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Set report: Mid-Day
The Harry Potter books and films have become a phenomenal worldwide success, so how could Ir not accept an
invitation from Warner Brothers Studios to visit the sets of the film in London.
For me it would be a reunion with an old friend, director Alfonso Cuaron, and an opportunity to see him at
work. He was still basking in the glory of his award winning and critically acclaimed film Y Tu Mama
Tambien when he was hired to direct the third Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban.
On the hour-long drive to the studio, I had enough time to familiarise myself with the production notes
the studio representative had handed me.
In this film, Harry Potter and his friends Ron and Hermione (teenagers now) are at Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry where they are forced to confront their darkest fears as they tackle a dangerous
escaped prisoner and equally forbidding Dementors who are sent there to protect them.
By the time the car pulled up to the studio, a hazy sun fought its way out of the clouds and I was
delivered into the hands of the waiting studio personnel and ushered into a tent for breakfast.
The tent contained memorabilia from previous Harry Potter films, props and costumes and hanging on the
walls were portraits of the sleeping professors and dividing the tent in two were two black boards with
transfiguration lessons written on them.
The main studio building, which much to my surprise did not resemble a studio at all, was a place where
airplanes were built during the Second World War.
This is Leavesden Studios, where all of dfu the Harry Potter films have been shot and which houses all of
the previous sets which are now being used for the current film, with slight modifications.
At first glance it seems rather an odd location to be filming in - the ceilings are low and there is no
soundproofing - must be a nightmare for a director.
Alfonso Cuaron seems to have adjusted though, as did his predecessors. "The first day I arrived I found it
kind of cold. A cinematographer friend who had worked here on another film hated it and thought it was
horrible.
My cameraman pointed out the low ceilings and how tough it was going to be, but I was distracted by the
creative elements and eventually it all worked out."
After walking through corridors and passing various craftsmen at work in various spaces, I walked towards
where Alfonso was shooting. What struck me most was the calmness and happy feeling that I got when I was
around the craftspeople.
They all seemed to be living and working in Harry Potter's magical world, a world of triple-decker purple
buses, shrinking shacks and magical creatures all casting their own spells under the watchful eye of
Cuaron.
Producer David Heyman, who himself is amazingly relaxed in spite of the enormity of the film, says, as he
points to the sets, "This is a magical universe, this is not a world in which magic happens and I think
that the film will be very exciting because Alfonso has a real passion for the story and a real
understanding of Harry. He's able to see the story through Harry's eyes."
The sets themselves are amazingly real, enormous and done with painstaking detailing. I walked into the
great hall not believing it was a set but a real structure from an ancient past.
There were the aged tables and benches and real stone floors, the walls were solid and the windows leaded.
Moving on I saw the moving marble stairway and the walls of the room adorned with portraits, which held a
secret of their own. Though meant to be portraits of wizards past, they where portraits of crewmembers and
the producer who posed for them.
David Thewlis, who plays Remus Lupin, the new Defense Against the Darks Arts teacher, tells me: "The
difference between this film and the two other Harry Potter films will be very apparent even to the
untrained eye.
Just the way it's being shot, the director is using extremely wide lenses on extremely close shots and the
camera is moving in quite extraordinary ways."
After walking around the sets wide-eyed, I had no time to actually watch Alfonso at work. So I had left
the world of magic and entered into the world of reality with a renewed desire to see Harry Potter number
three.
Set report courtesy of Mid-Day
-October 11, 2003
Back to Prisoner of Azkaban
set reports
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