Yesterday afternoon Annie and I went to the Warner Brothers Studio for The Making of Harry Potter Tour. Before we got to the studio, I was actually a little bit nervous that the tour would ruin the magic of Harry Potter. Instead, it more than doubled my respect for the film versions of Harry Potter. I was always one of the die hard J.K. Rowling fans. No one else will ever experience the Harry Potter books the same way that we did, waiting for each one to be released and growing up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I can distinctly remember having the newest book delivered to my door from Amazon the morning it was released and spending the next three days reading nonstop. I can remember going through the initial phase in second grade when I did not know how to pronounce Hermione’s name because the world didn’t know yet. I cannot imagine growing up in a world where the secrets have been revealed. Since I have such a strong alliance to the books, obviously I tended to enjoy the movies but never quite as much as the books. They often left out important sections and they got some of the details wrong (I distinctly remember reading about a tall skinny Uncle Vernon in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone). Heading into the studio tour, Annie and I worried that the knowledge would ruin the magic for us, ruin the secrets of how they faked the magic and make Hogwarts seem less real.
some original costumes for a few professors
We were happily surprised. In fact, the tour only confirmed the incredible work that Warner Brothers achieved when they produced an entire world around Harry Potter after the one created by J.K. Rowling. Seeing interviews with the producer who first decided she loved the first book, the one who made the decision that it should become a movie was very powerful. The thing that struck me the most about the studio tour was that all of the magical elements: the numbers of wands in Ollivander’s, the basilisk, the dragons in the Goblet of Fire all seemed like computer generated effects. For some reason I always just assumed that modern technology created all of these things. In reality, the majority of them were actually created, by hand, by the members of the crew working on the films. They actually built a basilisk. The door that opens the Gringotts vault is a functioning, mechanical door. The art department made 2,500 individual copies of the Quibbler with unique titles. All of the portraits in Hogwarts were painted by artists specifically for these films (many of which feature members of the film crew, the director’s family, etc.) and they are enhanced by CGI. Each of the vials in the Potions classroom were made individually, by hand, labeled by hand, and filled with substances by hand (some of which had to be created specifically for this movie). In Dumbledore’s office, all of the strange gadgets were created for these films. We learned that the films used over 100,000 individual props. There really is a world behind Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling created it in a beautifully genius way and Warner Brothers produced this world with integrity and care. The movie industry should be this way. The productions should be organic, individual, personal. Warner Brothers got it right.
The Door to the Chamber of Secrets