50 Behind the Scenes Facts About the Philosopher's (Sorcerer's) Stone

the Harry Potter films are iconic and so much.when into each and every one of them I'd like to take a moment and look at the making of these films and give you behind the scenes facts we're gonna start with the first film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone or if you're from America we call it the Sorcerer's Stone and later on down the road I'll do the same for the rest in the series but now let's focus on the first film before we start make sure you hit that subscribe button and turn notifications on to make sure you never miss a movie Flame video now let's get started after the books took off many movie companies approached JK Rowling the author of the series but she said no to all of them including Warner Brothers but Warner Brothers would eventually convince her and will produce all eight movies starting with the philosopher's stone the first person hired was David Heyman the producer for this film and all of the rest of the films in the series and the second person hired was Stuart Craig the man behind creating Hogwarts and all of the other magnificent sets and locations in the Potter series early on story Craig had a meeting with JK Rowling in a hotel lobby and it was here that JK drew a map of Hogwarts right then and there at the table and this was what Craig based his work on and later he said it was the most terrific gift JK could have given him Warner Brothers was looking for a director and many may not know that Stephen Spielberg the man behind jaws été Jurassic Park and so much more showed interest in directing the film but unfortunately he had too many other projects that he was working on at that time and he decided not to do it Chris Columbus was the man who ultimately got the job and prior to his meeting with Warner Brothers Chris wrote a full draft of the script for the first book and thought out how he wanted to approach each scene and him bringing this to his meeting made Warner Brothers see that he was the obvious choice for the job after Rupert Grint sent in his audition tape and did not hear back for over a month Rupert decided to send another video this time of him rapping and it caught the attention of the casting agents and Rupert eventually got the part of Ron something that was fitting as both of them have red hair both had many siblings Ron six Rupert four and both have a terrible fear of spiders finding the right kid to play Harry was incredibly difficult they knew that they were starting to film in September and when July came around they still hadn't found the right kid to play Harry one night however David Heyman the producer of the film went to see a play and Daniel Radcliffe was sitting behind him with his parents Heyman said that he barely watched the play and just kept thinking about and looking at Dan and after the play was over he went up to Dan and his parents and offered him the chance for the part Daniel Radcliffe's parents originally said no and this was important to Chris Columbus because they were casting the parents just as much as they were the kids but Dan's parents eventually came around and Dan got the part when Dan found out the good news he was in the bath and he cried of happiness when his parents told during casting there was one person that they thought of before Dan for the part of Harry Potter and that was Tom Felton Columbus thought they could just put a black wig on him but after some more screen tests he realized that Tom wasn't Harry but rather was the perfect person to play his arts rifle Draco Malfoy during auditioning tom felton had not actually read the book and when he and seven others up for the part of Draco were asked what their favorite part in the book was Tom had no idea of the story so he just went with what the kid before him had said saying that Gringotts was his favorite part the man who was cast to play Dumbledore for this film Richard Harris is actually the producer David Heyman Scott father something that meant a lot to Heyman because he said many times that Richard Harris had a huge impact on him growing up and that was what Dumbledore's character was all about having an impact on Harry growing up Richard Harris initially was not going to take the part however and he only agreed after his granddaughter Ella said that she would never speak to him again if he didn't take the role probably an empty threat but it made him get the part nonetheless Devin Murray almost got the part for Neville Longbottom but when he went to his final audition they decided to cast him as Seamus Finnigan instead Maggie Smith the actress that played Minerva McGonagall actually had a lot of input on her character and because her name was Scottish she insisted on being Scottish and making her hat have a very Scottish look after being cast as Severus Snape JK Rowling had a private conversation with Alan Rickman because the series wasn't finished yet she told him the fate of Steve's character and his love for Lily to ensure that he could base his performance on this information Rickman became the only person in the world besides JK who knew the fate of his character and he did not tell a soul until the final book came out six or seven years later during casting JK proposed the idea of robbie coltrane to play Hagrid as she thought he was perfect for the role and she had actually semi based his character on him in the books after hearing that the author herself requested in robbie coltrane came on board without hesitation in real life the Phelps Twins who play the Weasley twins don't actually have red hair and they had to die at every two weeks to keep it the right color of red while filming the same went for tom felton while he is blond in real life his