Comments on: "It even has miniature owls in the Owlery and hinges on the doors."

"It even has miniature owls in the Owlery and hinges on the doors."

brundlefly — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:55:05 -0800

A 50 foot wide miniature of Hogwarts used in all of the Harry Potter films will be going on display in London this month. The miniature was designed and built by production designer Stuart Craig.

By: elizardbits

elizardbits — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:57:14 -0800

What is this, a school of witchcraft and wizardry for ANTS?

By: Mavri

Mavri — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:04:21 -0800

I thought everything had gone to CGI. I love that this is a model.

By: schmod

schmod — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:06:30 -0800

Wait. All of them? I could have sworn they went through at least 3 or 4 Hogwartses as the directors got bored with the old sets, or needed to add new architectural elements to support plot developments...

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:09:13 -0800

Weirdly it reminds me most of all of the refinery model from Alien. Oh, and there's an ace Lego set.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:19:32 -0800

This makes me really want to go to Durham cathedral.

By: Pinback

Pinback — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:21:41 -0800

schmod: "I could have sworn they went through at least 3 or 4 Hogwartses …" This. But you've got to love the randomness of the Daily Fail's comments. Using an article about a production model of Hogwarts to post your rant against Tracey Emin?

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:29:54 -0800

Weirdly it reminds me most of all of the refinery model from Alien. Where's the Lego model for that.

By: philipy

philipy — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:31:13 -0800

If I go I'm totally going to pretend I'm a giant.

By: elizardbits

elizardbits — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:32:22 -0800

ok wait actually those would be some huge and terrifying ants.

By: Atreides

Atreides — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:44:47 -0800

The Lord of the Rings movies by Jackson did an awesome job of using miniatures. Very cool to see it used in the Potter films.

By: bewilderbeast

bewilderbeast — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:47:38 -0800

It's a school of witchcraft and wizardry for Dryococelus australis! I also thought it was a CGI castle and am delighted to have been proven wrong. That time-lapse video of its construction thrills my dollhouses-and-miniatures-loving inner child to her teensy core.

By: usagizero

usagizero — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:53:42 -0800

God i wanna play Warhammer on that. ;)

By: zardoz

zardoz — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:17:43 -0800

I ran across this video of the fortress from Inception (and its detonation). Hooray for practical effects!

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:02:40 -0800

YOU'RE A WEE MINATURE HARRY

By: fuzzypantalones

fuzzypantalones — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:32:23 -0800

first thing i thought of when i saw that first image

By: Ghidorah

Ghidorah — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:33:41 -0800

I want this so bad. It's bigger than my house, and much of my neighborhood, for that matter. I have no where to put it, but I want it so much, simply to gaze at for hours on end.

By: 5_13_23_42_69_666

5_13_23_42_69_666 — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 23:38:20 -0800

I could have sworn they went through at least 3 or 4 Hogwartses I wouldn't be surprised if they added elements and details as the series progessed. compare how it looks here and here. In particular, a lot of the roofs on the right half of the castle are different. (as an aside, man that still from the first movie looks like crap! so flat and cut out! ouch)

By: Joakim Ziegler

Joakim Ziegler — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 23:39:42 -0800

Is that still from the first movie really a finished frame? I mean, it's been a few years, but that looks surprisingly... shit. The buildings' contrast is wrong and it's very obviously a miniature. I mean, a very good and detailed miniature, but still.

By: 5_13_23_42_69_666

5_13_23_42_69_666 — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 23:42:42 -0800

oh, and I totally want to see this! I used to work at a VFX company that had a model shop on the ground floor and it was always awesome to see the work they did. they had a mimniature notre dame from this movie that was my favourite

By: blueberry

blueberry — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:34:45 -0800

~~"Troll in the dungeon!"~~ "There's a giant in an Eddie Bauer shirt at the eastern wall!"

By: rongorongo

rongorongo — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:36:55 -0800

No mention of the anonymous fictional architect?

By: Harald74

Harald74 — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:52:41 -0800

You'd ideally need about 25 of those Lego sets, artw, to do Hogwarts justice. And Brandon Blatcher, here's a start for your Aliens refinery Lego dreams...

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:57:25 -0800

Happened to catch the end of a 'report' (ie massive plug) for the Harry Potter tour on The One Show last night... interesting point was made that a lot of things that people might think were CGI (for example the door to the chamber of secrets) are actually old skool physical effects and models as it allows greater realism and flexibly for the director

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 05:06:35 -0800

That is very cool!

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 05:37:54 -0800

The only thing that would be better than seeing this in person is being able to bring your Harry Potter action figures with their brooms so that you could fly them around the turrets while going "vroom vroooom". I don't have any Harry Potter action figures YET Also, speaking of laboriously-constructed works of art (in a way), this also from the Daily Fail. There's probably a cute Harry Potter reference or two to be made, but I'm still reeling a bit.

By: eriko

eriko — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 05:41:15 -0800

ok wait actually those would be some huge and terrifying ants. Huge and terrifying ant wizards and witches.

By: gwildar

gwildar — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 06:28:30 -0800

Thank God for the model Hogwarts, you know? If they didn't have the model Hogwarts they wouldn't have gotten the idea for the big Hogwarts.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:30:13 -0800

Lego Nostromo - "The Nostromo is a heavy towing ship used to pull mobile refineries between distant mines and Earth, a journey that takes many months. It is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 feet long, and the refineries pulled are several miles square. I have made my model as small as I felt I could while preserving the essential details, because I plan to build the refinery it pulls at this scale as well." That was 2009. I imagine we'll hear from him sometime again in 2029.

