Emma Watson
Creating the Potterverse, and re-creating it seven times over, is a daunting task. While the franchise's enchanting elements rely heavily on CG and special effects, a gargantuan part of the behind-the-scenes bewitching is aided by the makeup, prosthetics and props departments, animatronic creature creation lab, and set design. During our Deathly Hallows: Part 1 set visit back in March, we spoke with Warwick Davis (who plays both Gringotts goblin Griphook and Hogwarts professor Flitwick), toured the different makeup and props departments, and sat down with production designer Stuart Craig. All of you moviegoing Muggles are in for a treat – the cast and crew's attention to every detail expands well past the walls of Hogwarts…
Warwick Davis rolled up in a jolly mood on his mini, motorized chariot, and sat to chat with the press in one of the studio press rooms. Dressed in full Flitwick wardrobe, he explained that he hadn't done much but sit in the makeup chair since arriving on set four hours earlier. In another half an hour, we would watch him film a scene for
Deathly Hallows: Part 2, but - per studio instruction - we'll need to save that for the next set report.
Transforming into the Flitwick character takes three to three and half hours, adding Griphook's goblin garb and makeup takes an extra 30 minutes, and removing all of it adds another hour. "It doesn't come off Mrs. Doubtfire style. I wish it was that easy. It's quite a painstaking process just to get it off and preserve my skin," Davis said. With a grin, he described his love-hate relationship with the makeup crew, but expressed his gratitude for their efforts. "What's wonderful about the makeup effects crew here is that it does enable me to play two different characters in the same film. Without these guys, for all the torture they put me through, however much I hate them, without them, I couldn't do what I do."
When asked which character he prefers, Griphook or Flitwick, Davis hesitated. "What you do as an actor is, you find a little seed of you and that becomes the start of the character. You have a connection and a fondness with all of them, so to choose one is really hard work." After a bit of urging, he finally blurted out, "Flitwick then, if it was somebody I'd want to hang out with. I wouldn't want to hang out with Griphook. You'd never quite know whether to trust him or not. I'll have a beer with Flitwick. Not that we drink, ever. Butterbeer."
From playing the Ewok Wickett in
Return of the Jedi to Willow Osgood in
Willow to the mischievous
Leprechaun, nearly every character that Davis has played has required heavy makeup. "It's something I've done my entire career. As long as you get on with the makeup artists and have a rapport with them, you can just chat and watch DVDs." He goes a long way back with Nick Dudman,
Harry Potter's special makeup designer and creature effects supervisor, who collaborated with the actor in 1981 on the third
Star Wars. Dudman created Davis' first ever lifecasting, which is a sculpting and molding process of creating a three-dimensional copy of a human body. For
Deathly Hallows, Dudman created another lifecast of Davis' head so they could create conceptual designs for Griphook's costume. (
Read Warwick Davis' full interview here.)
Hairy Potter
Griphook's concepts for head and nose included coming up with prosthetics for Davis to wear. It was especially labor intensive for haired objects. "All the eyebrows and hairlines are done one hair at a time. That's for every single day of shooting," Dudman said. "There simply isn't a better way to do it. You can make a wig to go on a dummy, but the leading edge mustn't have lace showing." Extra effort goes into grooming goblin brows, as they are a bit unruly. "They've been put in one at a time at the correct angle, having been pre-curled, so it all sits beautifully, but that's got to be the same for every day this character works, so that they can cut from any day of shooting to any day of shooting and it just matches."
Griphook is only one of numerous intense character makeups. In a scene where the Snatchers capture Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione and Ron, Hermione hexes Harry beyond recognition. "His face is distorted from it," Dudman said. "Paula, who runs my art finishing department, has actually come in and copied Daniel's eyebrows hair for hair for every day of shooting."
All the hairing of prosthetics takes time, and even obtaining hair can prove costly. "It's real hair," Dudman said. "The longer the hair is, the more expensive it is." It's graded and comes from several sources, including Italy and Asia. "Girls grow their hair and they don't cut it until they get to 15 or something like that, and then it's cut, so you get a significant length. We can either buy it colored from certain companies that supply it in different colors, or we can dye it ourselves, which we very often do, and then it just gets mixed as per whatever we want."
For the movie's creatures, they use yak and animal hair. The boar's head at The Hog's Head pub used pig bristle, which also had to be inserted one at a time. Putting wings and feathers on props, like Hedwig and Buckbeak, also entails a laborious process. They created birds with a stretch Lycra body, with each feather selected, hand painted and pushed into the Lycra in a given place and then glued on. "When the Lycra underneath is stretched by the machinery, all the feathers move across each other the way feathers do. So if you're doing wings, they have to open out. You have to construct them the way a wing works, otherwise it just doesn't work."
