Lucius nel Principe Mezzosangue

Hi,
I promised I'd report back when I'd had my tour of the HBP set. Took a while to organised but we managed to get there before they finish filming in a few weeks. I'm a bit gutted because the photos we took in the Great Hall and Dumbledore's office were deleted from my camera. They let us take a few sneaky pics as long as we didn't reprint them; they were only to be our mementos. If anyone know of a great restore program please let me know, they were on the camera's memory, not a memory card.

This is a completely rambling essay as I try to get everything down before I forget. I told them I wouldn't tell anything confidential and I don't think I've done that (I hope not anyway). I hope you find it interesting.

We met Dan and Tom, they were both really sweet. Rupert and the twins were about but we didn't talk to them. Emma was away studying. I had a rugby ball thrown at me by the guys who plays Neville Longbottom and Cormac McLaggen! I said my bruise would be a souvenir.

There are mini-buses a set points about the studio, you just jump in one and they take you were you want to go. The studio is enormous, we must have walked for miles and my feet are killing me – it was worth it though! There are also golf carts lined up in rows for the cast and crews, and boxes of umbrellas that have a sign on 'for cast use only'. Everyone else must get very wet! While driving around in one of the mini-buses we saw the two night buses, only one is drivable. There were all the props from the Riddle graveyard piled up and train tracks across the grass where the Hogwarts Express had been filmed. Usually it is filmed elsewhere but it was dismantled and assembled there on tracks laid by Railtrack (or something). There are large grass areas near the canteen and they told us the cast and crew play golf and football there in their free time.

We were shown the Hogwarts gates; they are in a small clump of trees with the tops lopped off and have blue screen on each side (blue instead of green because of the trees and grass). The spikes on the gate are made of rubber for health and safety reasons! There are huge carved griffins on top of the gate columns. They said the GCI will be added later with Hogwarts castle on one side and the trees will be repeated to make the Forbidden forest.

Hagrid's hut was a short bus ride away, it had been burned, even saw Hagrid's pumpkin patch though there were no pumpkins. They filmed it burning with a load of cameras (I forget how many they said) because they only got one chance to film it burn. A lot of the outdoor sets have camouflage nets around them. This is because the neighbours complained that the light was reflecting off them and that they were ugly.

I saw The Burrow both the inside and outside sets; the outside set had been burnt out in a Death Eater attack. The inside of The Burrow was amazing, the attention to detail. I climbed up the stairs to Ron's room, the bedrooms aren't there but the corridors have doors coming off them with pictures and ornaments. One of the doors had a picture of mushroom on it. Downstairs there were two clocks, one with the whole family's names on and scissors for hands, the other was smaller with a list of jobs to do. There were even postcards to Ron on the bookcase, howlers (or just letters like paper aeroplanes), a wizarding newspaper on a coffee table and children's painting of magical creatures framed on the walls. The guy showing us around said that it was the hardest set to build because nothing was straight or regular sized.

We went into the Great Hall, it really was huge. There are still wires hanging from the ceiling for the candles from the first film and they use them as reference points. The tables are oak and seat hundreds in sets of tens. All the side walls have false doors in to allow speedy entrance and exit of the large cast. We took our pictures (sob) standing on the dais in front of the teachers table. The tables were laid out with cereal (Pixie Puffs and another was a play on Cheerios) and gold plates and goblets. The windows are made of sugar glass and apparently take a week to clean. There was talk of blowing them up in this film but they changed their minds. They don't use any real food anymore unless a cast member has to be seen to be eating; even the butter that sat on the table was fake.

The Gryffindor common room was quite small. It is still the exact same set from previous films. As you walk in the door (no picture frame entrance here) there are a set of pegs on the right with Gryffindor cloaks, bags and someone's tie hanging up. The picture frames are filled with green screen and all the furniture is from auctions. Usually they hire furniture but as it was going to be used for so many years, this time they bought. All the chairs are well worn and a bit tatty! There was a little seating area to the left in a window alcove and the fire where Harry spoke to Sirius is on the right. Straight ahead are the stairs to the boy's bedrooms. They spiraled upwards to the left but to the right were a few steps that didn't go anywhere. At the top of the stairs there was a small hall from which you could look down into the common room over a banister. In the bedroom all the beds have been cut in half and extended as the films have gone on as the cast have grown too big for them! The curtains around the beds are velvet with star prints on them. The beds had roman numerals painted on the top in gold which corresponded with the numbers painted on the bedside tables, a nice touch. The tables had knickknacks on them and every bed had the correct trunk under it except Harry's which was at the Burrow. Dean's bed had West Ham covers on it.

We walked around Diagon Alley. Ollivanders had been destroyed, all the windows were smashed and it was trashed. The shops had complete interiors in case the camera caught a glimpse inside by accident. Quality Quidditch supplies had a Quidditch equipment display, uniforms on dummies and drawers full of clothing. Florean Fortescue's had fake ice cream sundaes lining the walls on shelves. Florish and Blotts had hundreds of books inside the doorway piled up and on shelves. The large books in the windows are actually Watford phone directories covered!

But WWW stood out in bright orange with a curved front door. It was the most wonderful place. It was like every dream you had as a kid. There were skiving snack boxes, puking pastels, U-no-poo, sweets from floor to ceiling. It had a set of stairs winding up the middle and was three floors high. The detail was amazing; the shelves were crooked with brightly coloured goods on every surface. It was truly breath taking. At the end of our tour we watched them filming a scene there. When you see the scene where Fred and George are talking to Ron on the stairs, he asks how much for an item, they say '5 galleons', Ron says 'but I'm your brother' and they say '10 galleons'. Well I am standing behind the stairs (out of sight) by the door! It took eight takes just for that few seconds and I was told they only complete 2 minutes of film a day.

