Today was a very busy and interesting day. I took advantage of our group’s later meetup time to catch up on a little sleep, but around ten o’clock, I headed out with some friends to visit Hyde Park for my second time. Since I knew the way that we were going, I decided to take the lead on the tube, which by now I am feeling pretty accustomed to and thankful for. I much prefer riding the tube to walking the many miles it would take each day to get to our destinations around London.
When we reconnected with the group after a nice lunch on the park grounds, we headed to Euston station to take a train to Watford to visit the Warner Brothers Studio Tour of Harry Potter. This was one day on the Itinerary that many of my colleagues, including myself, had been waiting for since the beginning of signing up for the trip. Even with all of my hype over the tour, I was still massively impressed by what the studio had to show us. Because of my experience working in the theater, I know how much work it can take to put on a show. The props, lights, costumes, and set design all take a considerable amount of work and to be able to see the work done on one of the biggest movie franchises in history was incredible. There was even one part of the tour where we learned that a group of designers worked for an entire year developing the effects that made up only a two-minute segment in one of the movies. Another time, the crew created over 15,000 glowing orbs to be in a short scene until the director decided that they would just use computer generated effects instead. There were so many times on the tour where I was blown away by the way that the studio could create such convincing scenes of magic with both visual and special effects. There was such an outstanding amount of work that went into the Harry Potter movies and this tour has impressed me a great deal. With so many memorable props, costumes, and sets to mention, I feel it is best to just leave a few of my favorite parts of the tour below as an example of some of the incredible things that we got to see.
This day was nothing short of amazing! I was hoping the tour would live up to the expectations I had, and they were definitely met. Although I haven't officially worked in a theater, being an actress before, I understand the time and energy that's necessary from all departments when putting a production together, especially on such a grand scale. As awesome as it was to see all of the different costumes, sets, props, effects and so on, I'm glad they also credited those who worked 'behind-the-scenes', who truly brought these movies to life and made them all possible. I would definitely go back in the future.
ReplyDeleteHey Dawson,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you and Bailey about the time and effort put into a production. As propsmaster and actor, I see and experience all the detail oriented work, collaboration and design in every aspect of a show. The museum really highlighted the amount of work done for every little costume, prop and set even if it was only for two minutes of film. Also I loved going to Hyde Park with our little group, a nice vacation from the busy city.