July Release for Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince
July 15 2009 – Cinesite have worked on every Harry Potter film to date and this latest instalment goes on general release on Wednesday 15th July 2009.
In this chapter of the story, directed by David Yates and with Visual Effects Supervision by Tim Burke and Chris Shaw, Harry begins his sixth year at Hogwarts School discovering an old book marked mysteriously “This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince” and begins to learn more about Lord Voldemort’s dark past.
The Cinesite model team, supervised again by Jose Granell, unwrapped the huge Hogwarts model and modified it interpreting the production design of Stuart Craig in preparation for 11 week shoot that started in early May, 2008.
As with every instalment of Harry Potter, Hogwarts evolves and this time round the Cinesite models team were required to build a 1:24 scale version of the new Astronomy Tower to be placed in the centre of the school.
The models team also built a huge 40’ high version of the Astronomy Tower to enable them to shoot extreme close-ups. The top of the tower where most of the action takes place, is an open structure which meant they had to build all the interior detail and match all the main unit set dressing.
Cinesite’s digital team, this time led by Andy Robinson as Compositing Supervisor and Ivor Middleton as CG Supervisor worked on various shots including CG twittering birds and the dramatic Glass Ceiling explosion as the Deatheaters escape and along with Bellatrix cause havoc in the Great Hall. Floating candles are always an important part of the Great Hall shots and Cinesite updated their candle pipeline to deal with an increased depth of field in the shots this time round. They also had to shoot additional flame and smoke textures for the shot where the candles are blown out. The glass explosion itself was achieved by Holger Voss using a piece of software designed to simulate the destruction of structures in response to catastrophic forces such as explosions, projectiles and shock waves.
Cinesite is currently working on Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (Warner Bros.), Naked Beauty (Disney), Clash of The Titans (Warner Bros.), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Disney) and Leap Year (Spyglass). Other recent productions include Moon (Liberty Films) and The Prisoner (AMC/ITV).
