After an hour and half transit that took us through some interesting industrial parts of London on the overground rail, we arrived at the studio. Our whole group was totally jazzed. Although there are other Harry Potter experiences at theme parks in the US, the actual sets, costumes and props from the movies are here.
Giant chess pieces from wizards chess.
The dragon from Grigotts Bank
Carson at Harry's cupboard under the stairs on Privet Drive. It was the smallest set.
Entering the Great Hall.
The pendulum for the O.W.L exams and one of Prof. Umbridge's costumes.
Rowena Ravenclaw's dress
Harry and Hermione's winter ball attire
Ron's dress robes
Ice cream sundaes!
Boy's dormitory in Griffindor tower
There was a lot of information about all of the child actors that were in the movies. The key actors, but also all of the 'extras'. By law they could only work 4 hours a day, so the producers had to very carefully plan every day to make the most of those 4 hours. They would have half the kits on set in the morning and half in the afternoon with the other group in their real classes at alternating times. There were real teachers on the set and the kids completed their coursework as well as prepping their lines, etc. School-within-a-school.
Every wand used in the movie was unique. Harry actually had 60-70 wands because he would wear them out drumming on things throughout the filming of the movie.
Entry to the Griffindor common room - the Fat Lady
Slytherin Common room
Mirror of Eristed - Carson did not see his parents in it, just his Aunt.
TriWizard cup
Back side of one of the sets. It was so weird to see each room as a stand alone construction, not connected to the rest of a larger castle. It would have been so interesting to see how all the cameras. lights and sound were crammed into some of these spaces.
Dumbledore's office.
Many of the books were telephone books that were bound with leather-like covers. All of the sets were so detailed down to the last little item on the shelves. It was unbelievable how much time was taken with every detail. One exhibit show the makeup artist working on the facial prothetics for the Goblins. It took a whole day just to hand stitch every hair in one goblin's eyebrows!
The pensieve
One of the larger sets was the potions classroom. It changed several times as each of the potions teachers changed. The designers created quite a few amazing mechanical special effects, including the self-stirring potion pots.
All of the ingredients in the potions room were so creative.
They had portraiture artists create all of the portraits on the walls throughout the castle. Many were actually of various staff on the set (put into period attire).
They had bios of all of the animals that appeared. Each one in the movie was actually played by several animals. Depending on the behavior that was needed they would change between them.
This door actually worked mechanically. It was not animated at all. It was pretty tricky designing it.
The super fancy locking mechanism for the doors to the castle (in the last movie) were a minaturized working model. They had it on display, locking and unlocking over and over. It was mesmerizing to watch. Below is the locking mechanism for the bank vault at Gringotts.
Flying Ford Anglia caught in the womping willow.
The Weasley's kitchen
In the Malfoy's home. The wizard who was levitated and killed was actually silicon not a person.
I really felt so much was over the top. This is one example. 15,000 actual orbs were created and then they decided to computer generate them instead.
The largest set was the Ministry of Magic. It stretched several stories high and was a block long. The shiny red and green tiles were actually wooden, but the paint job was very tile like!
Umbridge's office
The Forbidden Forest. It was very dark with mist and giant spiders going up and down on their webs.
Back side of the trees in the forest.
Hogwarts express
The Knight bus. Apparently they actually drove this through the streets of London for some of the filming. They had to very carefully select the routes because... you know - triple decker!
I loved this set of Gringots Bank. They had a video running that showed how the artists created the marble like paint job on the pillars. Very realistic.
The Lestrange vault. They had a cool video showing the stair steps hidden under all the treasure that was 'multiplying' and how Harry had to climb up over the props. They had to secure it all in place so it didn't get too shuffled under him as he climbed. The multiplying effect was added by computer afterward.
I wish I could remember more of the details about this last part of the tour. This is the entire exterior of the castle and grounds made to scale in excruciating detail. Many of the exterior scenes were films of this model. They had a time lapse recording of their construction of all of the parts it took 3 months to place all the pieces in place.
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