Shot Research

The shot I have decided to do is from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 and is the scene where Voldemort breaks into Dumbledore’s grave to steal the Elder wand.

The full scene can be found here.

First part of research – visit the shooting location.

I found a list of shooting locations and virtually visited them via google maps. 

The image below shows Lock Eilt where this scene was filmed.

An early storyboard I managed to acquire shows a drawing of this location but from the opposite bank, I have marked on the image above where I believe this storyboard was angled from.

The opening shot with the camera flying up towards the island had some work done to it.
Interestingly, the original shooting location had the island shown above however for the opening flying shot they removed this original island and a new CGI island was constructed further into the lake. 

This image of the original plate shot at Lock Eilt, shows the location of the island (from the storyboard) outlined but in the finished scene with the original plate lined up and blended over the top (below) you can clearly see another island digitally added. I believe the reason they did this would be because the original island is way too far inland and I’d think they’d want to hammer home that this is an isolated island as in the original book, the crypt was within the Hogwarts Grounds.
Why they moved it? We’ll never know.

After color grading the original island pretty much disappears into darkness however I believe it is this island that is used to get background plates for any shots used later in the scene which involve Voldemort with the CGI Island only used for the establishing shots.

My reasoning for this is as follows, the foliage is the same as on the island in real life (see first image) and one of the mountains in the background lines up with the mountains in the previous shot.

I also noticed that part of the mountain in the background is not visible as it would have been from that angle and is further off to the right. Which leads me to the conclusion that they would have had to move further to the other shore, to the left in this frame, which would then make the mountains line up in this manner.Ive included a diagram to explain this further.

Note how one mountain lines up but the other one is much further to the right in the darker frame

The crypt itself looks to be CGI and to be honest looks very simple and rushed as if it was added at the last minute. I'd like to make clear that this is not me discrediting the original artists in any way.

My reasoning behind this assumption is that having read the books on this section and with the immensely high respect that Dumbledore had as a wizard with many people attending his funeral, I’d have expected a more elaborate tomb design. So I believe that because the movie was made in two parts, they needed a good cliffhanger to finish on and so this scene which was not in any of the books was added.

Granted the book doesn’t describe the tomb itself in great detail, only saying.

 “The fire had vanished. In its place was a white marble tomb, encasing Dumbledore's body and the table on which he had rested.” 

The original storyboard (top) doesn’t show the tomb so I think that the design would have been kept as simple as possible so that it didn’t take long to produce.

The next part was filmed in a studio and involves Voldemort breaking into the crypt, I have seen the VFX Breakdown of this and so I know that a digital crack was added rather than rupturing it using pyrotechnics again leading to my theory that this scene was added late into the production schedule as I believe pyrotechnics would have created a much more believable rupture. There is a slight continuity issue here, in that we’re expected to believe that Voldemort then removed the cracked slab but there are no pieces and it is no longer there in future wide angled shots.

The original crack looks too painted on, which it was, this is why it was cleaned up and made to look a lot more 3d. There is a very subtle trick used which is marked in the image where forced depth is used. A shadow is painted very close to an overlap, which is where the effect is erased to align with the camera which gives that trick of 3d only when you look at the particular place. This is done again in two other areas which cover most of the effect area to give the 3d look wherever is seen.

Finally we get to the wand, again this effect seems quickly done and a last minute thing as the people making these visual effects have done much better spellcasting.

The spell cast is an electric arc to the sky however we only see a glowing blue orb at the end of Voldemort’s wand.
The example I am comparing this to is from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part Two, granted technology may have come ever so slightly forward between the two movies but they’ve been doing much better spells in previous films too.

This again makes me believe this scene was a last minute job.

There is one final effect that is always used on Voldemort which is his nose removal.

This effect hasn’t really been changed much from the first time it was introduced and the process hasn’t changed either.

Firstly blue and green tracking markers are applied to the face and these are then tracked in 3d space

Once this tracking data is acquired it is then applied to a CGI “flat nose” that hides the one underneath. This is then blended to the face in a similar way to how wounds are blended to skin in special effects makeup, only digital. Finally the whole lot goes through color correction and is then shipped off.

I enjoyed researching these visual effects and they have given me some ideas for how I would go about doing certain effects for my Final Major Project

Finally I'd like to reiterate that I'm not discrediting the artists working on this piece, I believe they worked their hardest on this and any work they are presented with.