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Prisoner of Azkaban DVD:
Interview with the Filmmakers
Transcript written by Veritaserum.com
Interviewer: Now, obviously, the first two films directed by Chris Columbus were a marvelous foundation. I just wonder about how you then made this production your own.
Alfonso Cuaron: The decision was to makes Hogwarts - the context - a character. To make the school, all the things that you see, to be an entity.
Stuart Craig: Because this is the third film, with these two guys, they literally reinvented it. They found a new way to look at all the existing sets, and we took it outside.
Interviewer: Okay, this is my next question. The idea of moving the whole cast, the whole crew, up to Scotland. Why'd you make that decision?
Alfonso Cuaron: The thing is, it was not part of one and two. So for me, it was just the natural thing to do. There's so much stuff that takes place outdoors in this story and it was pretty much Stuart who said, "We have to go to Scotland." He knew all these places, I mean, what do I know? So he really fought for it.
Michael Seresin: But it also gave the film air. It doesn't matter how beautiful the set is, it gives it space and scale.
Interviewer: It gave the film air.
Michael Seresin: I mean, you can recreate a certain amount digitally, but there's nothing like the real thing.
Alfonso Cuaron: And also, Hogwarts is involving that natural landscape. And it's not only the castle that's the natural landscape - now you see the kids pretty much walking out of a castle on a mountain.
Stuart Craig: The other thing we tried to do was tie up the spaces. So you're in the infirmary, but you see through a hall door to the clock tower. You follow that clock tower down to the courtyard below, that courtyard is connected by a bridge to the landscape.
Interviewer: Didn't JK Rowling actually draw you a little map of this? Some kind of little sketch.
Stuart Craig: Originally, on the first movie, there is a piece of paper. A very significant piece of paper.
Interviewer: I love how it starts with that.
Stuart Craig: And she did, in a hotel room, she said, "This is the world."
Interviewer: Reading the book, I'd think possibly the most challenging scene in it, without a doubt, is the Shrieking Shack. I just wonder how you then bring that from the script and collaborate to bring that onto the film.
Alfonso Cuaron: The writing was going on. What started to dictate a lot of the writing started to be Stuart, the sign of the Shrieking Shack.
Interviewer: Okay, so what goes on in that meeting?
Stuart Craig: First of all, we settled the exterior, because we are in a remote mountainscape in Scotland, not a snowy mountaintop. What looked very good in that situation was a very tall, vertical tower. That was, I guess, the earliest decision - this kind of tall, vertical shape, really.
Alfonso Cuaron: It was that, and you wanted to do everything wooden.
Stuart Craig: Yes, unlike the rest of Hogwarts, which is stone and massive masonry, this is a rickety, wooden structure. And then, I guess, the next step from there - I don't know if it was you or me or - but we decided that if it was in this incredibly exposed situation, wouldn't it be great if it moved? If it actually did move, I mean, big time, didn't it? It was a...
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.
Alfonso Cuaron: Oh yeah, it was nice.
Stuart Craig: Involving John Richardson, special effects, a massive mechanical rig, and Michael...
Interviewer: Yeah. So you then take that on as your problem now?
Michael Seresin: Yeah.
Interviewer: What did you see as the problems of this one?
Michael Seresin: The fact that we film on very wide angles lenses [pulls on Alfonso Cuaron's beard] with a lot of moving cameras. So physically, where do I put the lights to illuminate it all? It's a great challenge.
Alfonso Cuaron: The biggest conversation that these two guys have is about light sources.
Interviewer: I thought you said about lunch.
[Lunch discussion ensues.]
Stuart Craig: It's supposed to be a place without light, wasn't it? It's completely boarded up - no natural light sources, no electricity - what do you do? So that was our conversation.
Michael Seresin: Well, basically, it was very, very soft light so it'll be quite, sort of, very moody. And with no apparent source, because there are no windows. The only thing that there is, because it's such and old and decrepit building, because it's always moving all the time, Stuart made cracks in between the doors, so it's almost as if the blinding light from the snow is coming through and just giving you a very soft light. It's also incredibly dusty, so you have the feeling that there's just dust in the air.
Shrunken Head: Johnny, Johnny.
Interviewer: Not now, Head, not now. These are three very important people - they designed you into this film, they can design you out again.
Shrunken Head: Then what are they doing talking to you?
Interviewer: I noticed this change in how the children are dressed. They're much more relaxed, much more casual.
Alfonso Cuaron: The thing is that they are thirteen. This is a passage from childhood to teenage years. It is the moment in which the boogieman doesn't live in the closet or under the bed. You know, the boogieman resides inside you. So the whole thing we wanted to bring a really raw naturalism to the kids. The theory would be kind of that the more naturalistic we were with the kids, with the performance, with the blocking, with the way they behave, the more magical the magic was going to be.
Interviewer: And did you think it loosened them up having their own kind of clothes?
Alfonso Cuaron: I'd only done this first film, but something I know is that the kids really felt comfortable with their clothes.
Michael Seresin: Oh, yeah. In the beginning, they just loved the idea - it was a bit of individualism, it wasn't just all stamped out like the school uniform thing. Obviously, they got used to it.
Alfonso Cuaron: With the school uniform thing, we asked, "Okay, guys, here's the uniforms, what would you do with them?" And you will see some kids with the ties out, the ties all the way to here, some of them very tidy. So it's just pretty much like seeing kids walking out of school.
Interviewer: Apparently, there was a lot of joking around on set including whoopee cushions. Is this true?
Alfonso Cuaron: It was not a cushion, it was like...and that was very modern, that was a machine that was remote control operated.
Interviewer: And you did this, did you?
Alfonso Cuaron: No, it was Michael Gambon. [laughs] It was actually very good because it was a bunch of sleeping bags and Dan had to have his sleeping bag next to this particular girl and then, the thing is that we hid this machine in his sleeping bag. And the beautiful thing about that take is how amazing Dan tried to stay in character. You know, you will hear...
Michael Seresin: He filmed it as if it was a normal, regular take. And there's like hundreds of kids there, all asleep, and all the characters, and all of a sudden you hear this noise and Dan just stays in character for about twenty seconds.
Alfonso Cuaron: What was so amazing is that girls were the first who said, "Hey, it was not me. It was not me."
Shrunken Head: Hey man, it was not me either.
Interviewer: I thought one of those curious casting decisions was, well, him [points to Shrunken Head].
Shrunken Head: Me?
Interviewer: Yes, you. Why did you invent this?
Alfonso Cuaron: In the magical world, they have these fellows that are ripe. They are shrunken heads and on the Knight Bus they don't have a radio, they have a shrunken head there.
Interviewer: What did JK make of it? Because it was your idea to have this, wasn't it?
Alfonso Cuaron: Yeah, with this shrunken head, what happened is that when we proposed it to JK Rowling, she said, "Yeah, that makes perfect sense." And I think that in one of the books, there are some mention of a shrunken head.
Stuart Craig: Yeah, in Knockturn Alley there's a shrunken head.
Alfonso Cuaron: Knockturn Alley. It made perfect sense, and having Lenny Henry do that was just absolutely hilarious.
Shrunken Head: I'll thank you all in my Oscar speech.
Interviewer: Alfonso, guys, thanks very much for talking to me - that was brilliant. Thank you.
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