Ahoy, squirts! Quint here.
I actually had over half of this set report typed up and saved in my old email program, but the wrath of some enraged Mac god decided my Mac Mail program didn’t really need to run anymore… and that I really didn’t want about a quarter of my stored mail, including my half-written set report.
It’s a good thing, really. I didn’t exactly have the best time on the junket and I started writing straight away, while all that was still fresh in my mind. And, honestly, I hate it when reporters bitch and moan about having a bad time when a million other people would kill to be in their position.
It’s better that this report, while lacking the freshness of mind of the original, is less emotional.
One of the things I love the most about what I do for a living is visiting movie sets. They’ve always fascinated me. I can see how some think they’re boring. The pace is usually deadly slow, but I’ve always been obsessed with movies and how they are made. I feel at home on a movie set. I could be watching film history being made and that’s genuinely exciting for me.
The reason I don’t like junket set visits is because I don’t get that chance to observe the film actually working. On this visit, I spent about 12 hours on the set and of that 12 hours I got to spend 10 minutes watching a scene shot.
Granted, that was 10 minutes of watching Gary Oldman work, so who am I to complain? I was just like Veruca Salt, I guess… Or Oliver. I wanted more.
The rest of the visit was divided by round table interviews, tours of the sets, a demonstration of the EA game for ORDER OF THE PHOENIX and a viewing of various art, production stills and props from the movie.
It sucks a little bit being embargoed this long for the report because basically all the art and the stills I saw, which were big news then, are common knowledge now. I was freaking out about seeing a picture of Azkaban prison on a pinned up Daily Prophet. I was excited to write it up, describing the A shape of the prison, set in the middle of a raging river, perched on the very edge of a waterfall… But now you can go see it in the trailer.
Which allows me to now focus on the best experiences of the set. You won’t see a transcription of the round table interviews. I’m sure you can go to all the other fan sites that were there and read a complete transcription. Leaky-Cauldron, mugglenet, etc. I know Garth from Dark Horizons was there as well.
What I will talk about are my impressions touring the sets, the bit of filming I saw, my impressions of the cast who came in to do these round tables and whatever my direct interaction was at these round table interviews.
Let’s start with the sets. This was one of the main reasons I accepted this invite. I’ve mentioned already I don’t regularly attend junket anythings… pre-release interview junkets, set visits, etc… But I accepted this solely because I wanted to observe the Potter universe first hand. I wanted to see the sets, I wanted to watch them filming.
I am a Potter nerd. I love the books, I’ve really enjoyed the movies and I think it’s one of the most fascinating series ever committed to the screen. What other series has 7 huge films, all following the progression of the same core team in front of the camera? What’s even more unique is that it’s a kid’s series that grows with its audience, the audience in turn gets to watch the progression of the same group as they mature.
It’s pretty fascinating stuff.
The Potter series shoots at Leavesden Studios and has since the beginning. Because there’s always a Potter film in some form of production, they pretty much have the run of the biggest stages.
For instance, the Great Hall has been set up there since they first began filming. They even built it to be sturdier than an average set because they knew they’d be using it for all 7 movies, which will take… what? Ten years when all is said and done?
They built the Great Hall with real stone for that purpose.
It was quite surreal walking down the Great Hall, past the rows of tables. It’s a big place, but it looks bigger on the screen. It is completely contained, though. No false walls (that I could tell). The un-bewitched ceiling was a bit off-putting as I was used to seeing it all CGIy.
What I did notice was the detail on the walls. Every animal representing each different house (Lion for Gryffindor, Snake for Slytherin, Eagle for Ravenclaw and Badger for Hufflepuff) built in as gargoyles on the walls.
The entrance to the Great Hall is the exact same as you know it from the movies. Sometimes they build these things to be separately, but not in this case.
Nailed up all around the Great Hall doors were the Proclamations. If you don’t know the book, there’s a political element involving the government leaning on this school and instituting policy changes. It gets a little out of control and I saw the end result, with over 100 different framed rules crudely nailed all up and down the walls beside the door and even arching over the top of the door.
Out of all the different sets I toured on this visit, I spent the most time in the Great Hall. I got an up close look at the giant glass tubes holding different colored crystals, that end up keeping the house point tally. I sat at the Gryffindor house table. And I sat in Dumbledore’s chair, getting a feeling for what he sees when he looks out at the hall.
