A studio tour with a difference, The Making of Harry Potter aimed to ensure visitors feel not just that they are walking around a film set, but that they are ensconced in the world that has mesmerised them on screen. Jill Entwistle explores the trickery that casts a spell over those travelling to Hogwarts and beyond.
The Daily Telegraph reviewer extolled The Making of Harry Potter as being “as wonderful up close as it is on screen”; no doubt Michael Finney, director of special projects at the California-based Thinkwell Group, would be chuffed because that was really rather the point.
Finney led the team that created the award-winning lighting for the Warner Bros attraction in Hertfordshire, which opened last year. The aim was to make all the sets, which were constructed in Leavesden Studios, appear as they did in the films – an entirely different proposition from lighting them for filming.
With the help of Hoare Lea – “the guys there were brilliant in walking us through BREEAM; we’re used to working with LEED” – the lighting contributed to the overall site achieving a Very Good rating. The installed load is 32W/m2 while the night/grey day operational load is 19W/m2 for display and public areas; the figure decreases further when back of house is taken into account.
Fittings had to be very precisely angled and positioned, with two levels of mounting options: within the architectural features of the scenery and on the building itself.
The LED wash fittings from Austrian company Leader Light had no pre-programmed colours available in the console. “We were having to create colours from scratch, which was challenging and took some time, but it meant we didn’t get lazy and fall back on a pre-programmed colour – we were forced into fixing the right one.” Which is how programmer and assistant designer Jim Beagey arrived at brown light.
“We had had an awful time getting the colour right on the large round metal Snake Door. He created this odd russet-toned red that just punched up the rusted nature of this metal like nothing I’d ever seen,” says Finney.
A sequenced ‘power-up’ programme built into the controls helps reduce the chances of harmful voltage drops by hitting everything to full at once. A fade-up on all LED units avoids sharp spikes in voltage to the individual modules and, as Finney says, “it’s also more pleasant to be around than flashing everything on at once”.
Thinkwell also built a controlled/forced cool-down period in the channels for metal halide fixtures to help reduce the chances of repeated hot restrikes. All the mounting locations provide full venting to the rear and top of the fixtures so housings are not overheated. “This is a problem we often see in themed environments where the fixtures need to be hidden,” says Finney.
Thinkwell built a number of test cues into the system that the operators run daily, which gives them a quick way to identify lamp and control failures. Cycling given groups of fixtures in a sequence makes it clear when there’s a lamp outage, while control failures are highlighted by cycling through colour settings on the LED units – if a fixture is in the wrong colour or a group fails to come up, then there’s a control fault. There are also a series of monthly, quarterly and yearly physical inspections.
The team worked hard to ensure equipment is easily accessible for maintenance. “I actually had to abandon a couple of positions that I really wanted to use because there simply wouldn’t have been decent access after the installation was done,” says Finney.
The original planned power consumption for the exhibition areas was around 340kW (estimated using California energy guidelines) but the final design maximum was just under 269kW (32W/m2), including display items that incorporate lighting elements. The final operating load is approximately 154kW, rising to just over 156kW on grey days or at night (19W/m2).