This Easter, a huge surprise is in store for film fans as Warner Bros. Studio Tour London reveals the colossal efforts taken by producers, costume designers and the special effects teams to create Hogwarts’ famous groundskeeper – Rubeus Hagrid. The character who reveals the wizarding world to Harry Potter is celebrated during a special feature where lovers of the film series can understand what went into bringing this half-giant to life on screen.
From March 25th to April 17th 2016, visitors to the Studio Tour will see the costumes worn by Harry’s gargantuan guardian and find out how they turned 6’1” Robbie Coltrane into the half-giant Hagrid. During production two costumes were created for Hagrid, one which was worn by Coltrane and the other which was made 25 per cent larger and used by 6‘10’’ England rugby star Martin Bayfield who appeared as Hagrid in scenes where he needed to be bigger than the setting around him.
We have also been sent a video where Sarita talks about her role on the Harry Potter film series:
The press release from WB also gives some insight into the work that goes into keeping the props looking their best!
Sarita, who was instrumental in creating the hundreds of prosthetic Goblin masks for the Harry Potter film series, has been called in to restore and clean some of the weird and wonderful props such as the intricate Gringott’s Goblin masks and Hagrid’s larger-than-life sized animatronic head. All this is ahead of the three week celebration of Half-Giant Hagrid, a new feature opening in time for Easter and running between 25th March and 17th April 2016.
From re-curling each eyebrow hair to repainting every wrinkle, Sarita painstakingly gave each individual mask the ultimate treatment to ensure they are in top shape ready for the beginning of Easter. Hagrid’s animatronic head received particular special attention with his famous bushy beard preened to perfection.
After beginning her career as a hair and makeup artist, Sarita was personally invited by Nick Dudman, Head of Creature Effects team, to join the 140-strong group of special effects artists working on the Harry Potter film series, that were involved in creating and applying Goblin masks. This meticulous work involved individually punching eyebrow hairs into the masks and creating hairlines, inserting one hair at the time. Sarita later returned to work as part of the team that curated the Harry Potter creations at Warner Bros. Studio Tour London.
Goblin facts:
Full Goblin head masks were only used for background characters, whereas the hero characters would wear full prosthetic pieces that move with the face, allowing the actor to express more character and personality.
It took 140 makeup artists to apply goblin prosthetics to 60 people in order to create the Goblins for the Gringott’s Bank sequence in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – part 2.
From start to finish, a whole Goblin head would take six – seven days to complete.
It can take an entire day just to punch eyebrows on to the mask, as each hair is punched through the mask individually and the eyebrow hairs were even pre-curled.
The Goblin hairlines were created through a painstaking process of inserting each hair individually.
It would take the Creature Effects team two – four days to paint a Goblin mask and it could take up to four hours to fully apply the Goblin prosthetics.
Eight full Goblin head masks were created for the first film compared to an incredible 45 for the last film.