The other known set I saw was Dumbledore’s office, which was very busy, cluttered. A lot of the picture frames on the walls were just frames on green screen, where they’ll add in the moving ex-headmasters. The set was multi-leveled, with Dumbledore’s library behind his desk going up another flight.
The new sets I saw were number 12 Grimmauld Place, the Trial Chamber and the Ministry of Magic lobby.
Grimmauld Place was pretty sweet, I have to say. Grimmauld Place is Sirius Black’s house and headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, which is the group of adult wizards that bands together, kind of like an underground resistance.
The cool thing about this set was they really got to play with the dark side of things, being that Sirius inherited it from his Dark Wizard family and never had any time to fix it up, being that he was put away in Azkaban.
Once again, they built the whole thing, all different layers of it.
The entrance hallway is incredibly narrow and lined with pictures. It ends in a doorway that leads to the kitchen and branches left to a steep staircase that leads upwards. On the floor was a hollowed-out troll foot holding umbrellas and canes and stuff, like some assholes do with Elephant feet in the muggle world.
The kitchen is cramped, dirty and long. Black is the predominant color in this house. It’s the color of the wallpaper, the wood, pretty much any surface. There are shelves of plates, each stamped with the Black Family crest,
Up the staircase was pretty sweet. There were shrunken heads (house elves?) on display in grimy glass cases. Also, at the level area before the stairs turn and go up again was the portrait of Sirius’ mother, covered in a black drape.
The staircase led to two rooms. One room was the bedroom, where Harry, Ron and Hermione reunite. Ratty, run-down, but still a bedroom. The second room is more interesting, featuring the Black family tapestry.
I was told then that JK Rowling supplied all the information, going back five generations. The tapestry covered all the wall space, with burnt out faces peppered throughout. These were people that Sirius’ mother disowned. Sirius’ own face is burnt out.
The one thing of interest I saw in the many names was this: Charles and Doreen Potter – 1920-1977. Maybe I missed it, but I never knew Sirius had a blood relation to the Potter line. I always thought he and James Potter were just friends.
You’ve seen the trail chamber set… it was just as it appears in the trailer and pre-production stills. Rounded, many rising rings of seats.
The other new set I saw was the Ministry of Magic. It was ornate and still being constructed. It reminded me more than a little bit of Wizard of Oz, bright green tile, polished immaculately and rising up many stories.
There’s an Omni hotel in Austin that’s kind of half hotel and half office space, so in the lobby of the hotel you can see many stories of office windows.
The Ministry of Magic set reminded me of that hotel, with office windows looking down on the lobby of the Ministry, where the fountain and statues from the end of the book are.
There’s a long, wide corridor, floor and walls green-tiled as well, that leads to the lobby and on each side are rows of giant fire places. These are for floo travel, but they’re so big… made for travel first, not to hold fire. They’re probably eight to ten feet tall and four feet wide.
Once again, massive, massive set. You could walk in a line for maybe 3 minutes and still be on this set.
Now it’s time to talk about the people. I wouldn’t say I “met” anybody, but I did sit in on roundtables with Daniel Radcliffe, Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood), Gary Oldman, Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy) and Emma Watson. I’m going to be a little dickish here and only transcribe my one question with each, along with my impressions of them.
Daniel Radcliffe – I know it’s weird, but I couldn’t help starring at the scar on his forehead. He was in costume and made up. I’ve been in the lucky position of seeing some iconic movie figures in the past and I had a similar experience when I was on RINGS and I first saw Elijah Wood dressed up all hobbit-like. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the ring of power around his neck.
But Radcliffe was super nice, very friendly, down to Earth and very open. I had the first question.
Quint: From reading the books, Harry’s a lot… grumpier… than he has been.
Daniel Radcliffe: Yes.
Quint: Are you finding it at all difficult keeping him sympathetic?
Daniel Radcliffe: Um… No. I think there are different ways of playing anger. I think a lot of times the actor playing anger tends to shout and that can be very boring and that’s when I think you can lose an audience. But actually, what’s great about Harry is he quite introspective. He feels all this stuff, but he actually keeps it inside most of the time. This film sees the first sort of release of any sort of rage and anger that’s built up over the last… well, his entire life, really. So, I think, particularly when you take into account what Harry’s been through, he’s very easy to sympathize with because his anger seems… not petulant, but more like a natural reaction to the stuff that has happened in his life. So, hopefully I won’t lose the audience too much.
