Unraveling the Magic behind Harry Potter
It was my second-last day in London with my relatives, and I was really gloomy about the fact that I had to return to Kuwait in only two days. It was early in the morning, just after we had all finished breakfast, when I was told that we were going to go on a surprise trip somewhere. A few minutes later, my brother, my cousins and I were all in the car, and as we journeyed to seemingly nowhere, I kept pestering my cousins about where we were going. I wasn’t able to guess until I had seen a huge “HP Studio Tour” sign over a massive building. My cousins knew I was the most hardcore Harry Potter fan there was, and the surprise they gave me put me in a state where I didn’t even know how to react. Slowly, a grin spread over my face and I realized that it was going to be the best day ever.
Even before entering the actual studio, I had a few snaps taken outside the building. When we first entered, we were in a huge hall, with the walls draped with posters of characters from the movies. We didn’t get the tour guide headset simply because my cousins assumed that I probably knew more than the tour guide itself. People were made to go inside in batches, and when our batch first assembled in a dark hall, the tour coordinator introduced to us about the studio itself, and talked a bit about various movie posters in different languages (the posters, I mean). We then watched a short film showing the evolution of Harry Potter as a book as well as a movie series through the years. Finally the doors to the Great Hall were opened and we entered it, ready to start our adventure in the place that gave birth to the one thing we all loved in common, Harry Potter.
The Great Hall, as its name describes it, was a long and huge hall which was meant to be the place for a general assembly of the four great Hogwarts houses. There, we were able to see the actual costumes of the students and teachers who acted in the Great Hall including Hagrid (the giant that rescued Harry) and Professor McGonagall. From there we went to various exhibits displaying the movie props used in each scene. These included the Headmaster’s Room, the Potions Class and The Burrow. We even got to see the making of the Quidditch scenes in the movies as well as the famous flying Ford Angela. We went further inside to have a look ‘round the Forbidden Forest. The most amazing thing about it was how all the walls were hand-painted delicately and how the overall effect of the forest was produced. Aragog, the giant spider, also lurked there and the sight of it at first horrified me. We then proceeded to go outside and have a sip of Butterbeer, the famous beverage in the Harry Potter Series. It was a sort of fizzy drink with cream on top and I must say that it was really delicious. Next was 4, Privet Drive, the house in which Harry lived in the movies. We got to see the hundreds of Hogwarts Invitation envelopes that flew into the room in the first movie suspended in the room. We subsequently saw Platform 9¾ and the Hogwarts Express. A few days back we had gone to the real “Platform 9¾” in King’s Cross Station and we had to wait in a queue for an hour and a half, but in the studio tour, there was no queue at all. This infuriated my brother and cousins, but I still held the view that going to the namesake Platform 9¾ in King’s Cross was still worth it. Next, we visited various departments like the Graphics Department and Electronics Department that showed how the props that were used in the movies were made and the props themselves. Admittedly, the only part of the entire trip that let us down was when we found out Hagrid’s face was actually a synthesized face controlled by a remote. That entirely changed our perspective on the movies. Later, we saw a scaled-down model of Hogwarts that had every detail in it, and which was shot by a moving camera in angles by which it would seem on screen as a life-size model. Finally, we visited a gift shop and bought some souvenirs to keep as memories for the indelible and truly magical trip of ours. I wanted to stay there till the closing time, but sadly, we had other plans that day and so it was not possible.
