#fullmovie #engsub #tvseries #trending2026 #dramaseries #romancemovies #fullhd #Finding Harry The Craft Behind The Magic 2026
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00:15Some stories change us, some stories define us, but few stories live with us.
00:26And action!
00:29Quite like The Boy Who Lived, soon to be told by HBO Max, like never before.
00:49Harry's story from J.K. Rowling's beloved book series is a truly immersive tale.
00:56Requiring incredible dedication to realize this mesmerizing, almost limitless magical world.
01:03To create a place so rich, complex and expansive, building it in our world would be impossible.
01:13Until the true wizards get to work.
01:22The Harry Potter stories are this extraordinary phenomenon from 30 years ago for young people.
01:31But it struck a chord with people of all ages.
01:35And to reimagine the Harry Potter canon.
01:40To let it breathe.
01:42To tell a story in eight episodes rather than a single two hour movie.
01:47To go down all the wonderful rabbit holes.
01:50The story is there, but we get to enact all the things that you know are going on in the
01:56wings.
01:57But you don't see them.
01:58You wait forever to do something that means that much to people.
02:03And I think this really will.
02:06And they have done a brilliant job of selecting this extraordinary ensemble.
02:20We stopped counting at 40,000.
02:22Yeah.
02:23But it wasn't a good use of our time at that point.
02:25Count.
02:25But we watched all of them.
02:26Yeah.
02:27We're looking for a child who, he means so much to people in different ways.
02:33And so you are looking for a kid who perhaps on the face of it seems quite ordinary.
02:37But is ultimately very extraordinary.
02:40We wanted to make sure that all kids in the UK could audition by submitting their first auditions online.
02:45And then we went to Manchester, Scotland, Ireland and...
02:49Cardiff.
02:50Cardiff, Wales.
02:52This is the way they began to tune on in a film when we were auditioning children.
02:56We knew it was going to be a long process.
02:57We started with Harry, Ron and Hermione.
03:00They are really good friends.
03:02And so it was a really exciting challenge to find three kids that you would believe as friends with these
03:08very strong and different personalities.
03:10These are all ordinary kids, you know, but they are all extraordinary.
03:14there's magic in all of them we saw alistair in manchester and he was just funny and charming
03:23from the word go yeah this is him doing his um his story his little story mother doesn't want
03:28a dog she's making a mistake because more than a dog i think she will not want this snake
03:36that was first day of alistair and then arabella in london
03:42hermione lack of filter from being an only child her superpower is her emotional intelligence
03:47she's got main character energy so this is arabella's first audition yeah so she did the poem
03:54invictus it matters not how straight the gate how charged with punishment the scroll i am the master
04:01of my fate i am the captain of my soul hermione has to be playful so we got her in
04:08to do a scene
04:08where she's talking to her parents about um harry and ron and she was got got the giggles and the
04:14little snort and that's the take we used to show them that she's playful so you're constantly using
04:19bits of the audition that you know is going to help the kid when you show it to the director
04:23the show runners so arabilla's snort was quite crucial in her casting process we met dominic
04:29in glasgow what did we have about harry he's skeptical of the adult world he's got a vulnerability
04:35and a melancholy and a solitary a solitary quality to him he's grown up alone he's grown up alone and
04:41he he's survival is his thing artful dodger not oliver twist it's basically find an incredible actor
04:48basically yeah that was the brief it's he has so many different qualities so many different qualities
04:53dominic came in and his piece was a poem about his weekend that he'd written himself and it was rhyming
04:59and we thought he's so interesting my weekend by dominic started off saturday morning and a football
05:07going to play and i can tell you it went my way i didn't really have anything to do after
05:12that
05:12so i just slept the rest of the day dom just had this sort of quiet confidence in himself who
05:17do you
05:17live with i live with my mom my dad and my two sisters okay and my dog and have you
05:24done any acting
05:24before um i did with beth in january and were you one of mcduff's sons yeah i was you got
05:31killed
05:32unfortunately sorry to hear that okay that's great i really feel confident in these kids i think
05:38they're incredible
05:45in a show of this scale it's easy to get lost you can go to the great hall it's huge
05:50you can go to the
05:51quidditch pitch it's massive you can go to uh diagonally and we go back to the sets and we revisit
05:56and then add in a bit of detail sometimes for example i'll go to the gryffindor common room or to
06:00the tower and you're in there on your own and you're looking around and you look at the notes
06:05board and you're looking at every little bit of detail on mcgonagall's desk of the books on the
06:09spines and it's goosebumps the volume of this is just so fun to be able to build at a scale
06:20like this
06:21it's just a designer's dream to play in a sandbox that's this big we're trying to get in the joy
