There are two authors who I feel have had a profound impact on my adolescence: J.K. Rowling and Tamora Pierce. I routinely return to their worlds and stories to reexamine the characters who helped me grow into the woman I am today, and often find comfort in times of stress or strife. While many people turn to a religious text for these feelings, I find that the realms of Tortall and Hogwarts often help me to set my moral compass true, inspire me to push through my trying times, and give perspective on current world events (despite them both being fictional lands).
One of the things I was looking forward to most on this trip was the opportunity to visit Leavesden Studios, where all eight Harry Potter movies were filmed. They've taken two full sound stages and packed them full of sets, props, costumes, and more that were all used during the filming process. Despite my near encyclopedic knowledge of the stories and characters, I still learned a TON about how they achieved certain visual effects (how is Hagrid so big?), materials they used (the floor in the Great Hall is actually stone!), and greatly enjoyed seeing the creative process behind some truly incredible world building. They also had a "passport" (designed for children, but let's be honest; we all know I'm a child) that encouraged visitors to ask questions about certain locations, and provided a place to get a 3D stamp for each location. I collected ALL of the stamps, and spotted all 19 hidden snitches.
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| The Invisibility Cloak would have been worn with the "green screen" fabric on the outside. |
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| A small collection of the MANY hats created in the millinery shop. |
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| Models and illustrations from the Art Department. Not used for filming, but just for creation and communication of what the details of this world looks like. |
One of the biggest surprises to me was seeing how small everything seemed. The set for the Gryffindor boys dormitory is barely larger than my own bedroom, and #4 Privet Drive (while built as a full scale house) felt positively cramped. I struggled to imagine filming in locations like that, knowing that many actors, creatives, and their equipment would have to fit in a rather small living room or office setting.
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| The interior of #4 Privet Drive |
My favorite displays were the final two rooms. One held the scale model of Hogwarts used to film all the exterior shots of the castle. I may have started crying when I saw it because of its spectacular detail and intense beauty. This model is ENORMOUS, and took 7-8 months to build. After the initial build, they discovered that when a train would pass by under the studio, it would shake the model ever so slightly, and it would register on camera, so they then had to move the model to a new location away from public transportation. This moving process took 40 days! When it was winter at Hogwarts, they would cover the model in salt "snow" and then spend several days vacuuming up all traces of winter for other seasonal shots. Nowadays, in December, the model is decorated for the exhibition using a synthetic snow that is less realistic looking, but also less corrosive.
The final room was decorated like the back room at Olivanders, and contained 4,219 "wand" boxes. Each box bore the name of a person credited with working on the films. The staff working in this room could direct people to any box requested, despite the fact that the boxes were not organized by category (writer, actor, composers, etc).
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| Can you see any familiar names? I can! |
When it was time to go, I was sorely tempted to leave them with a job application, but given my distaste for change, I decided that moving out of the country to live in a fantasy world would upset my status quo a bit. I could have easily spent another 8 hours enjoying more details, talking with the employees, and sitting in the sunshine enjoying a cold glass of Butterbeer, but all good things must come to an end. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed that I'll get to return there some day soon!
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