Harry Potter & The "Cool" Team!

This project came to me as a gift for a 'Harry Potter' fan. When I was first approached about it, I thought, "This is a piece of cake!" but to my surprise, it wasn't! When Jen and I got started, things went very smoothly. The base with the landscaping came out well and exceeded our expectations. We then moved on to the garage...BAM...done in just a few minutes...then..."The Burrow"...

Our initial attempt was disastrous! It was off  scale and way too heavy. This was a difficult and quite challenging project for us because we had to build this set for durability given that it would be shipped to our client once completed.  By the time we'd come to discover that we failed at our first attempt, it was well into the next morning and we'd been up around the clock at this point. So, we called it a morning.

We returned to the project two weeks later.  And, fortunately, because of our trial and error session we had a better understanding of how to go about building the house. Not to mention we had plans to attend a paneling for Oscar nominated Art Departments and either it was a total coincidence or simply fate, but the 'Harry Potter' Art Team so happen to be one of this year's Oscar nominees and was on the panel. We did some prep work and then took off to the Oscar paneling. Aside from the seminar being extremely inspiring and beyond humbling, we got a chance to meet and  speak to the Supervising Art Director, Neil Lamont and Set Decorator, Stephanie McMillan, from 'Harry Potter'! Besides the fact that they were a joy and a pleasure to meet, we chatted with them a bit about our project and our attempt to replicate The Weasley's home, with partially recycled materials. Neil was blown away by the idea and reassured us that it would be difficult.  Nonetheless, he gave us some great advice and suggested a few ways to approach it. Stephanie was really informative on how she came up with the decorative concept for the interior, which will be put into great use when we decide to revisit 'Harry Potter' themed projects!

Overall, it was such a fun set to replicate and having been able to meet the creative minds that contributed to the vision of the actual film itself, was truly a cherry-on-top for us! It was like meeting our Lady Gaga being that we are primarily Production Designers/Art Directors ourselves.  Not only that, but we got to meet the Art team from 'Inception' as well, and just missed the opportunity to meet Team 'Alice' who took home the Oscar's for Best Art Direction...darn...maybe next time!

Anyhow, enough rambling...Check out the results below! =) Enjoy!

Best,

Carol K. Ras-

Materials used:
The house itself was made out of cereal boxes and various materials. The garage was made out of cardboard for the base and a paper towel roll to complete the top. The car and the chimney are made out of hardening clay. The base is made with foamcore and the landscaping is a diorama kit that was purchased.