hair isn't naturally as blond as it was in the films when he had to change his hair every two weeks during filming but instead of dyeing it like the Phelps twins he had to bleach it and Tom himself has said that his hair is thinner and damaged because of this process he went through over the 10 years of filming Chris Columbus wanted to protect the kids that he had casting and to do this for the three main actors he decided to hold a press conference to introduce them and let the press get their pictures but after that he shut the media away and let the kids be paparazzi free when JK first met Chris Columbus she was nervous because he was an American directing a very British film but Chris gained her trust after he promised her two things that he would be faithful to the source material as best he could and that he would have an all British cast and JK was very happy that he followed through with both promises the first day of shooting for this film was actually the final scene in the movie at Hogsmeade Station shooting this first scene was difficult the game emma watson you played Hermione buckteeth to match her character in the books but it was so difficult that they realized they could not do this for the rest of the film so after that first day they stopped with the buckteeth this however made it difficult because she now had buck teeth in the last scene but not throughout the rest of the film so they had to cut the scene to ensure that they hit Emma's teeth and for some shots had to use CGI to hide it on that same day the first day of shooting they gave Radcliffe Green contact lenses to match his character in the book but then had a bad allergic reaction to them and they decided not to continue with that either this actually helped the seen a lot however because Dan's eyes were watering making it look like he was crying tears of happiness as he looked at the picture of his mom and dad working with kids was extremely hard because not only did every kid need their own chaperone but they work a nine and a half hour day but they need three hours for education one hour for lunch and a 15-minute break every hour and producer David Heyman said that they only got to film with them for about four hours a day this made them actually shoot in film for nine to eleven months which is much longer than the average movie takes the film not to mention adding all of the pre-production and post-production on top of that time another struggle with the kids was the fact that they were all very inexperienced and they would just smile because they were so happy to be there even when it was a dark or scary moment and Chris Columbus had to pull the performance out of all of them to compensate for this Columbus rant three to four cameras for every scene to ensure that they got each shot with the limited amount of time that they had with the kids he would have a camera on each of the trio because it was impossible to get a whole scene in order so they had to pick and choose each shot from the many different takes and many cameras making the film very choppy Columbus said that it was like working on a documentary when cutting the film together and post-production Steve Clovis was the one who brought the screenplay for the film I thought from the book to the big screen and he was another person that Rowling was nervous about because he was an American working on a british-based story Clovis did not know the entire story as the books were not finished yet so he constantly had to talk to Rowling and asked her questions and over time Rowling warmed up to him and really liked him she told him more about the future of the series than anyone else though she still didn't give a much we all know the famous Harry Potter theme song which is named Hedwig's theme and the man behind the score is John Williams the man behind the Star Wars theme the jaws theme the Superman theme and so much more but the Harry Potter theme was made differently than the others normally you make the music after the film is completely finished and cut but here this theme was made before the film was even finished wooden brothers approached Williams and asked him to make a theme for a promotion of the film and thus the famous Harry Potter theme song was made Williams would later go on to compose the soundtrack for the rest of the film and several other films in the series the scene where we see Hogwarts castle for the first time was originally a lot shorter but after Columbus saw the long version of the scene paired with John Williams score Columbus decided to keep the longer version slowly because of John Williams amazing music because there were so many kids on set there became a no swearing policy for both the kids and the adults and this rule actually carried out through the rest of the films despite the fact that the kids turned into adults by the end of the series while most movie crews rent out time and studios to film Harry Potter actually did their own thing in bought Leafs and Studios which was formerly a rolls-royce airplane factory where they built engines and they took this over to make many sets including the Great Hall Gryffindor Tower Diagon Alley and much more and on top of that they built dressing rooms a cafeteria spaces for the many different departments like hair and makeup visual effects editing studios animal training centers and they even both a baseball field out back this was special because it was rare to have everything you need in one place and leave some studios became the home of Harry Potter over the course of the ten years while filming the movies filming a privet drive was a nightmare and after realizing that they had to go back they get a few more shots the owners of the house demanded a crazy amount of money so