Dumbledore's Office, photo courtesy of Warner Brothers
The Potions Classroom
There really is so much to see that I couldn’t possibly list it all here, and I ended up taking so many photos that it’s probably easier to just look at them all over on Flickr or in the slideshow at the end of the post. We saw the full sets for the Gryffindor Common Room and Dormitory, Dumbledore’s Office, the Potions Classroom, Hagrid’s Hut, the Burrow’s Kitchen and parts of the Ministry of Magic, including Umbridge’s gaudy pink and feline office. Every one of them was filled to the brim with props and costumes and there were staff on hand eager to tell us little facts about their allotted section.
Performing some magic at The Burrow
A few of the more interesting ones included:
- The dormitory beds had to be extended in the later films as the boys got bigger and bigger. By the end, they had to lie in them with their legs folded up and be shot from the waist up.
- On wall of the Gryffindor Common Room you can see a painting of Professor McGonagall as a young woman
- The books that line the shelves of Dumbledore’s Office are mostly phone directories and there are 48 portraits of former headmasters on its walls.
- Many of the potion bottles on the wall are filled with plastic animals from Regent’s Park Zoo and baked bones from a butcher’s shop.
- The Burrow set has a few of the special mechanical effects set up in it. By pointing a special wand at the right place you can make knitting knit itself, a knife chop carrots and activate the self washing frying pan.
House Elf armor
There are props everywhere, ranging from huge skeletons to small items of jewelry. Cabinets containing all of the Horcruxes, another with the Philosopher’s stone (Sorcerer’s stone for you US readers), a Remembrall, a Deluminator, etc., plus one more with the Tri-Wizard cup and a Golden Egg. There was a giant cage in the middle, so chock full of golden skeletons, goblets, chandeliers, wands and the cutest suit of armor I’ve ever seen (it was for a house elf), that it looked like the Room of Requirement. There was another huge glass case containing the wands of 24 of the major characters – less than 1 percent of the total number of wands made for the films! Larger items were placed around the edges of the sets and included the Mirror of Erised, the painting of the Fat Lady, and ornate doors to a Gringott’s vault and to the Chamber of Secrets. The level of detail in these last two was just astonishing – many people assumed the snakes moving on the Chamber of Secrets door were CG because of their complexity, but they’re actually real and cast in metal and resin. There was a whole wall dedicated to the paintings produced to decorate the walls of Hogwarts, some of which are actually of the producers and designers of the movies.
The Burrow, photo courtesy of Warner Brothers
The Dark Forest – this scene was filmed in my home town, Shepperton
Underneath the giant swinging pendulum of the Hogwarts castle clock there are several huge touch screens containing an interactive Marauders Map, which opens up to reveal the grounds of Hogwarts and with behind the scenes facts, photos and information about some of the sets that are not featured in the tour. Elsewhere another multi-touch interactive activity allows you to work as part of a post-production team to edit together a short scene by combining some movie footage with sound, music and visual effects.
The 'Breakdown' of Harry's costume
There are sections of the soundstage dedicated to various movie-making crafts. The hair and makeup section has loads of wigs and some odd product placement, as well as details of how the make-up is applied. The costumes section has plenty of sketches and photos of the outfits being designed and worn. There’s a nice bit showing how they keep the ‘Breakdown’ of a costume in stages – four identical outfits, with each one progressively more worn out. Also on display are the fabulous hats, shoes and uniform of the wizards from Beauxbatons Academy of Magic – designed by milliner to royalty and celebrities Philip Treacy. The animal department shows that they need many similar-looking animals for each role to keep them looking the right age – there were four Hedwigs, nine Fangs and more than a dozen rats, plus an animatronic one, for Scabbers.
Fantastic graphic design
My favorite one though has to be the Graphic Design department. The quote on the board next to the glass case says it all: “This was a graphic designer’s dream: An extraordinary opportunity to be creative.” Miraphora Mina, Eduardo Lima and Ruth Winick got to spend their working days creating thousands of fantastic designs, most of which are only seen fleetingly in the films but add so much to the overall feel of them. Some of my faves include editions of The Quibbler and The Daily Prophet, packaging for the Weasleys’ joke products, the Yule Ball invitations, books covers (for such tomes as ‘Hogwarts, A History’ and ‘The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore’) and the intricate Marauder’s Map – which has tiny little pop-up style staircase cut into it. They also designed all the crests for both Hogwarts and the four houses. Hanging above the display case is the gigantic Black family tree tapestry from Grimmauld place.
