This week I went to the Warner Brothers Studios, the Harry Potter studio tour to be exact and it was great day out!
Going to the studio reminded me of all those days out I went on when I was a child and with my family. There were quite a few families on our tour going round together. It was a mixture of tourists and families, unfortunately school groups and small groups of friends. It sort of reminded me of the exhibition of the Lord of the Rings films at the Science Museum.
It was very exciting walking onto some of the sets and looking at how each prop was made, really fascinating. I even had a go at the broomstick ride across London in front of green screen. Very uncomfortable but seeing as I knew I would buy the video or photo (too expensive) I went all out, going crazy and over the top on the broom. It was exciting wearing the cloaks too.
I was really bold over by the artwork. There was a cabinet full of the graphics created for the films, including posters, the Daily Prophet newspaper and the wizard magazine, The Quibbler. My friend and I had our noses pressed up against the glass, starring eagerly at the Marauder's Map. The coveted prize in the middle of the cabinet. We both said;
'this is what I wish was in the gift shop, we'll take this please'.
Not giving any secrets away but you get to see some major sets, such as The Great Hall, Griffindor rooms, the Potions Classroom and you actually get to wonder around, a little bit, in Dumbledore's office. The back lot has a few sets but I was most excited about the Knight bus, triple decker purple bus. Most of things I got excited about were from my favourite book in the series and favourite film, The Prisoner of Azkaban. Had my photo on it, like you do. then we enjoyed something I'm sure all people who read Harry Potter, a cup of Butterbeer and it was delicious.
After the cold outside, we wondered through the creature workshops and on to another highlight for me, Diagon Alley. The shops were all set up and if only we could have gone in to each of them. Again I just wanted to buy the set, one of those sets that you would want to live in.
After the alley it was some the most spectacular concept artwork on display. I really wished there had been some postcards of the art on sale in the shop but alas, nothing.
The tour ended on a definite high note. After being able to stare at the scale model of Hogwarts and explore it through interactive computers, we were all lead into Ollivander's Wand shop, where a very jolly and Harry Potter film expert welcomed everyone. All the wands had names on them, and we were told that each box represents a member of the cast or crew, there were 4,000 boxes. Very impressive. It was a fantastic end to the easy going tour.
I'm not the biggest Potter fan and I had a great time, I highly recommend going along to have a look round. If you love films and want to take in the splendour of British film crews' work, go visit the studios.