Research in Harry Potter Studios

Recently I traveled to London to visit the Harry Potter Studios Tour. I've been once before, but going now when knowing I have a module all about production design; I saw an opportunity to do some research and take lots of photos!

I managed to visit a lot of the many sets of Harry Potter during my time there and I was able to appreciate just how much time and effort goes into building a set. Here are some photos I took while I was there:

FOAM statues surrounding the Great Hall.

Dressing the tables for Christmas

FOAM statue, again!

This is a particular favourite of mine. This is the Hogwarts Crest engraved within the fireplace of the Great Hall. This demonstrates just how authentic Harry Potter's creators wanted to make the set look.
Have you seen the films!? Not once do they show inside of the fireplace!

Rather than building a full sized roof above the Great Hall; set designers built a miniature one to digitally impose onto the set during post production. The attention to detail is phenomenal.

Paul Hayes was the set construction manager on all eight Harry Potter films, and in this quote seen around the tour, he says "The construction department is an assembly line of carpenters, plasterers, metalworkers, painters, riggers and stagehands. This highly skilled team of craftsmen transformed the Art Department's blueprints into fully finished sets. During the course of the eight films, the crew conducted 588 individual sets." This taught me just how many people are needed to make only one side of film work, let alone the rest of the film crew!

These photos contain detailed blueprints of Hagrid's hut and the castle grounds. I couldn't believe how much detail needs to be drawn when designing a set. The bottom photo was taken from a video that was displayed about the process of researching and designing a set, which I found extremely interesting, for example, in the ministry of Magic, there is a foam statue of muggles (non-magic people) being crushed between stone, and the designer of that got the idea from the Holocaust! Here is a picture of the stature below:

It's foam! It looks so real!

The last stop on the tour is the big model of Hogwarts. It is absolutely breathtaking. The attention to detail is beyond belief. They used this model to film the big wide shots of Hogwarts from the sky. It usually used to be surrounded by either a green or blue screen and special effects work would then be added to make it look real and as big as a castle!