Case in Point, Hunger Games Characters inspire New Fanfilms

Recently I wrote a post about the series/universe/franchise/whatever that roared on to my radar recently as I finished "The Hunger Games" trilogy of books.  In my last blog post where I tried to lay out what makes it such a great series I made the asseration that the characters that inhabit the rich world created by "The Hunger Games" have such depth that they could easily spawn their own stories.

A point that is proven easily by the quantity of fan authored stories already out there. Not to take away from them (and to be honest I haven't delved into any of them...fanfic's never really been my thing in any francise) the series of short films produced by Mainstay Productions inspired by "The Hunger Games" simply take the story-telling to a much more visceral level. When I first watched them I found myself realizing that seeing these stories come to life in a sense will be a new and powerful journey. So far there are two (embedded below, before you watch NOTE: *SPOILERS*) videos the first of which "Katniss & Rue" has recently reached 1 million views on YouTube!!

The two videos have drawn their subject matter directly from the book while putting their own, quite faithful, spin on things. The production is of very high quality, well acted, with good effects and stunts for the short films they are. Now from Mainstay and Down with the Capitol comes news that the next project will focus on two, arguably, second-tier characters of the trilogy and that the stories will be based on a series of fan authored short stories! Based on the track record of the current videos I'm excited and curious to see what they come up with.

I think the passion here is great and it's fun to have something new to look two while we wait for the more mainstream efforts of Lionsgate to bear fruit later in July.  The whole thing reminds me quite a bit of the Star Wars Fanfilm craze at its height and for me Mainstay's work is the Troops of The Hunger Games universe. If you're finished the trilogy take a look and see what you think!

(*SPOILERS* Spoilers if you haven't read Book 1 "The Hunger Games")

(*SPOILERS* Spoilers if you haven't read Book 2 "Catching Fire")