For Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
it took 250 people to build the set for Dumbledore’s office,
and they commissioned several artists to paint the sleeping portraits that didn’t
require any movement.
If you love puns here’s a good knee slapper for ya that was created by the set designers.
The entrance to Dumbledore’s office is a Griffin,
or in other words its a "Gryffindor".
[Drum sting]
“Eat slugs!”
For Ron’s spell that backfired,
Rupert Grint spat out fake slugs that were covered in a variety of tasty slime flavors
such as: chocolate, lemon, orange, and peppermint.
[puking sounds, water splashes]
“Better out than in."
They wanted to film the Greenhouse scene in London’s Kew Gardens,
but when they scouted it out they realized it wouldn’t work
so they built their own gardens inside a soundstage instead.
“Rictusempra!”
During the duel between Harry and Draco
you can spot a cameraman on the left side of the crowd after Draco gets knocked down by Harry.
Draco’s line to Harry, who was disguised as Goyle, was improvised because Tom Felton
forgot what line he was really supposed to say instead.
“I didn’t know you could read.”
Another ad lib from the Malfoys was near the end of the movie in Dumbledore’s office.
Originally there wasn’t any line written for Lucious to say to Harry before leaving the scene.
But Jason Isaacs felt that his character had to say something threatening to Harry before he left.
So during one take Isaacs decided to make something up,
“Let us hope that Mr. Potter
will always be around to save the day.”
Narrator: and Daniel Radcliffe fired back with an ad libbed line of his own,
“Don’t worry…I will be.”
A variety of looks were tried on Jason Isaacs to find the perfect look for Lucius Malfoy,
which at one point included dying his eyebrows white to match his hair.
But in the end the hairdressers felt that his white eyebrows diminished the strength
of his character, so they left them as Isaac’s natural color instead.
Let me know in the comments which look you think makes him look more powerful,
with or without white eyebrows?
To save time and money some of the sets were repurposed to be used later on in the film series.
For example, Ollivander’s wand shop from the first movie was the same set used for
the Flourish and Blotts bookstore in “Chamber of Secrets”.
Aragog was initially going to be made using CG
because of how big and complex of a creature he was.
However, the visual effects team was able to convince Chris Columbus to let them make
a practical model of the giant arachnid instead, and if it didn’t work out they’d just
go with their original idea to use CG.
But when everyone saw the first screen test of their live-action Aragog they were completely
convinced that making him a CG spider wouldn’t be necessary.
The Basilisk’s snakeskin was forty feet long and was constructed using urethane rubber.
The filmmakers intended to have the Basilisk be a CG creature and only make a practical
version of the head for the close ups.
But they ended up building a full-scale Basilisk that used Aquatronics to make his movements
smooth and snake-like.
They also built fangs that could be retracted with cables, and the inside of its body was
made up of aluminum ladders with foam latex wrapped around them to toughen up the look
of its skin.
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