds of the “districts” and sounds of the capitol city within the film. The capitol is portrayed sonically as being isolated yet clean. It is not connected to the environment so the sounds of animals or natural elements are nearly non-existent. Instead the audience is met with sounds of a bustling city. The districts on the other hand, while also sounding isolated, also feel more connected to the earth with the sound of nature in abundance.

The motif of the characters visual appearance is also pushed within the soundtrack. Lionsgate.

This divide is pushed further sonically when different characters speak. Characters from the capitol are seen addressing an audience on more than one occasion in large, open areas. When these characters speak, they are met with huge amounts of delay, more so than we would expect in the type of environment they are speaking in. Also, there is no sound made from the audience. In any normal situation, we would expect to here some kind of noise coming from a crowd of 1000 plus people. This helps to push the divide between the districts and the capitol, forcing the audience to feel the tension in the crowd.

Catching Fire also features many sound effects that push realism into hyperrealism, but I don’t want to discuss them here. It is interesting to look at how just using ambiance can create a hyper realistic sound track and evoke emotion in the audience.