06:27and
06:27playfulness of what it means to be a magical kid when the first harry potter book came out it really
06:35felt so novel and exciting i think everyone had that shared experience of thinking what an incredible
06:42world it would be so great to touch and so we're trying to capture those moments of discovery that
06:49you find within the books we want you to have that same experience here
06:53but we are adding a level of world building that is even beyond what the audience is familiar with
07:01harry's introduction to the physical space of the wizarding world starts with the leaky cauldron
07:07and eventually we come out the back and go into our diagonally set the elements that we see are all
07:14things that we would recognize but how they combine and form is going to be something really new and exciting
07:21privet drive in our muggle world we really wanted to be rooted in reality and part of that i think
07:26for
07:27someone as a fan and an audience member is when your muggle world is rooted in a reality that we're
07:33all
07:33familiar with it makes that excitement of the wizarding world just being beyond our reach all the more
07:39enticing there's really a ton of thought that's going into this so that for the die hard fans we're
07:46trying to land it we've created these spaces that i think are going to give everybody a lot of joy
07:53to
07:53kind of be in and experience it's just so exciting that everybody's so game to make these things come
08:00alive walking into the great hall that first time where you go it's like walking into a cathedral
08:08was so magical it's so huge it's so beautiful and the entrance of the children coming in the first
08:16years coming in and then bringing them into that hall was possibly my favorite set in that sense it
08:23was just so iconic and so kind of symbolic of right here we go whole new bunch of kids into
08:30this world
08:31we go and here we are in hogwarts and welcome and whole new mystery is unfolding for you and sometimes
08:38you're in your dressing room and you'll be sitting there and then suddenly you hear this explosion of
08:43people outside as the children run in you're thinking about your work or whatever and they're just
08:48they've just got their own thing with whatever it is that's going on the way children do it's just
08:52it's a real energy sometimes on a really tiring day i always go close your eyes open them again
09:01and look around wow you walk onto a set and you think wow and it just ups your game
09:09because it's all just so beautiful beautiful
09:17in the initial conversations with mark and francesca about the core values of our show there
09:21was this kind of inherent desire to be rooted in naturalism also in this idea at the core of harry
09:28potter nature is the root of magic and so magical realism rooting things in principles that we find
09:37in nature and the phenomenon of the natural world
09:43if we could harness those things that's what magic is
09:47these ideas of naturalism being this core principle within the wizarding world is something
09:53that we're integrating into a lot of our sets we have to bring the natural world to them
09:58and to think that i'm at the helm of this it really is incredible
10:05this project is so exciting that there's so much overlap and play between different departments to really
10:10capture these concepts and themes and express them on so many different levels
10:16as we designed these practical and visual effects we wanted there to be a deeply rooted logic to what
10:23was happening even though magic is not logical for us it's more of these like consequences of magic that
10:28we're interested in for every expression of magic we're trying to do that critical analysis of how does
10:35this tie back into what we're saying magic actually is and we really wanted to celebrate it as a
10:41moment to do things a little bit differently
10:46this is one of the most exciting conversations i've had as a designer diving into the science of
10:52something that should be unexplainable the joy of working on a project like this is that we have
10:58so many really creative and exciting department heads it really is such a pleasure to work with such
11:04high level craftsmen who also are genuinely excited about this my father actually designed and painted
11:23the very first quidditch box from the first film and here i am 26 years later painting the new quidditch
11:32box
11:33uh for the hba production
11:40i actually worked on harry potter three and four film 25 years ago and i was actually a trainee to
11:46some of the guys that are working here
11:49every creature we build within creature effects whether it's an owl a rat whether it's a creature or a human
11:56being
11:56all starts with the same process basically extensive research into nature observing and looking at how
12:05an owl might move they just look incredible and it's our job to try and copy that movement and repeat
12:11that
12:11with the use of animatronics and creature effects you can see within the animatronics you've got all these pivot points
12:16and pieces of metal and plastic and servo motors and our job is to try and make that feel organic
12:27we are looking at essentially the culmination of a lot of teamwork
12:32these are some early prototypes we did of how we would create this incredible neck movement that you
12:38have within owls how they move so much this almost 360 movement the up and down the turning that we