Next up was Gary Oldman… now this was amazingly cool. I’m a huge fan of his… And again, he was all dressed up in Sirius’ fitting pin-stripped suit, his tattoos visible. But there was Gary Oldman, sitting five feet in front of me… possibly one of the best actors working in film today. This was my big geek-out moment. And it was pretty funny listening to him talk to these Potter nerds (again, myself included), telling them that it’s really just a part for him. He finds things to grasp on to and has fun, but it’s not like his world is changed every day because he is Sirius Black. We grab the end of one of his previous questions for me to come in. BEWARE OF BIG SPOILERS INVOLVING HIS CHARACTER IF YOU’RE NOT FAMILIAR WITH THE BOOK!
Gary Oldman: You know, I say it’s fiction, but I don’t mean it’s froth. There’s a lot here that (Rowling) has written. There’s a lot of stuff, deep stuff, in these books about relationships and love and family and loss and all of that. But it’s ultimately a role. I mean, all it has done… it’s just made my fanbase younger.
Quint: You didn’t have 4 year olds coming up to you quoting SID AND NANCY?
Gary Oldman: Not really, no. You know, “I saw you in HANNIBAL.” (laughs)
Quint: For me Sirius is one of the most likable characters in the whole series. Everybody’s against him, he’s the underdog. Do you find it satisfying that you’re able to play a character that is so anti-establishment in a series like this?
Gary Oldman: Well, it’s nice to be anti-establishment and nice. Because I’ve played anti-establishment and bad. (laughs) So, it’s actually quite nice… Yeah, he’s reckless. But you know, it’s a gift to sort of do it and I’m glad I’ve been a part of it. I don’t think he’s coming back in seven, so… I don’t think the audience could take another watery, teary-eyed reunion.
SUPER-DUPER MEGA-SPOILERS OVER!!!! Emma Watson – Yep, she’s a pretty girl and will be a beautiful woman. She came off as very nice and professional. And I won’t say any names, but I must say I got a nice little private chuckle seeing an older male journalist in the interview circle perk up and fluster his questions like a boy on a date. I wonder how often she gets that?
Quint: Are you at a point now whenever a new Potter book comes out you read it like the first draft of a screenplay?
Emma Watson: Um… no. The books, for me, meant something before I was in this and they mean something separately still, so I still look at them as books. I mean, I kind of sometimes slip into seeing us playing the people, but I started reading Harry Potter when I was seven or eight and I had read the third and was onto the fourth by the time I started auditioning, so I was already into the Harry Potter world, but kind of yeah.
Evanna Lynch – Out of everybody we saw, I think Evanna Lynch was the most loved by the little group of online peoples onset that day. One, she got the role of Luna Lovegood because of reading about the audition on one of the Potter fan sites. She was a bigger Potter nerd than anybody on that set, including the people that run these websites, and knew most of them on sight or by hearing their voices. I never introduced myself as being from AICN, so I have no idea if she would have known me from Adam, but I’ll tell you what really kind of warmed my heart about her. This was her first interview. Ever. And she was so nervous, so intimidated that she was literally shaking so badly that she needed help walking into the room to talk to us. She was so shy, her eyes as big as saucers. And then just watching her relax a little when she realized she was a fan of most of the people in the room. It was absolutely adorable. Add on to that she IS Luna Lovegood in person… kind of airy, brutally honest, no filter whatsoever… and the flattery, then you get the group’s favorite interviewee.
Quint: As a fan, what was the most important thing for you that you wanted to make sure you brought to Luna, what aspect to her personality or character?
Evanna Lynch: I wanted everything to be perfect because she was always my favorite character, you know? And… I want… Everyone says she’s crazy. She is, kind of, but I don’t think she’s crazy. Everyone says she’s weird, but she’s just honest and she just says what she thinks and that’s the way she’s been brought up and she doesn’t know any other way. I think it’s weird when people who aren’t being themselves… that’s weird. I wanted to have some of the fun parts to her, but also that she is very intelligent. And she’s really insightful. I think she’s a very good person.
