The three awards that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II was nominated for at the Academy Awards have been announced and sadly Potter lost out to Hugo in 2 categories and The Iron Lady to another.  Art Direction and Visual Effects went to HUGO and Makeup was awarded to The Iron Lady.  I know many of us hoped that Harry Potter would pull a Lord of the Rings and finally be recognized for the last film, but the Academy didn’t agree.  But we all know that Harry Potter is deserving of all the awards.

Kenneth Branagh, who was up for Best Supporting Actor for My Week with Marilyn, lost to Christopher Plummer.

Gary Oldman is up for Best Actor for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which will be announced later this evening, so there is still hope for one of the Potter cast to walk away with something.

UPDATE: Gary lost out to Jean Dujardin of The Artist for Best Actor.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II took home an award at the Costume Designers Guild Awards which took place last night.  Jany Temime, the costume designer for Potter since Prisoner of Azkaban, won for Excellence in Fantasy Film and beat

• “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” – Penny Rose
• “Red Riding Hood” – Cindy Evans
• “Thor” – Alexandra Byrne
• “X-Men: First Class” – Sammy Sheldon

Studio Daily had the chance to interview Harry Potter VFX Supervisor Tim Burke and he discussed working on the films for the past 10 years. More specifically he goes into using a digital set for Hogwarts instead of minatures as well as changing Voldemort’s Death scene after a few screenings.

Which shots in the film are your favorites?

Funnily enough, I think the sequence of the shield forming and the destruction of the shield. Even though they weren’t perhaps the most complicated, they were some of the most beautiful. As Voldemort arrived with his army on the hillside, the teachers went into the areas of the courtyard and created a magical shield that enveloped and protected the school. We art-directed the shots at Double Negative and they are elegant.

It took a long time to create the magical shield. Then Voldemort bombarded the school and destroyed the shield. We wanted to give that an epic scale. We referenced the Hindenburg airship disaster, when it went up in flames, to get the scale of the flames and burning materials. That was the reference for pieces of cloth-like fire that dropped down onto the school. It was magical – not in a Harry Potter sense. It was beautiful and shocking at the same time. Those shots were completely CG and had a big design aspect, which is rewarding.

Of course, all the fighting action sequences were great fun. Getting the giants to work by using live-action actors and changing their faces with CG helped us not to have to create full CG characters. We used scaling and oversized people. MPC changed their faces so they didn’t look human.

And I’m not forgetting the dragon that D-Neg created. We had to emphasize and feel sorry for this 60-foot dragon through pure performance. We found reference from badly treated real animals and translated that body language into our character. He was trapped. Unable to fly. Partially blind. And he had been down there his whole life. It was important to emphasize that so you wanted him to escape and when he did, he flew with majesty and pride. That was a lovely story to roll into the character of the dragon.

The Harry Potter books, Deathly Hallows: Part II, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson have been nominated for Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards! Voting for the awards opens on February 24th, we will post a reminder link on that date. The awards will be presented on March 31st and you can watch on nickelodeon at 8pm/7pmc! The nominations are as follows:

Favorite Movie:

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II
• Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
• The Smurfs
• The Muppets

Favorite Actor:

• Daniel Radcliffe
• Johnny Depp
• Jim Carey
• Adam Sandler

Favorite Actress:

• Emma Watson
• Amy Adams
• Sofia Vergara
• Kristen Stewart

Favorite Book:

• Harry Potter Series
• The Hunger Games Series
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series
• The Twilight Series

The Orange British Academy Film Awards were held tonight and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II came away with the Special Visual Effects award. Tim Burke, John Richardson, Greg Butler, and David Vickery were there to accept the award, a video may be seen on the BAFTA website.

Daniel Radcliffe, Bonnie Wright, Jamie Campbell Bower, Gary Oldman, Kenneth Branagh, Ralph Fiennes, Jim Broadbent, Helena Bonham Carter, and John Hurt were also in attendance at the ceremony and photos may be seen over at the BAFTA website (Scroll down)!

The Evening Standard British film awards were held last night and a bunch of Potter stars were in attendance including Bonnie Wright, James Phelps, Clemence Poesey (Fleur), Jamie Campbell Bower (Young Grindlewald), Toby Jones (Dobby), Warwick Davis, and John Hurt. Photos of the stars at the event may be seen here.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II won the Blockbuster of the Year, People’s Choice Award. Additionally, John Hurt, who plays Ollivander in the Potter films, was honored with the Alexander Walker Special Award for his contribution to film.