Nominations for the 37th Annual Saturn Awards have been announced and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I has been nominated for five awards!  Those nominations may be seen below.

Thanks SS!

The VFX Supervisor for the Harry Potter Films, Tim Burke, recently sat down with StudioDaily to discuss the visual effects for the Harry Potter series. Some snippets may be read below.

F&V: What were the hardest shots to accomplish on Deathly Hallows, Part 1? I think the hardest things were the characters. The creatures and Dobby. People had to relate to Dobby, to empathize with Dobby to believe he would die. People are used to seeing good and bad CG characters. If Dobby didn’t look like he had a soul, we would have lost the emotional moment at the end of the film. I thought Dobby would be the hardest character, but with the skills of our brilliant animators at Framestore, he wasn’t that difficult to execute. And we had brilliant reference performances, which helped us nail the characters.

The hardest shots were the abstract and conceptual shots of the destruction of the evil horcrux creature. It was a lot of work for Rising Sun. What does it look like to rip a soul apart? David Yates had it in his head toward the end of shooting, and we had to invent something. All those subjective things are open to interpretation. But we kept sticking to it and translated his ideas into Houdini effects. We drove the faces, which are hidden, through facial capture from Ralph Fiennes. We used Mova, the same motion-capture system used for Benjamin Button, to drive the distorted faces of Voldermort into this writhing mass.

F&V: When you think back to the previous films, what were the hardest effects? We’ve always pushed all the available technology at the time as hard as we could. When I think over the group of films, the giant in the fifth film wasn’t our best and there were all sorts of reasons why he didn’t work. The character changed halfway through the film and we had to throw out all our reference because the director didn’t like it. So all of a sudden we didn’t have a character. When we lost that we were drowning, so as a result, all those shots feel hard. I’ll hold up my hand and say it didn’t look good enough.

We’ve had other difficult things that did work. The Hippogriff was an incredible challenge to pull off, and it was the star of the last film. But the abstract subjective effects are the hardest. And all the Potter films have had them. It isn’t like matching a real environment that you have to keep working on until it looks real. If you’re destroying a tortured horcrux soul, that’s hard.

F&V: How did the role of visual effects change in this film compared to earlier films? […] For Part 2, we’ve done away with Hogwarts. It was such a major job to stage the battle of Hogwarts, and we had to do it in different stages of production. We had shots with complex linking camera moves from wide overviews, to flying into windows and interior spaces. So we took the plunge at the end of 2008 and started rebuilding the school digitally with Double Negative. It’s taken two years – getting renders out, texturing every facet of the building, constructing interiors to see through windows, building a destruction version of the school. We can design shots with the knowledge that we have this brilliant digital miniature that we can do anything with. With a practical Hogwarts, we would have shot it last summer and been so tied down. Instead, as David Yates finds the flow and structure, we are able to handle new concepts and ideas.

Thanks SS!

Playbill.com has posted a new video featuring Daniel Radcliffe and director-choreographer Rob Ashford talking about theatre, film, and more!  This is the first part of three, so stay tuned for the rest.

Thanks Betsy!

IGN has released some more details on the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Ultimate Editions which will be released on June 14th.

The Order of the Phoenix releases will feature the following bonus materials:
— In-Movie Experience
— Creating the World of Harry Potter Part 5: Evolution
— Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Behind the Magic
— Building the Magic: The Sets of Harry Potter
— Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: The Rebellion Begins
— Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Fulfilling a Prophecy
— Additional Scenes in Hi-Def
— Trailing Tonks: Natalia Tena (aka Nymphadora Tonks) leads a personal tour of the set
— Harry Potter: The Magic of Editing: Director David Yates and Editor Mark Day explore the editing side of things
— Theatrical Trailers

The Half-Blood Prince releases will contain these bonus features:
— Maximum Movie Mode
— Creating the World of Harry Potter Part 6: Magical Effects
— Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Behind the Magic
— Additional Scenes in Hi-Def
— J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life featurette
— Close Up with the Cast of Harry Potter
— The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Get a Sneak Peak at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Universal Orlando Resort
— What’s on Your Mind?: Lightning-Round Q&A with Cast/Crew
— One-Minute Drills: Cast members sum up their characters
— Gallery of Five Distinctive Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ABC Family Promo Spots
— Theatrical Trailers

I will be posting more information, as well as links to preorder, when we receive it.

The new ReelzChannel Facebook app, ClusterFlick, allows players to put the concept of six degrees of separation to the test using movie and celebrity information.  The app has a challenge for Potter fans, that challenge is to link the movies created by the first two directors of the Harry Potter series: Chris Columbus (Harry Potter 1 and 2) and Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter 3)

So take the challenge and see how you do!

Some new items from Emma Watson’s last Fair Trade clothing line for British retailer People Tree have been released on the website an announced with a newsletter.  You can see all the new pieces here at People Tree and some of the new ones below. It is not known whether these are all the pieces in the line or if more will be released at a later date. This is her last line for People Tree, but as many of you know she has recently done another Fair Trade line with Alberta Ferretti which will be released very soon.