April 16: Thanks to Richard

April 16: Thanks to Richard who sent us this report:

Thought I would drop you a little note about the filming at ChristChurch College Oxford last week. After I saw via TLC last week that HP2 was filming there, my girlfriend and I went up Saturday morning to have a look around. Alas, they finished filming on Friday morning (April 12), but all the sets were still in place, and for £4 you could have a tour round the college, which also gave a bit of a look behind the scenes.

There were no HP security guys there on Saturday, so we could look around okay, and the Porters (The College staff who help tourists) were eager to say about how the filming had gone. They were all really excited. They said that all the main cast were there with doubles for Harry and Hermione, because they were working 14 hour days, while the kids can only work 7 hours per day.

They didn’t have the real Hagrid, so they had his double (some 6-foot 6-inch rugby player in a latex mask). All the stuff they were doing was distance stuff, so it’s okay.

Anyway, they were filming some snow scenes, and some more Christmas stuff on the stairs up to the great hall. What was interesting is that the main hall in the film is digitally put at the top of the stairs. ChristChurch hall is to small and in slightly the wrong place, so they had a huge white sheet at the top of the stairs onto which they can digitally put the doors through to the great hall and the larger great hall beyond.

ChristChurch hall only has 3 long tables, although in all other respects it is Hogwarts hall, but as they remade a larger Hogwarts hall based on ChristChurch hall, I dont think they did any filming in the real ChristChurch Hall.

They also filmed a night scene, because they still had a huge (about 15 foot by 25 foot) back drop of Hogwarts lake at night set up infront of a doorway, so that whatever they film in that corridor will appear to be at night.