Warner Brothers Studio: The Making of Harry Potter

There is probably no better Christmas gift for someone brought up on Harry Potter than tickets to Warner Brother Studios The Making of Harry Potter. Two tickets magically (see what I did there?) appeared in our letterbox 2 weeks ago, and we were so excited to see that Brian's family had given two Potter nerds the best surprise ever! So today we headed out to Leavesden (North London) to see where Harry, Ron and Hermione spent 10 years making the best movies ever.

After overcoming an early obstacle (to get your tickets you have to show ID and Anthony booked our tickets under BrianKobi Gingberts haha!), we were in! We spent the next two hours going through the real sets, seeing the actual costumes and props used, and learning all the behind the scenes secrets of Harry Potter. It was so awesome. A huge thank you to the Gings and Vennitti's for the present, we loved it! I'll let the photos do the talking!

 

Later muggles,

Kobi & Brian

The cupboard under the stairs...

The Great Hall all dressed up for Christmas. 

The Great Hall dining tables, and the first Hogwarts uniforms ever worn by Harry, Ron and Hermione

The hour classes that count the house points for Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff

The teachers table in the Great Hall, with original costumes

 

Original costumes, wigs and props

Gryffindor dormitory

Ron's bed, with Harry's in the background

The Gryffindor common room - Sirius Black's face appeared in this fireplace!

 

The potions classroom. The props team filled over 1000 jars with 'ingredients' such as herbs and leaves. But when they ran out of herbs to use, they would go to the butcher and ask for bones and off cuts, and preserve them in jars of liquid. Eww. All the potions scenes when Snape was teaching were filmed in this room, which is surprisingly small and actually about 3 steps away from Hagrids hut.

 

Dumbledores office - just outside is shot were glass cabinets full in trinkets all moving around, including the pensieve where he stored his thoughts. The walls were also full of portraits of ex headmasters asleep, eating etc. 

 

This tour definitely made quidditch look less extreme! All the broomsticks are mounted on a machine that moves, against a green screen.

 

The Weasleys kitchen at The Burrow, complete with self chopping knife and self washing frypan.

Ollivanders wand shop, Diagon Alley

Diagon Alley set

4 Privet Drive, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunias house

While a whole set of Hogwarts doesn't exist, there is a model built which is the size of a huge room. They used this model to do all the aerial shots - you can see the rails on the roof where the cameras roll over. Every detail is to scale (albeit a tiny scale!) and it was covered in snow when we were there. It was pretty amazing!

 

 

Hogwarts covered in snow

 

Choosing my wand from Ollivanders (even though you don't choose the wand, the wand chooses you!)

 

Brian with a butterbeer. If anyone wants to know what it tastes like, it's cold, fizzy butterscotch-flavoured soft drink, and it has this weird creamy layer on the top like when you make an icecream spider. I thought it was gross but Brian loved it.