Rupert, Dan and Emma have higher chairs than everyone else! But everyone has chairs with their names on. They are lined up for the cast members who are filming that day. Each cast member has a stand-in who sets up the scene so the actors are not waiting about. The stand-ins look spookily like the actors and a few made me double take especially Draco's. There were other bits and pieces of set about, parts of the black tiled Ministry of Magic and a bed and wardrobe that will be the orphanage room where Tom Riddle slept. There was another orphanage set somewhere else but this is where the conversation with Dumbledore took place. It was very small with a single door wardrobe and very institutional metal bed with grey rough blankets on.

We saw Knockturn Alley but the lights weren't on so it was by torch light! Saw Borgin and Burkes that way. The vanishing cabinet was in the centre, it was dark wood with a slanted roof. There were lots of skulls and creepy looking objects – even creepier due to the lack of lighting. There were wanted posters on the alley walls for Bellatrix and the Carrows.

We were taken to the tank where all the underwater scenes are filmed. We went downstairs and there was a large window looking into the tank. It is the deepest tank in Europe and the smell of chlorine stung my eyes. The water was bath temperature and there were scaffolding towers inside the tank. Next to it there were a row of wetsuits and breathing apparatus. The scenes in the cave with Dumbledore and Harry were filmed here.

We couldn't get into moaning Myrtle's bathroom because it was locked. They filmed the Sectumsempra scene there last week. They told me Tom had to lie in the fake blood and water for hours. He had a prosthetic chest on which pumped out fake blood and for each new take he had to get cleaned up and dry his hair before starting again. There are some pictures floating about of the scene and they look like Tom is lying dead in a pool of blood, very freaky for his friends to see!

The Hogwarts courtyard is used as a seating area for the cast when not filming. There are piles of plastic garden chairs that look very out of place. We walked right around the courtyard. From a distance the background paintings of the lake are very realistic. At one end there is a huge suit of armor which used to lead to the stairs to Dumbledore's office. The stone on the courtyard floor is real but around the entrances and edges it isn't real and bounces slightly! There is even moss in the corners of some pillars which the set dressers have laid painstakingly. The walls are made of a hollow material and echo when you knock on them.

We got a quick peek at the potions classroom. We weren't allowed in as they were still going to be filming in there so we looked in from the doorway. It was quite a large set with tables in the middle and bottles lining the walls. There were a number of small cauldrons on each table labeled with the names for where each actor would stand. On the walls were patterns made of real gold leaf with runes (I think) engraved in the middle.

Dumbledore's office has had most of the ornaments removed but his chair and desk were there. I had a photo of me in his chair holding his quill but alas that is now lost. They told us that the giant telescope had to be got in by removing a side of wall. The pensive was in a glass cabinet along a wall and there was a 6 foot tall display cabinet free standing to one side with hundreds of glass vials in, each holding a memory. Everyone was labeled individually mostly with nonsense but I caught the name Riddle written on one – amazing detail yet again.

We were also shown the special effect department. Buckbeak was there; apparently each feather was cut by hand and it is all weaved together then held on with velcro. They told us it took a team of fifteen crew months to make. There were mannequins of Katie Bell when she had been hexed, one life size and one smaller for when Hagrid is holding her. She was wearing a red scarf and red coat. The hair on its head was real and the girl I was with knew the actress and was quite shocked because it looked so life like lying there. Baby Voldemort was sitting on a shelf with Dobby. There were giant spiders galore and the whole place stunk of resin! There was so much to see, Hagrid's feet and hands, all the goblins prosthetic faces and props that are used for the cast to act against when CGI will be put in later. They are about to pack everything up as this department has finished with the film.

We were also taken around the animal enclosure by the trainer. They had two monkeys there. We saw the two cats that play Crookshanks and other cats that are extras! There are three of each owl in case of illness. We saw Hedwig, it's a boy and he's very old now, losing feathers on one wing and they're going to retire him after this film. I held Pig; he is tiny and very sweet. Sirius' owl was dyed to make him so dark and they keep any of the owl's fallen feathers because they can replace a broken feather with the spares. They had one owl there which cost £1,500 and has only been used in background shots. They had two hairless cats, they looked quite odd and a few cats that looked like tigers, they were American, I forget the breed. We didn't see Fang but apparently he is absolutely huge (of course).

The costume department was very interesting; I ran my hands over the invisibility cloak. There were a few and one had the velvet outside that we see on the films and another had green screen sewn into it. Saw Katie Bell's red costume, Belatrix's, Snape's and well, basically everyone's. Luna's wardrobe was suitably eclectic. There were lots of black cloaks and Quidditch uniforms and pictures of the cast in their outfits with lists of their measurements hanging on the rails. They all have at least 3 of every item of clothing in case one is damaged. The stunt people's clothing is exactly the same as the cast's but in bigger sizes so that the protective pads can fit underneath. Neville's actor is actually quite slim and wears padding to bulk him out.

They were filming a stunt on green screen that will take place on the millennium bridge. I saw Bellatrix's stunt double in place but they were waiting for more cloud by the time we got there and everyone had stopped for ice creams! There was a woman with black hair with a white streak through it and I was told she was the double for Narcissa (can't confirm that though).

It was a beautiful day and most of the cast who weren't filming were enjoying the sun. Luna was having her hair plated and other people were sitting about or playing sports. We were told that it's not always like that and sometimes it can be stressful (Ha!). Everyone there was so nice and took the time to say hi or tell us all about their specialist area. It was a truly wonderful day.