Growing up I loved reading the Harry Potter books and watching the Harry Potter movies. I have a special connection with the movies because my aunt Molly Hughes was one of the art directors in the Harry Potter series (specifically movies three through seven part two). I toured the sets when I was younger and met some of the cast and crew. I knew that since then, there has been a replication of the set in London for Warner Bros, but I wasn’t sure of how accurate it is or what the actors think of it. In “The Making of Harry Potter” I learned that the actors are pleased with how accurate the replication is and it makes the majority of them feel nostalgic. The first part of this “Making Of” film is a tour around the “set,” which is really the set replication and the second part is an interview with eight of the actors from the last few movies.

    The actors talk a little bit about the fear they had when they first started filming Harry Potter because very few of them had been in such big name movies. They also talked about how accomplishing it feels to finish each scene they filmed. On another note, they discussed the difficulties of filming movies that require so many special effects. One of the actresses said she was supposed to “fight off” snakes and it was really hard to pretend there were live animals in front of her face. I never thought about this because I always assumed technology was good enough that the actors could pretty much imitate what was wanted on screen, but I guess they could only imagine what they were supposed to be executing.

    In the cast interview during the Behind The Scenes, all of the characters communicated so well with each other and bounced thoughts off of each other. It was clear that they were all bonded and work really well together. This is crucial because these people spent so much time together on set so if there were any poor connections between anyone then this might spill over into the movie when they are all supposed to be in character.

    It would be really cool to work on a movie set and experience what the cast and crew of Harry Potter (or really any film) experience from day to day. On a movie set like Harry Potter there is a lot of pressure and it’s high intensity because there are strict deadlines. I can’t imagine coming to a set to film for ten or more hours a day and anticipating the next cue/scene every second. It costs so much money and time to create big-name films that there is a lot of pressure on the actors (and the crew) to avoid making mistakes. I think if I had to choose one position in the making of a movie, I would want to be a minor part of the cast because I would still be directly involved in what is put on screen but there isn’t the amount of pressure that the main characters deal with.