The Secret Life of Sets: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Or: Dan Radcliffe Sat Here... Maybe... Or Maybe Not...!  

by allo for DanRadcliffe.com, 23rd July 2004. Many thanks to Kim Farris for the additional commentary and photos!

You're in L.A., you've just stepped out of the movie theater after a very enjoyable afternoon spent watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban... what are ya gonna do? You're gonna mosey on over to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and check out a couple of those Hogwarts classrooms for real at "The Secret Life of Sets", that's what!

A flat-screen TV shows an interview with Stephenie McMillan and movie footage (click to enlarge image)

"The Secret Life of Sets" is an exhibit about the work of the set decorator, that oft-unheralded individual whose job it is to help bring a movie to life by defining its physical world. The exhibit, which is at the AMPAS Galleries in Beverly Hills until August 15th, 2004, showcases the work of over 20 set decorators on movies from over the last few years, using both 2D and 3D displays. One of the featured set decorators is Stephenie McMillan, who dressed the sets for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and parts of two of the classrooms from the movie (Divination and DADA) have been recreated on a small scale on the Academy's Fourth Floor Gallery.

Unfog your future here! (click to enlarge image)

Step out of the elevator on the fourth floor and you'd have trouble telling whether you were at an exhibit or about to enter the hospitality suite. Nope, that's actually just a bar used in a scene from Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle but the array of bottles and glasses is convincing enough to make you think twice before trying to order a cocktail. Step around to the left and there, nestled amongst the living room from The Cat In The Hat, an office from Spider-Man 2 and a skull-bedecked chaise longue from Van Helsing, is what we've come for. Welcome to Hogwarts.

The world of Hogwarts, as envisioned by McMillan and production designer Stuart Craig, is one of dark woods and rich, heavy, lustrous fabrics in deep, warm hues. The walls of the display are oak-panelled and carved with various magical-sounding names, a couple of which I recognize as the authors of Hogwarts text books although some of them sound like a bit of an in-joke by the designers! On either side of the movie banner are two huge display boards, one marked "Int: (for "Interior)" Divination Classroom, Professor Sybill Trelawney" and the other marked "Int: Defence Against The Dark Arts Classroom, Professor Remus J. Lupin". Each board is covered in sketches, plans and fabric swatches showing how various props (such as the Boggart's

Classroom designs and displays (click to enlarge image)

Wardrobe and Snape's Projector) were designed and how each classroom was furnished, and photographs of the end result. The walls are draped with sumptuous velvet curtains which surround mock windows or large-scale scenes of the classroom and there are several more panels of photos of the various sets, some showing the cast as they prepare for their scenes within them. Scattered around the set are various items of prop furniture from the two classrooms: bell jars containing bizarre skulls, a tower of teacups (though smaller than the one used in the movie) with an elaborate brass tea kettle perched on top and several small, round, cloth-draped tables surrounded by their "fat little poufs". Each table is topped with a crystal ball and a copy of the Divination textbook, "Unfogging The Future", sadly bound shut to deter casual browsers. At the entrance to the set, a large, flat-screen TV plays a loop of an interview with McMillan, showing her at work on the sets and several scenes from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Set decorator Stephenie McMillan with some of her props. Source: AMPAS

Stephenie McMillan has been designing and decorating sets for twenty years. During that time, she has worked with HP production designer Stuart Craig on twelve movies, including The English Patient, Mary Reilly, Notting Hill and the first three HP movies, and they will both return once again for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She won an Academy Award in 1996 for Best Art Direction, with Craig, for her work on The English Patient and was nominated again in 2001 for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Craig, she says, has taught her that "one strong idea in a set is better than several conflicting weaker ones. Bold statements are great but so is detail." It has to be said that she has a wonderful eye for the details of J.K. Rowling's magical world, from the shabby antiquity of The Leaky Cauldron to the jumble and clutter of the The Burrow, or from the Hagrid's rustic hut to the majestic Great Hall.

Constructing the tower of teacups (click to enlarge image)

Her inspiration, she claims, "comes from reading really good scripts that have a truth that touches your very soul." It can also be found in the strangest of places. The caption of one of the photos in the display tells how McMillan found an old pouffee dating back to the 1920's in a junk shop, which became the basis for the design of the velvet pouffees in the Divination classroom. She also became an avid collector of teapots and teacups, gathering about 1,000 cups. 800 of those cups make up the phenomenal Teacup Tower in the movie's Divination classroom.

Smaller scale tower and kettle (click to enlarge image)

A glance at the credits in the brochure and on the photo captions makes you realize what a mammoth undertaking set decoration can be. McMillan is supported by a team that includes concept artists and designers, graphic artists, model designers and makers, drapers, property buyers, prop wranglers and construction specialists. Then there's a budget to consider and coordination with the production designer, the director and cinematographer. McMillan and her buyers hunt high and low to find the right fabrics, the right props but anything they can't find has to be made from scratch and there are many things in the magical world that have no real-world equivalent. Obviously this required a lot of work for the first HP movie but fortunately, as all the movies are set in most of the same locations, many of the props can be reused in later movies. The props are stored at Leavesden Studios when not in use.

The Fates have informed me that "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" will make MILLIONS and MILLIONS of dollars!

I spend several minutes poring over the display boards and props, taking care not to knock over the teacup tower, but before I leave, I am determined to solve one last mystery. I take a seat on one of velvet pouffees and inspect the crystal ball on the table before me. Sitting there in the relative calm and warmth of the gallery, surrounded by the sumptuous furnishings and staring into the fog within the ball, it is quite easy to imagine the waft of incense and how Harry and his pals could have dozed off in the middle of one of Trelawney's classes. Now... how does this thing work? The "fog" itself appears to be some type of white, fibrous material suspended in a clear liquid (there's a telltale bubble at the top of the ball). It rotates slowly and silently and the effect is quite hypnotic but what mysterious unseen force makes it turn? Ah, look no further - it is not some supernatural agent, merely a small battery-operated motor, carefully positioned away from the camera during filming. And therein lies the magic of set design - with a little imagination and ingenuity, the simplest of details can have some of greatest effects.

Skulls from Lupin's DADA classroom (click to enlarge image)

It's been a long day and my Inner Eye begins to cloud over. I'd better leave soon - I'm not really psychic but you don't need the Sight to divine that the traffic on the freeway is going to be awful all the way home. If you are in the Los Angeles area this summer, put AMPAS on your list of places to visit (another plus: the admission is FREE) and witness for yourself the craftsmanship and attention to detail that goes into not just the Harry Potter movies but also every other movie on display.

For more information about "The Secret Life Of Sets: Set Decorators At Work", including viewing dates and times and more details about the other featured decorators and movies, please visit the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences web site. There is also an excellent interview with Stephenie McMillan about this exhibit over at the Horror.com web site. (WARNING: while this interview is innocent enough, be aware that Horror.com specializes in horror movie culture and some of the other areas of the site may NOT be suitable for younger readers.)