Firstly Dan Dark, Managing Director of Leavesden Studios, was at a roundtable interview attended by Hypable.com, who of course discussed the Tour, including when they began planning it and protecting the old sets in anticipation of it, the quality of the staff, and return value for fans.

We started making the Harry Potter films in 1999. During the making it was clear that we had something special on our hands, and You see for yourselves the incredible talent that goes into these things. I would say we began to develop some ideas for the tour in 2005/2006, and we were still making the films, so we really protected all of the sets and props because we were never quite sure about what we wanted to bring back. And as we were drawing to the end of making the Potter films in late 2010, we brought all of the production people and back in from making the films to recreate everything. We turned this around in 16-18 months, that’s an incredibly short time. This sort of thing would normally take years, and that’s a real testament to the talent of these guys.

Everybody that has been through this facility has commented on how incredible the staff are, and we’re really proud of that, the staff is really proud of that, how they are perceived. And I think that’s relatively unique in the UK, where sometimes we’re a bit cynical about the level of quality of service, and I’m really proud to say that our guys were able to do that. Pride is something that really comes through, and I firmly believe that this is something that the UK should stand up and be extremely proud about.

You have to ask the fans that. When we see the reactions… what I find the most incredible to watch is the reactions of the people coming into the facilities. It’s quite spectacular! It warms your heart to see them. So that’s not for us to answer that question, it’s for the visitors. I’ve walked through this facility so many times, and I still see something new. So the repeatability is frankly endless.

Secondly, producers David Heyman and David Barron took part in this lengthy chat about the Harry Potter films and the Studio Tour.

 
And we also have this short interview with David Yates via LeakyNews in which he talks about his upcoming project Your Voice in My Head, which he hopes to cast Emma Watson in. In particular he discusses the huge potential he believes Emma has as an actress.

 
And in the following interview, David again speaks about Emma and Your Voice in My Head, as well as the prospects for the Doctor Who movie that he is set to direct at some point in the future.

 
Hypable also managed to talk with David Yates about the Dumbledore funeral scene in Half-Blood Prince. Yates notes that they tried to make it work, but it never made it past the script and no footage was ever captured.

It’s a beautiful picture. That scene was in and out, and in and out again… it was a rhythmic thing, it felt weirdly book-ended. So you would read the script and you’d get to Dumbledore’s death, and it felt climactic and moving. And then we went to the Great Hall and this austerity… it sort of felt weirdly complete. And then you got to this grand funeral, and it felt less about the man and more about the pomp of the ceremony, and it felt oddly less connected. So just rhythmically it felt wrong. But I love that scene, it’s a beautiful scene in the book, but it felt wrong in the movie.

They got a sneaky picture of this beautiful concept art for the scene:

The following quote is from David Heyman and is a sweet story in which he describes the support that Tom Felton gave to Emma Watson when she was struggling to deal with fame:

There was a time on the third film where Emma was really uncomfortable with her celebrity and what it meant. And Tom was absolutely brilliant; we were filming Hagrid’s lesson with the Hippogriff, and Tom and Emma were really friendly, and Tom really encouraged Emma to engage with the fans in the way that she hadn’t. It was like she needed someone, a friend, to go on that [journey] with her. They were all looking out for each other.

And finally, on the red carpet at the Studio Tour Luna actress and die-hard Harry Potter fan Evanna Lynch talked about JK Rowling’s new book and the future of the Harry Potter fandom.

Following Deathly Hallows Part 2′s Visual Effects win at the Baftas and ahead of the Oscars (where Harry Potter is in nominated in the same category), VFX supervisor Tim Burke has been doing a few interviews, including one very lengthy one with Studio Daily.

Tim talks about the differences between the effects on DH2 compared with the previous films, discusses working with several small VFX companies in London for different aspects of the film, gives some insight into the creation of a digital Hogwarts as opposed to using miniatures, talks a bit about 3D, the Gringotts ‘roller coaster’ and the CG giants and spiders and the dragon, mentions last-minute changes to the death of Voldemort and also describes his favourite shots from the last film.

Read several excerpts of that interview below or check out the whole thing here.

In what way did this film have the best effects of the series?

