This whole UK trip morphed out of a single desire -- to visit The Making of Harry Potter at the Warner Bros Studios. I'm a total Harry fan. Love everything about the books, love everything about the movies. So today was like being five years old and Christmas has finally come. I'll admit this -- when I saw the first Harry Potter movie, I nearly wept I was so excited that it lived up to the books. I'll also admit this -- I did weep, full on full out at the end of the last book when Harry told his son that he was named for two Hogwarts professors and one of them was the bravest man he had ever known, referring to Severus Snape. And I guess if I can admit those things I can also admit this -- when you enter the studio they give you this introductory blurb along with some video type interviews and stuff, and damn if I didn't tear up then. All this to say, "OMG! It was a great day."
The studio is housed in two buildings: the first contains costumes, sets, and props. The second: animatronics, plan drawings, scale models, and the model of the castle. It is overwhelming and impossible to take it all in. I mean you can see it all, but the detail of each set, each prop...well, I can't wait to watch the movies again to see if I can spot even a fragment of what they put into it.
There were the things you expected to see like the sorting hat and Dumbledore's podium in the Great Hall...
Sets so familiar they seemed like home...
And costumes galore. Loved seeing the costumes, picturing the actors actually wearing them...
And so many props filled with such detail but that would be next to impossible to notice on screen. This one in particular struck our fancy...one of those 'you had to be there' moments.
At the end I didn't want to leave. I'd have happily gone back through to see it all again. And again. And maybe again. I would work there. For free. They wouldn't have to pay me.
Just let me stay in that magical world forever.
It's a great day when reality lives up to expectation!
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