While Taylor Swift is set to lend her voice to the upcoming animated film The Lorax, due out in theaters early next month, her voice will also be heard on the soundtrack for The Hunger Games. This video looks behind the scenes of the making of the music video for “Safe & Sound,” and also features Swift, as well as featured artists Joy Williams and John Paul White as they discuss the song and the making of the video.
“Safe & Sound” made its way online back in December, and the video debuted just last week. While the music video is set in the woods and an old looking cabin, which may be a nod to Hunger Games’ lead character Katniss’ home district, there doesn’t appear to be any footage from the movie in the video. However, the subject of the movie did come up when The Civil Wars' Joy Williams and John Paul White talked about writing the song with Taylor Swift and T Bone Burnett.
“I can’t say that there was a specific scene that we went to from the movie to begin writing that with Taylor and T Bone,” Joy Williams says in the video below, which was posted by iTunes. You’ll also see Swift talking about the cold conditions during making the video, and writing the song. There are also some interesting thoughts from White on how the song might tie into The Hunger Games.
From the way White and Williams speak, it doesn’t sound like the song was inspired by any one specific part of the movie (or Suzanne Collins’ novel), but the story and the featured characters were in mind when they were writing it. White said:
That’s one great thing about the books, about the whole franchise, is that there’s so many different dynamics between characters that that song could be about. It could be Katniss and her sister, or Katniss and Rue. But, on top of that, it doesn’t have to be specific to the movie, either. We like to keep the edges just gray enough. It can be whatever you want it to be.
Between the haunting melodies and lyrics like, "Just close your eyes, the sun is going down. You'll be all right, no one can hurt you know. Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound..." they certainly succeeded in creating gray edges, and in leaving us to speculate over when we might hear the song during the movie, assuming it’s featured at some point during the movie and not just the closing credits.
Source