12:44put
12:44together in fabrication and then we hand these over to the wonderful feather team to do all their
12:51beautiful work over so that we can fill these voids and have amazing feathers that all glide and move
12:56and create that incredible motion that an owl's neck has so we then insert each and every feather
13:03individually in the net and glue it down and it's about 36 000 feathers per owl and we made about
13:1110
13:12owls for this shirt
13:16because technology's moved on and we've actually got stronger and faster motors that we can actually
13:20fit inside you can actually pick the rat lick up and push it around and bully it around when
13:25ron holds the animatronic it actually pushes it aside rather than feeling like a stuffed scabbers dan's
13:31actually put that into this animatronic here where as you push the feet down it actually compresses
13:36and i can actually move this around you can see here so it doesn't feel too robotic and and rigid
13:42which i think really helps the performance of a young boy who's probably never held an animatronic
13:47before in his life and then of course when you put it into the sort of context of uh you
13:53know down on
13:54floor like that it's it's really believable
13:59we also made a biting scabbers that charlotte's going to bring in now put a finger in his mouth
14:04and wiggle it around that's it there you go thank you very much
14:12this is a dug bog which is a character that hasn't been seen in any of the films before
14:16it's um based on a toad that has uh movements that we've taken directly from nature from toads where
14:22the eyes pull in retract inside we've got a mechanical tongue nose movement nostrils
14:31we added this detail on top so the kids could actually snap the backs the back off and pull
14:37these mollusk off so it doesn't feel damaging for the creature
14:43such an amazing opportunity for us to all come together all departments all disciplines whether
14:49it was creature effects special effects visual effects model making set deck we also created
14:56these flubber worms and characters like this that we didn't tell that the kids that we're actually
15:02gonna be able to pick them up and add slime and we had these fire crabs that was actually working
15:11closely with special effects and these two would actually blast fire out of their backsides at each
15:17other so we've got a self-contained animatronic here where all the motors are inside and someone's
15:23actually operating that remotely
15:30i'm shaking right now just being in this room like this is this is crazy
15:34i was the right age and it was always there and i sort of it was something i really i
15:38really bonded
15:38with my siblings over i think my cousin first introduced me to it so we used to i mean we
15:44used
15:44to run home from primary school and change out of our our primary school clothes and into our hogwarts robes
15:52we're set in 1991 and we did a full study of what people were wearing in 1991
15:58um and we tried to make the muggles feel as true as we possibly could make them we really sort
16:06of drawn
16:06out you know certain tried to sort of create a real contrast the muggle palette is past orientated
16:13very cold colors and there's a big emphasis on synthetic fabrics as you can see here it's really
16:19the period of shell suits i don't we call them shell suits they're these crinkly tracksuit tops
16:25i think in terms of finding harry's look he lives in a world where everyone is following the fashions
16:33he hasn't ever had the luxury of choosing his clothes he's he's given he's given these old
16:38castoffs by petunia which are dudley's old clothes his clothes just hang off him and they're just
16:46grayed out actually everything that he wears we found original beth found original pieces
16:51which we then meticulously recreated we're finding real clothes sort of trawling many vintage yards and
17:01wholesale scrap yards and just finding it and the amount we've amassed because we've costumed thousands
17:07and the more we found this palette came naturally together these are the colors of 1991 we want to
17:15time travel we get to dive in and out of different time frames different styles of costuming and you
17:21can't time travel if they're not exactly the right thing our uniforms are all made of british wool
17:30organic cotton shell buttons wooden buttons scottish tartan natural cloth is is something that is
17:37almost rare it's quite a radical act just to wear a jumper that's made of sheep's wool even though you
17:42know we live in a country that's like full of sheep
17:50for magical people we had to find how we present them
17:54that feels somehow a little bit other what francesca and mark really wanted us to be bringing
17:59into the design with with lots of nature that's that when when we decided to use all this very
18:06imperfect natural processes like leaf printing like hand painting like marbling when you print with leaves
18:15there is this natural magical process that happens you don't know what you're going to get depending on
18:20the leaf you just have to go with what you get for dumbledore we wanted to use leaf printing because
18:26we wanted to do this camo fabric for him to wear and we wanted to create the sense of this
18:31natural
18:34immediate um unruly process it's the imperfection that brings the beauty it's not kind of like a
