Entertainment
Apple Store Event - Part 1
In this special podcast episode, the cast and producers of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One' gather at an Apple Store event to discuss the film's creation and the decision...
Apple Store Event - Part 1
Entertainment •
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Interactive Transcript
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Thanks everyone.
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This is a magical day for people at the Apple Store because we have with us practically
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the entire cast of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One.
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And let me just take a moment to introduce them one by one.
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First off, Cormac McClaggan himself, Freddie Stroma.
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The Delightfully Luna, Luna Love Good, Evanna Lynch.
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The beloved Fred Weasley, James Phelps.
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Oliver Weasley himself, George Weasley himself, Oliver Phelps.
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The future Mrs. Harry Potter, Ginny Weasley, Bonnie Wright.
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The ordinarily colorfully-made Nymphadora Tonks, Natalia Tenna.
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The surprisingly clean shaven today, Remus Lupin, David Thulis.
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The wickedly charming Narcissima Elfoy Helen McCroary.
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I think the only person here who's played two different characters in the Harry Potter series,
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both Professor Flitwick and Grip Hook, Warwick Davis.
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Words fail me to introduce Hagrid himself, Robbie Coltrane.
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The producers of the Harry Potter season, series David Baron and David Heyman.
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And I have a surprise for everyone.
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These are the announced people, but we actually have an additional guest today.
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Cormac Gambon, Dumbledore himself.
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So thank you all for being here today.
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Let's get started.
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Let's get started with the two David's here.
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The whole reason we're here and the reason for this franchise at all.
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Can you tell me a little bit about the decision to split Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
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into two movies?
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I know it's more exciting for all of us, more of our hard-pairing dollars to go into your pockets.
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Can you tell me a little bit about that decision?
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Yeah, I was all about the dollars.
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Believe it or not, that had absolutely nothing to do with it.
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When the idea was initially mooted, I was very much against it, David too, because we'd never done it before.
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We talked about doing it on the fourth film, but we didn't do it.
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I thought this is a terrible, terrible idea.
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But as we began to break down the book into a script form,
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it became really clear that we couldn't do it justice in one film.
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So much is resolved in this book.
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It really is the end of the series.
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Where we to do it is one.
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It would either have been five hours long, or if we'd done it as two and a half hour film as many of the films are,
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it would have made absolutely no sense at all.
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So really to do justice to Joe's book and to bring the series to the conclusion that we wanted,
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we made the choice to break it into two.
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And then having done so, Steve Clovis, a couple of weeks later, once we'd agreed on this, called me and said,
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there's almost enough here for three.
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But I think that may have been pushing it a little bit far.
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In fact, the dollars part of the equation was something that we really put us off splitting the interchiege start with,
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because we felt that everyone would just shake their heads and say, oh, they couldn't resist it.
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One more rush to the cash register.
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But there was just a way of doing it in one film as David says.
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But I mean, listen, the truth is, is that clearly for Warner Brothers, the studio, who have been fantastic, they really have been our partners.
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I mean, when it came to the decision not to do 3D on part one, clearly it would have been in their interest to continue and do it in 3D.
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But when we said that we couldn't do it right, they backed us.
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But there's no question that if financially it made no sense to split it into two, they wouldn't have done it.
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Clearly it makes sense financially.
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But I promise you that was not the reason or the imperative for doing so.
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So let me ask Robbie as well as Oliver James and Bonnie, you've been with the series from the beginning.
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How has it changed for you? How have these films changed and your approach to the material changed?
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How has what changed, Maggie Potter?
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How has the experience of doing a Harry Potter films and your approach to the characters that you play changed?
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I haven't changed at all, sadly.
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I'm still the old fart always.
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Thank you.
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The children have changed and I think the young adults have completely changed.
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They were about that size where we started.
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They were literally children.
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They were tiny creatures and these enormous great sets.
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And had to be quite carefully looked after, really.
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They don't have to look after now.
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They were also talking about their toys when we first saw them.
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What's your drive in these toys, Rob?
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And things that rhyme with Robbie Oli in the car park, you know what I'm saying?
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So they've changed, in all honesty.
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That was one of the great pleasures about it and one of the ways it didn't become routine or boring over 10 years.
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Because they've changed all the time and it was great fun.
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True, isn't it?
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They've changed, but in a way they didn't change.
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I think that's been really, I think one of the things where we've been really, really lucky.
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I mean, all the people here, Dan Ruperd, Emma.
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Yes, they've changed.
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Dan was interested in Worldwide Wrestling Federation to begin with.
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Now he's interested in girls.
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Girls.
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So things do change.
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But he's still, and they're all very much the same people they were when we met.
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Humble, generous and really good people.
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Actually, for Robbie's, some of the techniques that we adopted to achieve your, your size as Hickory have changed,
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we don't go into them because we don't give too much away, but technically it's become easier to achieve what we needed to achieve over the course of the films.
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Definitely.
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Definitely because it was all these weird mechanical tricks that people would be doing for years, digging all sorts of people to walk down so that I would take with sex and so forth.
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But now it's all your CGI, no, it's much, much easier.
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James?
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I think they've covered it all really.
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I think the other main thing that we've noticed changes just the technology from what was stated the art 10 years ago is now obsolete.
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So, and being such a big thing like Harry Potter, like we get the cream of the technology to work with, even the seven Harry sequence,
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that was one of the first times it had been done anywhere else.
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So to be part of that was really cool to do.
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Oliver, can you tell us a little bit about that scene in particular?
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Yeah, it took, I mean I don't know how down was able to keep his mind really after doing it, like portraying all of us for as long as I think there was a lot of takes what took place in that.
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But when we were doing it, we didn't quite understand, I certainly didn't understand how it was all going to map in together and everything.
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But it was, it worked really well on set.
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And especially when you go back two years ago when we used to have, like we used to do the quidditch sequences and they do certain computer elements and you'd have like about five dots on your face.
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And that would be the way they get it, whereas now it's almost like a face paint almost.
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And with about I think it's 21 cameras, they take different motions you have.
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So that was all really exciting stuff.