London Days 38 & 39: Brighton and Harry Potter!!!

its been an exciting two days here in England. On Friday, the morning after getting home from Stratford, we all got back on a bus and headed to Brighton for the day! Brighton was great! sort of like a British version of Santa Cruz, which was exciting for me since Santa Cruz is one of my favorite places on earth. The beach was beautiful, there was a pier with lots of rides and carnival type food, and the town itself was great. It was full of restaurants, boutiques, and vintage clothing stores. we had a great time exploring, riding the rides, and eating WAY too much sugar. (seriously, I'm a little appalled at what my diet consisted of that day). But it was a beautiful day, and we all had a blast!

Friday was great, but Saturday was even better! me and a few people from the program, went to the Making of Harry Potter!!

Its a really cool tour that has been set up with original sets and costumes and props from the films. As both a huge Harry Potter nerd, and a lover of any film, behind the scenes thing, I was pretty much jumping up and down with excitement. before we went in, they showed us a film about how the Harry Potter books  took over the world, and then another that told us a little bit about the tour, what we were going to see. then the movie screen lifted up, to reveal the door leading into the great hall set. From there we got to see tons of set pieces, and props  and costumes, which was so amazing.

there were a few things that really impressed me/ got me really excited while looking at all of this 

first, the costumes. it was so cool to be that close to the costumes from the movie, not only to see some of the detail and construction, but to see that some of those costume pieces might not have actually been as amazing as they looked in the film. I thought that was interesting.

next, were the sets and props. the detail in these sets was amazing! and most of it are things you would never really see or notice, but add so much to the look of the film. the production designer (who was the same throughout all the films, even though the director, producers, and lots of other people changed ) was amazing! I still cant get over how elaborate the sets were. but the cool thing about seeing it in person, is seeing that its real. I mean obviously it took a huge amount of time and money to create all of this for the film. but seeing it in person somehow made building a set and making an incredible movie seem like an achievable end.

there were also two really cool things that I hadn't ever even thought about. first was the huge graphic design team that was needed to create all of the newspapers, posters, advertising, and packaging seen in the film. when looking at the area on this stuff I realized how much their work had become ingrained in this world of Harry Potter, but its something that I hadn't thought about. Plus I cant think of a more fun graphic design job.

the last thing was the animatronics  used in this film. I didn't realize it, but in many shots in the film, Buckbeak, Dobby, the monster book of monsters, even Hagrid's face were all animatronics. I found this so impressive, and again, that's another piece of film making that I had never thought about.

the tour ended with the model of Hogwarts, which was filmed to get the wide, sweeping shots of the castle. I've got to say, this was just the coolest day. not only did I get to walk into this world that I have loved from the time I read the first book as a child, but I learned so much and got so excited about the future. This is what I want to do. SO BAD. designing and creating worlds like this is just so fascinating to me, and I sincerely hope that someday I will get to work on a project as creative and design heavy as these films were.