It was more of a spectacle. It was the final chapter of the saga, the death of Voldemort, the battles. We’d never been able to create sequences on that scale before. Before, the films had been fairly contained. This gave us an epic sense of the world around Hogwarts rather than inside Hogwarts.

Do you think people have discounted the “magic” effects through the years? 

I think so, sometimes. Also, some people think we were doing the same thing over and over again. Talking paintings. Wand effects. So, I think perhaps there was a sense with some people that we were doing the same thing every time. Hopefully, the last film showed a bigger world no one had seen before, and brought so many CG characters and creatures into the storytelling. The visual effects were more obvious without being live action with magical effects on top.

Did it help to work with the same studios you had worked with before? 

Having the luxury of working on several films together in the same series does help. You build up relationships, learn the strengths and weaknesses of different studios. These were mostly Soho-based shows. We were able to use the best visual effects supervisors and artists at the key vendors and build a team to deliver the caliber of work everyone expected.

Why was Hogwarts always a digital set this time? 

It was a big change, a big decision that we made before starting the film. We were still working on the sixth film [Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince] and in discussions with the director and producers. All we had was the book. No script. We realized how much a part of the film and the story the school had become. David [Yates] wanted the freedom to fly the camera outside the school, inside the windows, explore the school as part of the developing battle.

Having worked with miniatures in the past, one big 24th-scale and bespoke models at different scales for key areas, we knew it would be a daunting task to build all those miniatures and nest them into wider shots. Double Negative had technology that we had used successfully on Half-Blood Prince to rebuild the whole of London. It was time to throw away the model.

We could previs, design the resolution we need to build, then plot and plan the school build at different resolutions to do everything David [Yates] wanted. He could move the camera from the mountain into the window to a camera move on a stage set. We had all that architecture.

Did you know you’d be designing shots at the last minute? 

There were certain areas of the film unresolved and because of the virtual environments, [David Yates] realized we could recreate shots quickly. The key thing that changed was the death of Voldemort. That happened after we had locked cuts. We had done some screenings and realized we needed a more epic ending. So we redesigned the sequence and thankfully with the digital assets we could recreate the environment. We projected some elements of Ralph Fiennes onto geometry of him and added those to the shots, and for a couple shots had to use a full CG Voldemort. It happened way past the 11th hour. The shoot had finished 12 months earlier, so it was long past the point of pick-up shots. We had to take materials from other shots and recreate him.

Did you design the “roller coaster” sequence through the Gringotts bank with stereo 3D in mind? 

When we shot the film, we didn’t yet have the decision about stereo. We were shooting sequences and didn’t know it would be post-converted. But we designed that sequence in previs to be as much of a roller coaster ride as we could. When we knew the film would be in stereo, we knew certain shots could be delivered by visual effects, and that was one. We had shot the actors on a motion-based gimbal. We extracted those elements and re-projected them onto geometry. The environment was all 3D so we could re-design the shots to push the stereo roller-coaster ride experience and make the audience become a participant in the ride. That was great fun. We did several other sequences where we took over, about 200 shots, and rather than having a post conversion, delivered full 3D shots.

Which shots in the film are your favorites? 

Funnily enough, I think the sequence of the shield forming and the destruction of the shield. Even though they weren’t perhaps the most complicated, they were some of the most beautiful. As Voldemort arrived with his army on the hillside, the teachers went into the areas of the courtyard and created a magical shield that enveloped and protected the school. We art-directed the shots at Double Negative and they are elegant.

It took a long time to create the magical shield. Then Voldemort bombarded the school and destroyed the shield. We wanted to give that an epic scale. We referenced the Hindenburg airship disaster, when it went up in flames, to get the scale of the flames and burning materials. That was the reference for pieces of cloth-like fire that dropped down onto the school. It was magical – not in a Harry Potter sense. It was beautiful and shocking at the same time. Those shots were completely CG and had a big design aspect, which is rewarding.

Of course, all the fighting action sequences were great fun. Getting the giants to work by using live-action actors and changing their faces with CG helped us not to have to create full CG characters. We used scaling and oversized people. MPC changed their faces so they didn’t look human.