18:42high fantasy it's really rooted in the real and i think that would hopefully make people think
18:48oh maybe maybe it is around that corner or yeah look at a person walking down the street and think
18:53oh i remember we kept saying i've just seen a magical person i've just seen a magical person and we
19:00were
19:00photographing people like on the tube or the bus that we'd identify as sort of a magical person and
19:05so it's this idea that magical people do exist and they are around and we wanted that to be within
19:12all of them just a sort of combination of elements that just made you look
19:20and by complete contrast we have created an inky moody natural palette for the magical people so that's
19:29one way that we've created a dichotomy everything is rooted in reality our dumbledore he is a little bit
19:40like edwardian gentleman because that's what we thought knowing how old he is we kind of walk out
19:47that's his height his heyday a little bit of scottish tweed here embroidered as you can see in a very
19:53unruly not too perfect way i mean i love harry potter because i picked up the book when when i
20:03had
20:03my children and i got really into reading the books with my son eric who just loved them
20:11he could really project himself into the story and i think it was so good for him and i could
20:18see
20:18how much he was loving it and and and we were loving it together our thing where we'd sit down
20:24together at night and read very intricate stories with quite complicated plots and lots and lots of
20:30things happening and he said to me mommy is there a school that i can go to like this
20:37and um and i i thought i need to find this school and if i can't find it i need
20:43to try and create this
20:44school it definitely feels like a big responsibility i think it's a big responsibility to get it right
20:50isn't it to honor what has gone before but to hopefully like find more detail
20:58i think i was literally the same age as the kids in the book you know i think the first
21:11one came out
21:11in like seven i was seven um and i was definitely at the age where like the books were still
21:17coming
21:17out when i was at school so it was actually really intense i remember reading those books
21:23and you wouldn't be able to talk to your mates at all because like if someone was reading faster
21:28than you were they were going to tell you what was going to happen and like these stories were so
21:31important at that age it wasn't worth like the conversation with your mates at that age you
21:38you imagine yourself being a kid at Hogwarts or you imagine yourself being in Harry's shoes
21:44i remember on one day i came in to see uh mark and they were shooting the scene on platform
21:51nine
21:52and three quarters and just walking in and seeing the real train it was like being thrown into the book
21:58it was like being thrown into it it was real
22:06so as you can see though the world of Harry Potter is already legendary its legacy is still growing
22:14as a new generation discovers its magic an exciting new era is upon us i knew that while i did
22:24the first
22:25season of harry potter i would be turning 80 years old that meant that i would age to about 88
22:33before it was
22:34all over this is an extremely difficult thing to contemplate they're just an amazing ensemble
22:45all of them arabella and alistair and tom do you want to come and sit down and they all adore
22:57each
22:57other i'm really excited to see how they grow and how their artistry grows and what kind of people they
23:04grow into they're going to grow up with this and uh and i'm going to grow old with them
23:16theoretically we could be working for many years together and they'll be young adults by then
23:23we want them to grow up thinking wow it might have been hard it might have been difficult might
23:28have been tiring but boy it was good and so glad i did it it was so exciting to be
23:33a part of it
23:37and here we are what better place to end this journey into the heart of harry potter
23:42than where he begins his journey to hogwarts here we're surrounded by both unbelievable scale along
23:49with the little things that make it all feel so real talking about mind-blowing detail come and have a
23:57look at this a tiny taste of what's to come
24:05so all aboard you might want to hold your ears it's about to get very loud
24:10so all aboard this feels like my queue
24:20so
24:44so
24:44so my dad was a prop master and all of the uh eight original movies and i'm here to carry
24:50on the
24:51legacy the next generation of fans being something very important to me because my son is a big harry
24:57potter fan and so i cannot let the little guys down cannot let the new generation of fans down i
25:05know
25:05it's really important my family worked on the original harry potter i get to carry on the legacy what a
25:12dream
25:12i met my wife on the third harry potter and now my son works for me so it's it's been
25:19our life really
25:20well i started my harry potter experience in 1999 and 27 years later i'm still here i remember the first
25:29day
25:29that i was filming we were on set on on privet drive and we had harry's hour with him and
25:34i just sort of
25:35looked around and it was such a pinch me moment there's been too many good moments to count to be
25:40honest it's it's it's been a a year of highlights
25:44you
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