Bringing The Last Harry Potter Film To Life

The time has come — the end of one of the most popular film franchises in history with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. The eight part series has earned a whopping US 6.3 billion over the last decade, not including the final installment. Incredibly important to the impact of the fantastical series was visual effects, in which Adelaide’s Rising Sun Pictures contributed in a strong way to bring J.K. Rowling’s world to life.

RSP’s expertise is lent to features exclusively; immediately after the completion of Part 1, work began on the next. The VFX house supplied 63 shots to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. There were a few stalls in the process due to late changes in the film — a scene in which the dementors invade Hogwarts — but there were plenty of other opportunities for RPS to create soul-sucking creatures. The filmy textured cloth of the Dementors’ dark, spooky robes was created using the same Autodesk Maya pipeline used in the previous films. RSP used Maya Ncloth. Using Maya, they could achieve the otherworldly, underwater movement of the Dementors’ robes. The whole crowds of Dementors, flying in the hundreds, winding in for the attack and flying back blasted by the Patronus spell, were generated in Houdini. The title sequence that included the Dementors was also the work of Houdini and RSP.

Clouds have been a big success at RSP. They worked on Severus Snape, using an apparate effect to transform into a shadowy creature. In the last film, his transformation effect turned him into a bat-like creature. In Part 2, RPS worked on his vanishing effect — Professor McGonagall duels Snape in the Hogwarts’ Great Hall and, choosing to run, he lifts up into the air, swirls his cloak and disappears before hurtling out the window. They made it a more specific, clear-cut effect than the Death Eater apparate effect.

The last film gave them the opportunity to go through a long process of development to achieve what director David Yates wanted. Another apparate effect accomplished by RPS was Draco Malfoy’s return to Hogwarts to interefere with Harry’s pursuit of the lost diadem of Ravenclaw. Harry’s invisibility cloak was also brought to life, using Houdini toward the end of post-production. At first, they used 2D plates, and then generated a 3D particle cloud, luminance-based effect. It left a streaming, streaking effect that softened the motion on 2D cameras — they wound up generating the 3D effect from the 2D plate, creating an interesting fog of transparency.

No Harry Potter film features quite the same effects; each one gets looked at from a new angle. Sometimes in VFX abstract style guidelines are worked on for months to develop different interpretations of an effect. RPS also worked closely with other VFX houses — MPC, Cinesite and Double Negative — to make sure the 3D pipeline was cohesive. It was a big production, combining different companies and exchanging all the stereo camereas, but they pulled it off with lots of communication. RSP worked on the wand battle at Hogwarts while Double Negative altered the dragon that aided the escape of Harry, Hermoine and Ron escape from Gringotts.

Rising Sun’s work on the last film (on the Horcrux) made their Houdini pipeline much fuller, allowing them to experiment at every opportunity. They also did a matte painting of Hogsmeade Village, largely produced with Maya.