And I’m not forgetting the dragon that D-Neg created. We had to emphasize and feel sorry for this 60-foot dragon through pure performance. We found reference from badly treated real animals and translated that body language into our character. He was trapped. Unable to fly. Partially blind. And he had been down there his whole life. It was important to emphasize that so you wanted him to escape and when he did, he flew with majesty and pride. That was a lovely story to roll into the character of the dragon.

Did you have other CG characters in the film? 

We had the dementors again – Rising Sun did those. Framestore did the giant spiders. That has a sweet backstory. Andy Kind, the supervisor who did the spiders, was the one at Mill Film who had worked with me on the spiders on the second film nine years back. Mill Film closed down, so those spiders no longer existed. He rebuilt them by referencing footage from that film.

How does it feel to be away from the world of Harry Potter now? 

It’s really difficult trying to give you sensible information. It feels like a long time ago. It was quite an interesting challenge to come back into the real world. So it’s nice having these awards ceremonies. It brings it back. It was such a great experience, and we were so sad when it was finished. This is a nice timely reminder of what we were involved in.

 
Thanks to Magical-Menagerie.com for the tip on this.

The BAFTA film awards took place tonight in London, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 picked up the award for Special Visual Effects! Congratulations to the team: John Richardson, Tim Burke, Greg Butler, David Vickery and all the others who contributed to bring the books spectacularly to life.

Unfortunately, Deathly Hallows Part 2 missed out on the other awards it was nominated for – Production Design, Makeup & Hair, and Sound.

Also of note on the night was legendary Ollivander actor John Hurt receiving the special award for Outstanding Contribution to British Cinema, an award which was given to the Harry Potter series at the BAFTAs last year.

You can see lots of pictures from the event here in our galleries, with photos of Harry Potter stars on red carpet including Dan Radcliffe, Ralph Fiennes, Jim Broadbent, fiancées Bonnie Wright and Jamie Campbell Bower, Helena Bonham Carter, Kenneth Branagh, John Hurt and Gary Oldman, who saw success on the night with his film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, although he didn’t win for Leading Actor.

Over in Beverley Hills last night he took home a much deserved prize in the fantasy film category at the prestigious Art Directors Guild awards for ‘Excellence in Production Design for a Feature Film in 2011′, for his work on Deathly Hallows Part 2.

Update: The brilliant people behind the Harry Potter films were also recognised by the Guild with a special award for Outstanding Contribution to Cinematic Imagery! The press release names David Heyman, David Barron, Chris Columbus, Alfonso cuaron, Mike Newell, David Yates, Steve Kloves, Michael Goldenberg, Stuart Craig, Neil Lamont, Stephanie McMillan and JK Rowling as the recipients.

This should boost  the film’s chances in this category at the Oscars in a couple of weeks time, although it faces tough competition from the other big ADG winner, Hugo.

Although veteran Craig has won three Oscars in the past (1982, 1988 and 1996), none of them have been for Harry Potter even though his work is probably the standout feature of the whole production. We hope that can finally change!

The full list of ADG winners for the feature film section is below. You can also see the TV winners right here.

Period Film

Hugo (Production Designer: Dante Ferretti)

Fantasy Film

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (Production Designer: Stuart Craig)

Contemporary Film

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Production Designer: Donald Graham Burt)

Warner Bros is negotiating to acquire Your Voice in My Head, the Emma Forrest-scripted drama based on the scribe’s memoir that is expected to be the next film by director David Yates. The film is shaping up to be a Harry Potter reunion. Yates is in discussions with Emma Watson to star in the role of a young woman who attempts suicide before being saved by a New York-based psychiatrist who’s dying of cancer.

They go on to say that the studio may be aiming to get Tom Hanks or George Clooney for the male lead in the film. Sounds interesting! We’ll be sure to update you when any more information is released about this.

The original version aired in July and did not have any scenes from DH considering the release of Part 2 this July. The full list can be seen below.

