A Walk Through the Wizarding World: Exploring the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio
This post originally appeared on CAPA World Blog in December 2015.
The first time I laid eyes on the magical world of Harry Potter, it was 2001 and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone had just been released on VHS. I had never read the books, never even heard of the series, and my initial encounter with this pop-culture phenomenon had quite an impression on me.
It scared me to death.
That might seem silly now, considering The Sorcerer's Stone is the least dark of the Harry Potter installments and the most geared towards children, but I was barely six years old and my film repertoire consisted mostly of animated Disney movies and The Land Before Time. The recurring image of a cloaked Lord Voldemort drinking unicorn's blood in the midnight-black Forbidden Forest gave me nightmares for months.
Dumbledore’s office
Unfortunately, this little scare put me off of the entire series for about six more years. It was one of those things that I knew everyone liked, but I was determined to be different. I couldn't see the big deal.
I must have been in seventh grade when a chance viewing of a Harry Potter weekend on ABC Family changed my mind. Seeing bits and pieces of the movies, I couldn't remember why I thought I disliked them. I decided to give the books a chance, which is when I underwent a complete revolution of opinion and found that far from hating Harry Potter, I was completely in love with it. The rest is history.
I am slightly embarrassed to admit that when I knew I was coming to London, a tour of the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studios was one of the first items on my to-do list. I researched devotedly, booked my ticket, and last weekend I finally boarded my bus to the studio tour in Leavesden, just outside London. I don't regret it one little bit.
For a loving fan of Harry Potter, a walk around the studio was almost a spiritual experience. I know I'm not alone, because all the other visitors were grinning giddily and squealing and letting out cries of "Oh my God, it's the invisibility cloak!" I even saw a woman dabbing tears in front of the intricate model of Hogwarts.
Forgive the photo quality — this was a college-budget camera in low lighting. But you can still feel the magic!
The tour had every Harry Potter tidbit you could ask for - original costumes and wigs worn by the actors, pieces of the sets used for filming, reconfigured scenes from the movies, a hodgepodge of authentic props and "magical" items, and a plaque and video at every display, explaining how everything in the films was done.
A low-lit look at the Great Hall.
I saw my reflection in the Mirror of Erised, walked through the Great Hall, boarded the Hogwarts Express and strolled down Diagon Alley.
I peered inside the Burrow and Hagrid's hut, stood in Dumbledore's office and the Potions classroom, and saw the Gryffindor common room and boys' dormitories.
I came within a foot of the goblet of fire, the vanishing cabinet and Voldemort's horcruxes.
I recognized hundreds of trinkets and costumes and paintings and props I had only ever seen on screen, and I read as much as I could about how much work was put into every little detail of production — the settings, the mechanics, the thousands of handcrafted items that gave the movies their magical authenticity.
It was amazing to realize I was standing where everything in the Harry Potter films happened, where the actors grew up, where favorite scenes were played out, where the wizarding universe was built lovingly by hand and hard work to create the fantasy that engrosses our imaginations.
In a way, it was bittersweet, learning the realities behind that fantasy, placing the magical settings within the real world. But the enchantment wasn't lost, because the real magic is in the storyteller's capacity to captivate so many minds — so many hearts — and in the filmmaker's ability to bring that dream world to life, and in the story lover's still-childlike imagination, where it always stays alive.