instead they built their own set of privet Drive and leaves to the studios both the inside and the outside and ultimately this saved them over a million dollars because the set stayed up for the rest of the series as we all know the final book in the Harry Potter series was split into two parts but it was actually talked about long before they got to the final book they discussed splitting the first book into two parts but ultimately they decided against it Columbus's reasoning for keeping it one film was because he didn't want to become such a slave to the source material that the film would suffer the question of making the books two parts stayed around for pretty much every book in the series but every time I shut it down until they got to the Deathly Hallows while most scenes inside the castle were filmed that leaves tin for the first film the outside of the castle was a combination of many churches and schools in England and they blended all of these locations together with the sets it leaves tin to make the castle feel whole one thing when JK rowling came to Leavesden to look at the sets specifically Diagon Alley and made her tear up seeing her vision come to life for the Great Hall the first set that they ever built for the Potter films they realized that they could not fit nine hundred kids which was what they described in the books so instead they decided to make it four hundred kids and though some might say that this wasn't what they imagined the Great Hall to look like JK yourself said that this was what she imagined while filming the scenes with the Ouse at privet drive the Owls became interested in the moving camera and looked at that instead of the actors so to fix this they hung dead mice from petunias apron ensuring that they would look at her instead of the camera when coming up with the Wardrobe for the kids at school Rowling said to the costume designer that the kids did not have uniforms in the books but they ultimately decided to go with the uniforms because it was more picturesque in cinematic while filming the Gringotts scene with small people in the goblin costumes were getting grumpy after hours of shooting and their makeup and prosthetics and when Chris Columbus was trying to get a performance out of one of them saying that they should hate Harry the small person looked up at Chris angrily and said that he hated him as the small person walked away this left Chris Columbus at a loss for words while filming and Gringotts Columbus was trying to get a scared performance out of Dan and to help them Warwick Davis one of the small people in the goblin costume tried to scare Dan by screaming at him but how it made and it was laughs incredibly hard while working on the Quidditch sequence Columbus sat down with Rowling for hours to try and understand every rule and tiny detail of the game because he wanted to ensure that he got it perfect for the film in real life robbie coltrane in place Hagrid is barely over six feet tall but in the films that made him 8 foot 6 using stilts and sometimes made him look taller using creative camera angles Hagrid's costume laid over 90 pounds and was very thick and hot robbie coltrane said that the worst time he had in the costume was when they filmed in the 100 degree forest but luckily they had cold water running through the inside of the jacket to cool him off and he said that without that he probably would have passed out from overheating while filming the potion scene with Snape ruber Grint who played Ron through a bad picture of Alan Rickman that according to Rupert exaggerated a few of his features Alan Rickman then came up behind him and solid while working on the seventh film when Rickman was asked about it he said he had Rupert sign it and that he still had it and was quite fond of it Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint constantly pranked robbie coltrane and one day they put a kick me sign on his back and a bunch of kids kicked them that we never found out it was them that did this and another time they took Robbie's phone and turned it to Turkish for the per ticket still taua scene with Neville Matthew Lewis kept shooting his feet up as he fell as they got the shot they had to cut and have a stunt guy take over halfway through the fall for platform 9 and 3/4 they made their own pillar and made it so you could take the middle out of it to create the illusion of Harry running through it the chessboard scene was filmed toward the end of the filming process and the kids had come a long way as actors but Chris Columbus saw just how much here after spending most of the filming process pulling performances out of them he was ecstatic when he didn't have to do much here as the kids gave their best performance after filming the chessboard scene though he wasn't supposed to Rupert took home a broken piece of the horse that he sat on after it was destroyed during post-production Chris Columbus who lived in San Francisco spent the week in England to work on the film and every weekend flew home to ensure he spent time with his kids and his family while working on the effects Chris Columbus said that his biggest disappointment of the film was the ghost effects saying that he thought they were awful and were not up to his standards during the premiere of the film after it was over the crowd gave a standing ovation thank you so much for watching guys you can follow me on social media to see more of my personal life and see 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Channel: MovieFlame

Views: 667,712

Keywords: Movie Review, TV Show review, Harry Potter, Superhero, Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Disney, Hunger Games

Id: Y8tB9fTfhRw

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 27 2019