1. The First Sight of Hogwarts – Philosopher’s Stone
2. Harry v. Voldemort:The Final Battle – Deathly Hallows-Part 2
3. Snape’s Death – Deathly Hallows-Part 2
4. Ron and Hermione’s Kiss – Deathly Hallows-Part 2
5. The Death of Dumbledore – Half-Blood Prince
6. Voldemort v. Dumbledore - Order of the Phoenix
7. Harry’s First Visit to Diagon Alley – Philosopher’s Stone
8. Hermione Hits Draco – Prisoner of Azkaban
9. Dobby’s Death – Deathly Hallows-Part 1
10. Platform 9 3/4 – Philosopher’s Stone
11. Harry’s First Quidditch Match – Philosopher’s Stone
12. Hagrid Arrives to Rescue Harry - Philosopher’s Stone
13. Harry v. Voldemort:The First Battle – Goblet of Fire
14. Molly Weasley Kills Bellatrix – Deathly Hallows-Part 2
15. Buckbeak the Hippogriff – Prisoner of Azkaban
16. The Sorting Ceremony – Philosopher’s Stone
17. Bathilda Bagshot/Nagini - Deathly Hallows-Part 1
18. The Arrival of Beauxbatons – Goblet of Fire
19. Lord Voldemort Returns – Goblet of Fire
20. Ron Returns and Destroys the Horcrux - Deathly Hallows-Part 1
21. Sirius Black is Murdered - Order of the Phoenix
22. Ron Takes the Love Potion – Half-Blood Prince
23. Dementors in the Underpass – Order of the Phoenix
24. Harry Gets his Wand – Philosopher’s Stone
25. The Chess Room – Philosopher’s Stone
26. Harry Summons his Patronus to Save Sirius – Prisoner of Azkaban
27. The Triwizard Tournament:The Black Lake - Goblet of Fire
28. Fred and George’s Firework Display – Order of the Phoenix
29. Dumbledore Drinks the Potion in the Cave – Half-Blood Prince
30. Snape v. McGonagall – Deathly Hallows-Part 2
31. Dolores Umbridge Punishes Harry – Order of the Phoenix
32. Harry Returns with Cedric’s Body – Goblet of Fire
33. Owls Deliver Harry’s Hogwarts Letters – Philosopher’s Stone
34. Aunt Marge’s Comeuppance – Prisoner of Azkaban
35. The Yule Ball – Goblet of Fire
36. Harry’s Left at Privet Drive – Philosopher’s Stone
37. Harry and Cho’s First Kiss - Order of the Phoenix
38. Lupin Turns Into a Werewolf – Prisoner of Azkaban
39. Pesky Pixie’s of the Cornish Variety – Chamber of Secrets
40. Harry and Ron’s Dispute - Deathly Hallows-Part 1
41. Sirius Black and Harry – Prisoner of Azkaban
42. Neville Defends Hogwarts on the Bridge – Deathly Hallows-Part 2
43. Harry and Ron in the Flying Ford Anglia – Chamber of Secrets
44. Dementor’s on the Train – Prisoner of Azkaban
45. Dobby’s Arrival – Chamber of Secrets
46. Dancing in the Tent - Deathly Hallows-Part 1
47. The Mirrod of Erised – Philosopher’s Stone
48. Ron’s Howler - Chamber of Secrets
49. The First Glimpse of the Ministry of Magic – Order of the Phoenix
50. The First Meeting Between the Trio on the Train – Philosopher’s Stone

A few particular moments that are interesting, in my opinion, are No. 9 (Dobby’s Death) and No.4 (Ron/Hermione Kiss). Do you agree with this list? Do you feel that some could’ve been left off and some should have been added? I think that this list is fine, I just hope that they air this special in the States.

Digital Spy said this:

Digital Spy readers’ top five movies of 2011 are:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Part 2 : 25.5%
2. The Inbetweeners Movie : 13.1%
3. The King’s Speech : 11.5%
4. Bridesmaids : 10.0%
5. Black Swan : 5.8%

In keeping with the movies top five list, Colin Firth and Daniel Radcliffe occupy the first two places for favorite actor of 2011, Black Swan’s Natalie Portman was the most popular pick for female actress.

Elsewhere, The Twilight Saga:Breaking Dawn-Part 1 emerged as the top choice for readers’ worst film of 2011. The penultimate Twilight movie debuted in November to poor critical reviews but has still grossed more than $650 million at the worldwide box office.

This reporter hopes that the Oscar voters only can see what all of us see, the Harry Potter franchise is not only life-changing but a rewarding and timeless classic. Happy or Merry Christmas to all those Potterheads who celebrate.