Honeymoon Pictures, Part II

Being in London, I was relatively so close to the Warner Bros. Studio Tour Harry Potter experience that it was very important to me that I made it for a visit! With some finagling, I managed to do it, and it was silly and fun and really quite amazing! Mr. Q and I actually split up for this day’s activities, because going was rather expensive and while he’s seen the movies once he doesn’t remember much about HP (sad, I know!). He had his own fun, though, that I wouldn’t have been interested in, so it worked out well. I took hundreds of pictures and had to comb through them to find the ones that made it to the blog.

I believe that part of my reason for liking HP so much is that there is such an immense amount of detail in the creation of the world in both the books and the movies. I love being able to step into such a well-developed reality.

There was a special interest area devoted to the costumes and hair in the show, which of course was right in line with my interests. There was also an employee talking about the wigs and hair and answering questions, which was really interesting and informative. Even some of the every day hairstyles were wigs, so that the actors would always look the same for certain scenes, even if re-filming was necessary and they had cut their hair, etc.

There were also costumes on mannequins scattered throughout the tour, but I can’t show them all! Again, there is so much detail in the costumes. Such amazing fabrics, and construction, and details…

Then there is a whole area devoted to the designing and drafting of all of the elements in the films. It’s amazing to think that every little thing had to be designed down to the smallest detail!

And there’s also concept art…

And models of different sets. These have such detail in them, but were relatively small–this one is maybe four feet across?

It has it’s own room, with a ramp that circles around and slowly descends, so you can see the castle from every angle. This is what they used to shoot some of the outside scenes of the castle.

Finally, you end up in the HP store. Mostly overpriced, in my opinion, and I really didn’t need stuff to take home with me. If I was going to be tempted by anything though, these were them.

And there were so many other really awesome things I didn’t include pictures of! If you like HP and you’re in London, I highly suggest visiting. Of course, if you don’t like HP, I wouldn’t spend the money, because while you can still enjoy the attention to detail, if you don’t know what all the things are it wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining and fantastic.

Anyway, here’s the last picture–from the green screen broomstick experience!