Harry Potter Fun Facts & Behind The Scenes Secrets

You know the first book right? ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ that’s not what the US print received. Their version was titled ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ why on earth?

The North American publishers actually thought that from the use of the word Philosopher, it would not appeal to the children and they might deem it boring.

The clever people also get into your brain as well. Obviously isn’t ‘sorcery’ more mysterious and provoking? (Laugh).

I always wondered, where Voldemort’s nose is. It’s very awkward to look at alien-humanoid based facial characteristics. Despite the uniqueness, Voldemort’s face is a result of clever visual makeup and digital special effects to give him his unique prominence.

How can we forget the beautiful candle ceiling, atop the beautiful long dining table? Those floating candles were in fact real, if you thought they were computer generated. Only in the first movie though.

Those floating candles were actually suspended with the help of wires, which were layer removed in post-production. In the later movies this idea was no longer used, because the floating candles burned the wire and fell off.    

Professor Snape, the potion master. Well if you did not know that, you will definitely know him as the slytherin teacher that despised Harry’s presence very much.

Alan Rickman, who played the character in the potter series was the only actor who already knew the outcome of his character before the release of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. JK. Rowling informed Rickman everything earlier.

Potter characters don’t have any affection with alcohol, but are eager butter bear fans. Hermione invited Ron and Harry to the ‘Three Broom Sticks Inn’ to share some foamy mugs of the drink.

Despite the attention of teens having alcohol, the drink itself was substituted with foamed Apple juice. Hilariously, here we thought UK reduced their age limit on alcohol consumption.  

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Part 1, the scene of ‘Seven Potters’ proved to be very difficult for Radcliff, because each ‘Harry’ spoke differently and required his own persona. It took more than 90 takes for this single scene to be shot.   

That mysterious barefoot blonde girl, who just loves the forest – Luna Love good, played by Evanna Lynch designed many of her own outfits for her scenes. Remember the lion cap she wore in the film that was designed by her. Hey! I never doubted the girl’s creativity.

Remember the laughter scene between Harry, Ron and Hermione in ‘Harry Potter and the Order of phoenix’. The moment of laughter was Radcliff’s and the group’s natural laugh, when they were accidentally caught discussing about Harry’s kiss with Cho.

The director thought, it was what he needed and kept rolling and included it in the final cut, definitely a one to remember in the harry potter fun facts list.

According to the original book series, the character of Harry had green eyes. When this aspect was brought into the motion picture, Radcliff’s eyes reacted badly to the artificial lenses. Enough to continue on with his natural eye color throughout the series.

If you know about the veil room scene, you should know it took roughly 950 special effects for that specific scene. It turned out to be a record for any scene in the entire series.

Now I know really know, why these movies turn out to be so expensive to make.

If there is anything a Harry Potter fan does know, it’s that Harry Potter movies use a lot of props and really BIG sets. These sets require a lot of space to be filled with, it took 5 huge warehouses to store as much as 5000 pieces of furniture, 12000 handmade books, 40000 Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes and 25000 pages of Quibbler.

Oh ho, we couldn’t forget this one, “Take it away earl” the miniature head says in the ‘The Knight Bus’ which nearly runs over harry from ‘Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban’

The knight bus was created from three vintage London double-deckers that were combined to give it the height and old charm. It took nearly 8 days to shoot the scene, on closed streets where the bus drove to its maximum and the cars around it unusually slow, the whole scene was sped up post production.

It’s a must for the students to have pets at Hogwarts. During filming throughout the series, on set was present an entire animal production team that catered for the animals, coached and handled them.

If you remember Ron’s pet rat, was played by 12 rats. While Hermione’s fang was played by 9 Neapolitan Mastiffs. Harry’s white snowy owl was played by 4 different male snowy owls.    

Professor Snape, played by Alan Rickman never had those original black eyes, he wore black contact lenses for his character. To give him his strong black never ending iconic eyes, well it was all about that deep stare right?  

Ooh, that little right hand of Voldemort- Bellatrix Lestrange, played by Helena Bonham wore one of the costliest wigs available, made out of human hair.

To give her that pristine resemblance of dark evil, she wore fake nails and teeth, to further complement the personality of her character

Emma Watson adored her pet hamster Millie and regularly brought it to the sets to care for. One day her pet died on set, the crew members made a tiny coffin for the pet and burial.

She was so touched and grieved by the loss of Millie that she dedicated her Britannia award to her pet hamster.  

Over the course of the series, Harry Potter went through more than 160 pairs of glasses and 60+ wands. Despite the classic round look and broken bridges, the glasses were in fact very new.

All the stair cases you see moving in the castle, were in fact digitally created from one original stair that was created and moved accordingly. The digital ones mimicked movement accordingly to the original stone version.

Dumbledore’s office, all those old books of great magic, wisdom and secrets were in fact very old phone books covered in leather and let to stay in a dusty environment to show age and maturity.

You remember the Yule Ball scene, where Harry had to dance. While other cast members had weeks of training, Radcliff had only four days, due to his tight filming schedule. For that reason all his scene are shown waist up. Obviously, to not give away any stumbling feet from below. 

In the first installment, ‘Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone’ – the library scene revolving around going into the restricted section.

The Duke Humfrey's Library made an exception of a massive scale, for that particular scene. Because the library historically forbids flames and the scene required Harry to carry a traditional flame lamp in his hand and walk.   

The scene involving Ron watching Aragog (a giant spider), the horribly frightening expressions you see were completely natural due to his acute fear of spiders in reality - arachnophobia.

Students passing through walls, wall mounted lanterns and torches was all simulated through the use of more than 300 fiber optic lighting, installed in the Hogwarts model. Not everything you see is digital, and that’s where all the fun of realism comes from.

Remember the sorting hat scene, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione enter the great hall for the first time.

The trio had never seen the hall before, ever! The aw’s and amazement was as real as it could get from the actors.