In addition to creatures, the animatronic creation lab creates entire human dummies. Remember Katie Bell, the Gryffindor student who was cursed and eerily flung around in mid-air in Half-Blood Prince? Rather than have the actress hang from wires, a dummy was used for the sequence. The same was also done for Charity Burbage, a Muggle studies professor at Hogwarts, who is suspended over a table at Malfoy Manor at the beginning of Deathly Hallows. Dudman actually let us touch the Burbage dummy – she's mechanized so her body arches with her back bent backwards, her skin stretched, and her face contorted in disturbing, realistic fashion. The body can be used in all her scenes apart from those in which she has dialogue or close-ups.
In storage, we also viewed Emma Watson's underwater Hermione dummy from Goblet of Fire. "In the scene where they're all held underwater, we made moving dummies so that they could be suspended in the tank as opposed to having actresses or divers physically tied with ropes to the bottom of the tank," Dudman said. Instead of using electrical devices to mechanize them, they used air rams that could pump water into them to make them move up and down, similar to how a submarine works.
In between interviews, Warner Bros. took us through the rest of the studio. We viewed the green room, where Quidditch, Hogwarts' moving staircases, and the Gringotts' cart scenes were filmed. In the cafeteria, we saw display cases showcasing Harry Potter memorabilia, props and posters. Back in the press room, we found more Deathly Hallow items, including the Slytherin locket that Voldemort used as a Horcrux, Hermione's drawstring purse where she pulls out the tent, Wanted: Undesirable No. 1 posters of Harry, and concept art of the Bathilda-Nagini transformation at Godric's Hollow.
Batty's transformation and Godric's Hollow
Four stills display the progression of the transformation; the first is a regular profile view of Bathilda Bagshot—or what appears to be Bathilda, since Voldemort's snake Nagini has possessed her. The second shot shows her head cocked back, with her mouth open and scales on her face. In the third photo, Bathilda's head and neck are arched unnaturally backward, her face is ripped open starting at the mouth, and Nagini's tongue protrudes from the orifice. The last photo is of Nagini, shedding Bathilda's body as if it were its own old, shriveled skin. The concept art brings to life the split-second transformation detailed on Page 340 of J.K. Rowling's book, which could turn into a truly horrifying scene on film.
Stuart Craig, the production designer for all of the Harry Potter films, said that when they built Godric's Hollow again for the seventh film, they looked at what Rowling had to say in the book about the state of the Potter house. "We do refer to the book all the time. It's so specific and precise and everything is grounded in the book." For things that aren't specified, or things they've planned to exclude, they consult Rowling for her expertise. "Please, please, please give us additional simple things like the names for shop fronts," is one of the things Craig has asked Rowling. "She has that knack for coming up with something that is so imaginative – has all the right associations. We've asked her about gravestones. Could there be a graveyard within Hogwarts? She said no. Maybe she was protecting and preserving the idea which none of us knew anything about and [related to] Dumbledore's tomb within Hogwarts."
Other concepts that they've run by the author include the tapestry in Sirius Black's house and Black's complicated family tree – "something that we could never have worked out on our own without her help, so she contributed enormously there," Craig said. They've also been careful to consult Rowling before leaving out characters; Kreacher, the Black family's house elf, was going to be written out of the script for the fifth film. Rowling vetoed that, and anyone who's read the
Deathly Hallows understands why; Kreacher plays a key role regarding one of Voldemort's Horcuxes.
Adapting to the darkness
It was challenging for the filmmakers to adapt the books since many details of the final chapters had not yet been revealed. Craig said they've had to rebuild and revise many Hogwarts sets to accommodate additions. "When we started, there were just two novels, and they've come out sequentially since then. Not everything was known. We didn't know [about the Room of] Requirement. Certain changes have been forced upon us. The astronomy tower's had to pop up in the middle of the whole complex and the forecourt in front of it has had to get bigger and bigger to accommodate the battle at the end."
As the series has gotten progressively darker, the crew has changed the color of the sets to match the films' seriousness and emotional content. "The sets have literally gotten darker. That rather attractive sort of honey color, we've gone and painted out."
Since Craig has been designing the sets from the beginning, his eye for continuity has proved valuable, as has his dedication to creating a cinematic world within the confines of Rowling's Potterverse. For film franchises, it's common practice to change directors and production designers for a new film's different moods and styles, so Craig's attachment to the entire series is a bit unusual. "I have very carefully and deliberately said to every one of [the directors], 'You don't have to have me,'" he laughed. "I know what we did before and how to rebuild it, but it isn't as necessary as it appears. I think the changes of director have been exciting and stimulating and entirely good for the whole project. Frankly, a change of designer would've produced similarly interesting results, I'm sure."
Now that the ending of the franchise is approaching, Craig has found he's developed sentimental attachments to some of the sets. "I walked past a set here the other day that I was particularly fond of -- Malfoy Manor, the interior. [There are] two large sets and two thirds of them are gone. I've seen hundreds of sets built and pulled down, but I was a little disturbed by that." He's been in talks with set decorator Stephanie McMillan and others regarding which sets to bring back for the Warner Bros. Leavesden set tour. They hope to bring back a lot of it, including the Great Hall, Dumbledore's office and the Dark Arts classroom. "We are still at planning stage, but hope to preserve it … for the ninth," he joked.
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