A fan had the chance to visit the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows set and has posted her report online. The report includes many things, including a life-size Grawp, Malfoy Manor, new scenes, and much more! Here are a few excerpts:
The first thing we saw was a life sized Grawp on top of a building. That guy is HUGE! From there, we went on to Grimmauld place. It had just been used as Baker Street in the new, Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes film and was being repainted for Deathly Hallows. From here, we drove past the Hogwarts courtyard that was being worked on and also the entrance to Malfoy Manor. It has a huge hedge (~15 feet tall) and two large, stone pillars flanking either side of the entrance. They apparently did one or two nights of shooting on this set. This set was used for the scene where the Snatchers take Harry and the others to Malfoy Manor. There was also mention of a white peacock at the animal wrangling section and this was probably there for the Malfoy Manor exterior.
Right across from this was another set, but not something we recognized from the books. It appeared to be a bunch of burned trailers / mobile homes. Apparently this is a scene where Harry and Hermione show up at a camp site only to see it’s been attacked by Death Eaters.
After this, we saw the actual Burrow!! Well, the first floor or so, as the rest is CGI. They were “planting” the tall, reed like grass (like what we saw in the swamp scene in HBP). Each of the stalks of grass is individually pushed into a foam base, and there were something like 9000 of them that have to be done. One part of the base was purple.
We turn the corner and right there in front and to our right was Privet Drive! They had been doing the seven Potter scenes there.
We got a very close and impressive look at Luna’s house. It looked like a stone base of a tower… just about 15 feet tall. Again, CGI would be used to complete the house. Rocks jutted up around the front yard. Growing up the front of the house was a tree, and the left side was covered with vines and bright orange plants. Our driver, who was extremely knowledgeable on what was going on, said these were the Dirigible Plums. They had recently filmed a fight scene here and the right side of the house was pitted with holes where Death Eater spells had hit the house (squib explosions). They were prepping the house again for a much bigger version of that fight, apparently. They were adding even more squibs for the new fight.
The first thing we saw was the Room of Requirement, similar to what we saw in Half Blood Prince. Stacks upon stacks of furniture, books, potions and whatnot (including several chess pieces from Philosopher’s Stone) were everywhere. Here we got to see a bit of filming that involved the stunt doubles for Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) and Louis Cordice (Blaise Zabini). They were perched atop one of the stacks of furniture and rigged into a harness. Just to the right of these guys, but not used in this scene, was Hagrid/Sirius’ flying motorbike mounted on a rig and lifted off the ground.
When they cut, we slipped into the set and skirted around the edge. Around the corner from the stunt doubles and through the gap between two stacks of stuff was Tom Felton and Louis Cordice. We got to watch the playback monitors for the scene they had just shot. One of the monitors shows the actors exchanging dialog, while the other was an overhead shot of them walking through the stacks.
We went from here to another stage and saw Bathilda Bagshot’s house. They have done a body cast of that actress and made a snake skin. Take from that what you will.
I’ll just sum up some of the things we saw:
A dead Dobby (blood on his clothes and sand still on his skin from use on the beach shoot. So sad to see this, as he was unbelievably life like and real)
A terrifyingly realistic dead Dumbledore body. This took our breath away when we rounded the corner and saw it on the shelf. Again, something very emotional to see. It was scaled down smaller than lifesized, as it was created for a scene where Hagrid was to carry him. Apparently this wasn’t shot so the body wasn’t used
A model of Katie Bell from Half-Blood Prince (when she gets cursed by the necklace)
Another Katie model that was repurposed for a Greyback scene in Deathly Hallows
Loads of different Centaurs and Greyback models and prosthetics
Loads and loads of goblins. Apparently a big goblin scene was coming up to be shot. We were also warned, upon the start of the tour, to watch out for goblins on Segways, but sadly we didn’t get to see that sight
Pictures of Ron turning into Reg Cattermole. From the looks of this, they will actually be putting very realistic prosthetic makeup on Rupert. In the final stage makeup picture of him, you would not recognize him as Rupert
Photos and sculptures of Dan’s hexed makeup where he’s hexed to hide his identity from the Snatchers. This looks amazing! The right side of his face is all lumpy and deformed. It’s hard to see Dan under this makeup
The sculpted bust of Rowena Ravenclaw and the diadem perched atop her head. Stunningly beautiful detail!
After the tour, we went to the canteen to have lunch with our guide and the rest of the crew. While there, our heads were whipping left and right as we saw Rupert, James and Oliver (one of which had a bandage over his head and ear), Mark Williams (Arthur Weasley), Emma, Tom, Bonnie and Evanna (both sporting hair nets so as not to mess up their ornate hair… presumably for the wedding scene about to be filmed), Stan (Krum… who sat at the table next to us and ate lunch by himself), Warwick Davis and his son, Domhnall Gleeson (had prosthetic scars on the left side of his face), several wedding guests and actor’s doubles. One of those was, we firmly believe, was Xenophilius’ double. He was wearing mustard colored corduroys, a pale shirt with a yellow waist coat over the top that was covered in flowers and shoulder length blondish-white hair. I didn’t get a close enough look to see if he was sporting the Deathly Hallows symbol or not. Booo.
There’s much more to the report. Make sure to read the entire thing here!
Source: TLC
Warner Bros have provided fansites with a video and loads of new photos from the LEGO Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 game. The photos are specifically from years 1 - 2 (Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets). They include some great screen shots of Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Platform 9 3/4, the Troll, Hermione, Dumbledore, Harry, Ron, Draco, and much more. Check out the many new photos in our gallery beginning 
1 Response
I am a fan of Harry Potter from China. I love this movie so much. However, I have some questions that I would like to share. Why put Harry and Ginny together. We know about the book,
but we thought that the director would change this part. See, most of our fans wacth HP from the first movie, and they have always been supporting Harry and Hermione . You might find it childish, but it is true that some HP fans do not pay much attention to all the magic staff, they pay more attention to the relationship between the charactors. you can go to any online video system in china to check the feedback from the audiance. They call thier friends, they tell them ” hey , let’s go to the cinema this friday to see HP6.” after they knew there is no change of the story line(the relationship part ) ,they say ” we rather wacth The Transformers”. I have done some researches , over ten thousands audiance( all of them are children) in China think the HP6 is disappointing them , in many part, especially the relationships bewteen the charactors . And they are looking forword some changes in HP7.
Posted on August 21st, 2009 at 6:46 am
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