And one of the last was Jason Isaacs, who I really liked a lot. He was really open, had a great sense of humor and just seemed like the kind of guy you could hang out with and have a laugh. Keeping in mind the sequence they were shooting this day was Sirius Black dueling alongside Harry Potter against Lucius Malfoy in the Veil Room at the Ministry, here’s my question.
Quint: When I was reading this sequence that you’re shooting today as kind of an old western shoot-out. That’s what I had in my mind when reading it
Jason Isaacs: Yeah.
Quint: Are you enjoying the action aspect of it?
Jason Isaacs: I probably shouldn’t say how much I’m enjoying it because then people will just be annoyed that I get paid for it as well. But yeah, I know that I’m doing exactly what kids all over the world will be doing once they’ve seen the film. I’m having a wand battle. We’ve been waiting for the wizards to have a wand battle since the series began. We’ve seen the kids, who are learning, but we’re the ninjas unleashed. Not only are we meant to be very good at it, but Gary Oldman and I, who are having a fight today, we’ve been given a week with the choreographer to come up with basically anything we want and they will make it real. So, we kept going “Well, could we…” and I don’t want to tell you what it is because it’ll give away some of the fun things, but “Could you do this with a wand?” To a stony silence. And I go, “Could we?” And they just looked and kind of shrugged their shoulders and went, “You can do whatever you want!” So, there’s all kinds of fabulous fun.
So, we have all that out of the way… this is turning into a long report, but I promise the end is near. Now we get to the bit where I actually got to see shooting. We all had earphones and crowded in front of a monitor on the outside of the Veil Room set. I never got to see inside it with my own eyes, but it was rocky and the pillars that held the veil were erected. We came in as Gary Oldman and Jason Isaacs were talking about their scene, about to rehearse. Isaacs approaches and says something like, “The Dark Lord will be pleased…” and makes short, stabbing motions with his wand, which Oldman reacts to, moving his wand in time, deflecting the charms. He also seems to get caught a few times, having to steady his wand hand and hold it in one position, acting as if there was a connection between the two wands, like at the end of GOBLET OF FIRE. After the rehearsal, David Yates called out, “Fine. We should have shot it!” As the crew put the final touches on the lighting, I heard Oldman over the headphones. “You ever get the feeling, after you’ve done some takes, you feel like you’re in the zone. You’ve done it as well as it will ever be done and then they tell you the boom is in?” Which he followed up by practicing his wand movements, face set and whistling the Harry Potter theme to himself. He did shoot out one, “My name’s Sirius and I’m delirious!” which made me smile. They picked up a take. The slate wasn’t labeled HARRY POTTER AND THE anything, but TIPTOP. The lighting was such that each time a spell was cast or deflected they’d flash a different colored light. When they begin their fight, Lucius says, “You should have stayed in hiding, Black.” Oldman shoots back, “You will wish I had!” The wands swing around… up, down, left, right. Oldman drops his wand at one point and Lucius approaches. Radcliffe jumps in, calling “Impedimenta!” giving Sirius time to grab his wand. There’s more fighting and Radcliffe throws another charm causing Oldman to cackle and shout out, “Good one, James!” Of course, in the rush of the moment, he confused Harry with James Potter. They did this a few times and on one take Oldman missed his cue. “Wrong again! Dammit!” I’m sure they got what they needed. I saw the movie last week and this scene was still in it… kind of important as something really big happens in the very next shot. I just wasn’t there to see the rest. I saw the rehearsal and maybe two or three takes. Most of the coolest stuff was eavesdropping on conversations between Oldman and Radcliffe, Oldman and Isaacs and Oldman and nobody. It wasn’t ideal, but I can’t deny I had a little bit of fun. It was sweet actually being IN Hogwarts, sitting in Dumbledore’s office and dining hall chairs, seeing all the actors in costume up close and personal-like and a paid trip to London is also nothing to complain about (even if I did spend more time in the air than on the ground). I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting hit pretty hard with Pottermania. It’s just this whole last week has been so Potter-centric. I had those one on one interviews, saw the new movie, wrote up this up, re-read Book 6 and the 7th and final Potter book is due out in less than a month. Crazy. So, thanks for reading along through all that. I hope it turned out halfway decent. I still have my final one on one interview from the last London junket, with Harry Potter himself: Daniel Radcliffe. It’s halfway there right now, so hopefully I’ll have that finished by tomorrow morning. See ya’ then, if you’re not Harry Pottered out by then. -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
