A Day with Harry Potter

Monday, 11 June 2012

Enough with the history of Kings, their palaces, wives, and conquests, today is about Harry Potter, a subject far more fascinating with intimate details at the Girl's immediate recall. Today, VII and VIII denote not a Monarch but the last installments of Harry Potter.

"Welcome to Hogwarts" we are greeted as the doors to the Great Hall swing open.

"Harry had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place. It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in midair over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting. These tables were laid with glittering golden plates and goblets. At the top of the hall was another long table where the teachers were sitting...Harry looked upward and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars. He heard Hermione whisper, "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts a History"

Our first view of the Great Hall could be described the same way Harry saw it, expect our ceiling is dotted with spot lights and LEDs pefectly illuminting the Hall in all the right spots. The Hall is a "warm set" in that it is ready for shooting. The lecturn in the center appearas ready for Dumbledore to step forward and address us all.

The set is in one of two giant Warner Brothers sound stage buildings in Leavesdale one hour northwest of London that has been masterfully converted into "The Making of Harry Potter" experience. For 10 years 2,000 cast and crew worked here to make the eight films. The artifacts of their work are exceptional. Three hours seems a fraction of the time required to see even half of it properly.

The Gryfendor common room and sleeping chambers look as though you could move right in. Awe struck and giddy, the girls would do exactly that.. Dumbeldore's office, Umbridge's office at the Ministry of Magic, the Ministry lobby and Flues, Professor Slughorn's potions classroom, Luna's wardrobe, the five inanimate Horcruxes, Weasley's Dining Room and Flying Car, and that is just the first sound stage building.

After taking a CGI broomstick flight through London, we grab a Butter Beer and head to the backlot between the buildings. The Knight Bus, Haggrid's motorcyle and sidecar, and one of 17.5 flying light blue Ford Anglias used in the movies immediately grab your attention. Behind them sits the only address in England perhaps more famous than No. 10 Downing Street - No. 4 Privet Drive. The Potter's vacant Godric Hollow home sits next door and infront of the bridge connecting Hogwarts to the Dark Forest.

The Knight Bus is especially interesting. Designers put four tons of additional weight in the bottom of the top heavy, three story, bus to keep it from tipping over. The beds and chandelier are all inside. To bad Ernie isn't present to tell a few stories.


This morning before riding out to Warner Brothers studios, we visited Lambeth Bridge where Ernie pulls the lever to compress the Knight Bus and squeeze between two oncoming buses. "Hey fellas, why the long faces," quips the Shrunken Head. Big Ben and Parliament are both in the shot and so they are as we approach Lambeth Bridge. Harry Potter sites in London, it is more excitment than the girls can handle without fits of giddy laughter.

We are greeted in the back of the second sound stage by Goblins, Elves, Spiders, a Norweigan Ridgeback Dragon, a Thestral, and a cast of other occupying the Creatures workshop.

"Harry wished he had eight more eyes... There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon...." reads the description of Harry's first trip to Diagon Alley. As we pass Gringots and turn up Diagon Alley for ourselves, we feel the same way. The wave of awe that comes over the girls face is exactly what you would expect having read all the books three or more times a piece and nearly worn out the DVDs.

Like the Great Hall, Diagon Alley is a warm set, dressed as it was in the final movie. Olivanders is burned out. The Weasley Brothers bright red shop and huge W domiating the Alley. On our morning site visits in London, we stopped at Leadenhall Market in the Financial District which served as the original "on location" set for Diagon Alley. The girls took pictures in the doorway that served as the original entrance to the Leaky Cauldron. The Australian Embassy in London served as the interior of Gringots Bank and is strictly off limits unless you are on offical business.

The indoor stage built for the final movies looks quite different other than the cobbles, which is exactly how it unfolded, with storefronts changing throughout the series. Both sets successfully transport the imagiation to another place.

Next, we pass through two rooms full of drawings and artists concepts for various sets and buildings prior to their actual construction. The designs are literally architechtural renderings, schematics, which make you realize all the more the tremendous detail and planning that went into bringing these places to life. Buildings like the Three Broomstricks, the villages of Hogsmeade, and Godric Hollow, pieces like Dumbledore's lecturn, Hagrid's Hut, all of precisce drawings depicting them from concept through schematic.

Exiting the concept rooms, we round a corner and there it stands, the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardy, the most complex and dramatic building of them all. It took 400 people 7 months to construct the model. So big, it occupies the entire width and hight of a room all its own. Every detail is precisely painted. The interior is lit by 3,000 fiber optic lights precisely placed in rooms, corridors, and stairwells to make the grounds come alive. The model was used in the first six movies for outdoor and panaramic shots. The technology to digitally produce Hogwarts did not exist prior to the 7th movie.

"Hogwarts, it does exist," says Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) the voice on our audio guide through the exhibit. We couldn't agree more!


Exiting through the gift shop as every good capitalistic venture of this nature does, we can't help but to purchase a Marauder's Map, that always come in handy. The Chocolate Frogs are also to much to pass up; although, the girls are less than impressed that the Wizard card in our box is that of Salazar Slytherin.

Take a poll of the four McDonalds on this tour of Eurpoe and the vote is easily 3 "for" with myself obstaining from the vote for purposes of self-preservation that the Harry Potter attraction is the best and most significant thing we have seen in Europe. Hogwarts, I must confess, is one of the few places to make Versailles and Hampton Court Palace look ordinary.