By: Winnemac

Winnemac — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:23:22 -0800

I could have sworn they went through at least 3 or 4 Hogwartses As usual, the internet is on the case with very detailed information and photo comparisons from film to film. Now let's all argue over which slightly different building is obviously the best one.

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:49:55 -0800

Mavri: "I thought everything had gone to CGI. I love that this is a model." You know, I think that people underestimate the amount of models still used in big budget effects films: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Batman Begins (I don't know about The Dark Knight), Pirates of the Caribbean. Even the Star Wars prequels made use of them (Fifth image in the slideshow, and check out who's working on it!), and most people assume that those are pure CG from top to bottom.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:51:12 -0800

Fun Prequels fact: The crowd in the stands during the podrace are dyed cotton buds.

By: schmod

schmod — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:25:14 -0800

rongorongo: "No mention of the anonymous fictional architect?" My theory is that Hogwarts was designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. Nothing about the castle's location or construction makes any sense at all. Even if you could use magic, it looks like it must have been a pain in the ass to build. Sure! Let's build the castle into the side of a huge bloody mountain in a country that is otherwise covered in rolling hills and verdant pastures. Build the school in London's wizarding enclave? Nope! How about near the only wizarding village in the country/world? (n.b. England=The Whole World, except for when it doesn't) Nope! We'll build it 5 miles away from there too! Where did they find geography like that in England anyway? I mean...maybe in Scotland (which is where a lot of the movie was filmed), but even Scotland doesn't really have any ridiculous fjords like the one that suddenly appeared next to the castle around the fourth or fifth movie. How is anybody supposed to get to the quiddich field? People with virtually no magical training can open almost any lock in the building. Why were locks installed in the first place? The castle is the size of a small city, and has one groundskeeper (two if you count whatever it is that Filch does)? I know, magic, and all, but the series establishes elsewhere that housechores still require some effort and attention when using magic. At that, the sadists in the Hogwarts HR department hired the only two people in the wizarding world (that we know of) who can't perform magic to carry out these duties. On that note, who is making the hiring decisions over there? The school has some rather dire personnel issues that never seem to be addressed or resolved, including the hiring of numerous imposters, slaves, people with seemingly no magical background, not to mention the guy who had Voldermort's face grafted onto the back of his head. Shouldn't that have come up during the interview? The moving floorplan is cool, but wouldn't you want to be able to control it? After a while, the building's behavior would just seem....catty. Assigning personalities to art and architecture has never worked well. The bathrooms (particularly the prefects bathroom) actually do sound remarkably similar to the magical loos that Terry Pratchett described (albeit in better working condition). Maybe it's time to set up a "Magical Bathroom" page on TVTropes....

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:28:27 -0800

n.b. England=The Whole World, except for when it doesn't Well, we are magic.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:37:13 -0800

Schmod, you forgot to mention that the scoring system in Quidditch is rather silly and probably doesn't conform to game theory or something.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:42:54 -0800

You mean the complex points system rendered irrelevant because you do one thing and it automatically wins the game?

By: schmod

schmod — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:43:06 -0800

I'm assuming that the architect didn't also design Quidditch, but, yeah, it's a completely nonsensical game. Might as well be Calvinball.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:47:52 -0800

Well it certainly explains why HP has been so unsuccessful.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:55:40 -0800

Guys, I think a wizard did it.

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:28:59 -0800

Your Muggle logic don't work 'round here, mister.

By: schmod

schmod — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:50:57 -0800

Artw: "it automatically wins the game?" Strictly speaking, no. It ends the game. If your team is down 160 points or more, you will lose the game if you catch the snitch. Obviously, the game's one interesting gameplay dynamic is never made relevant in the books, so we don't really know if a team would ever want to deliberately end the game with a losing score. Some have hypothesized that teams are ranked by points scored rather than games won, so that it's therefore advantageous for a losing team to catch the snitch so that it can mitigate its losses against a formidable competitor. Otherwise, you'd need to aggressively try to prevent the other team from catching the snitch until your team was able to recover its deficit. This could lead to an exceedingly long and drawn-out match, which Rowling actually did allude to in the books (although the reasoning for the long matches was never given AFAIK). That said, this is Quidditch. We're talking about the castle. I get that this is fiction, and to suspend disbelief of some things. However, the movies made suspension of disbelief difficult when they kept modifying the sets, and inadequately explaining things that did not need to be explained. Also, I'm a nerd and an engineer, and wonder about the poor soul who was tasked by the insane architect to build the castle. And, really, the more I think about it, Unseen University is a perfect parody of Hogwarts, despite the fact that it was conceived years before JK Rowling dreamt up Harry Potter. Are there any other precedents for this kind of reverse-parody? ook

By: Zed

Zed — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:27:33 -0800

Show me your patronus, and I'll show you mine...

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:49:58 -0800

So is there a word or term for not actually liking the source material (I have yet to finish one of the books and have seen like, only three of the movies) but really liking the Fandom around it and thinking they do neat, fun thing? Like I watched A Very Potter Musical and laughed my ass off and I'm sure I was missing a ton of jokes but I got the basic idea and it was fun so I end up with a good opinion not of the work itself but of the stuff encrusted around the work. There should be a word for that.