Harry Potter Studios

I never got round to blogging about my trip to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studios a couple of months back. Yes, I'm a big nerd, but I was also really curious to see the actual film sets. It was such a great experience and really good to see all the props close up. Some were completely different to how I'd expected them to be.

The tour starts with a look into the Great Hall, and the rest continues very much like a museum with all the props, costumes and artefacts displayed. It was incredible to see the amount of detail and design work that had been put into the spell books and sweets packaging. However I did find out that most of the books found in Dumbledore's office are actually yellow pages and phone directories rebound to look old, ha! We were able to walk down Diagon Alley, Sit on Hagrids motorcycle, and even buy Butter beer!

The tour ends with the extraordinary sculpture of Hogwarts castle. It was built for the first film and used for exterior shots in every film since. The sculpture was incredibly details with lights in the windows and even owls in the owlery. If you are a Harry Potter fan, the studios are definitely well worth a visit. It has also got my intrigued in a career of set design, but we'll see about that.

Pottermore

Personally I don't see much point in the new pottermore website, it is essentially just an online portal introducing the new harry potter e-books and unseen additional content. The new stop motion animation film launching pottermore from Andersen M Studio however is utterly brilliant!

I have always appreciated the work of creative directors Martin and Line Andersen, one of my favorite stop motion pieces being Going West for the New Zealand Book Council, and this animation for pottmore is just as impressive. The project was was entirely paper craft, all hand cut and photographed using a digital slr, no CGI was used to animate the piece. I love the paper owl and the wizarding sorting hat.

The images below can be found at mestudio.com and the film can be seen below.
http://www.pottermore.com/

Harry Potter WB Studio

Forget going all the way to America to see Harry Potter world, there is a new attraction opening in London! Warner Brothers Studio tour shows you behind the scenes on the set of the Harry Potter films. Tickets come on sale on Thursday, I really want to go.

You can see the trailer and all details on the website http://www.wbstudiotour.co.uk/.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Went to see the new Harry Potter film today. It was amazing! So much darker than the previous films. I loved the way it was filmed, there were so many beautiful landscape shots as apposed to the usual Hogwarts school setting. The story line was much more tense, one scene that stood out in particular was the torture scene with Hermione. There was also a lovely piece of animation in the middle of the film, to explain the story of the deathly hallows. Can't wait until July to see the second part!