POV Shifting in the Film

[Cindy C.]

A while back, we had a discussion of the various shifts of point of 
view in the books.  The upshot was that the books are told mostly 
from Harry's POV, except when it is impossible to do so.

Obviously, the movie cannot be shot entirely from Harry's subjective 
POV, although it was shot largely from his perspective.  Mostly, we 
follow Harry around.

But there were a few exceptions.  One was as the owls are delivering 
the letters.  We get a wide shot of the house with owls all over it.  
In the book, of course, we don't learn how the letters get there, 
because Harry doesn't know.  The filmmakers didn't feel constrained 
to stick to Harry's POV, so we got a very nice and effective non-
Harry POV shot.

The other exception I noticed was with the invisibility cloak scene.  
One shot is Harry holding the lamp, so we are following him around 
from the outside.  Then we have a shot of him under the cloak (IIRC), 
which is a bit more intimate, but we're still just following him 
around.  But then we have the shot of Snape, which is totally 
subjective from Harry's POV.  I thought this worked well.  

But I also wonder if there was any other practical way to shoot the 
invisibility cloak scene.  We can't have a typical "follow Harry 
around" shot because Harry's invisible, and the viewer wouldn't 
understand Harry's proximity to Snape.  So the POV shift worked well, 
and it may have been impossible to do it any other way.

Although this is only tangentially related to POV, I also found it 
interesting that the filmmakers chose to show Harry under the cloak 
with his arm and lantern sticking out.  I guess they did this so that 
the viewer could keep track of Harry.  But maybe it really isn't very 
realistic based on canon.  If someone sees him with the lantern, what 
does he do to remain concealed?  If he brings the lantern under the 
cloak, does it become invisible too (assuming Harry doesn't set 
himself on fire)?  Does it continue to light his surroundings?  
(Maybe it should, because we know from canon that sounds and smells 
permeate the invisibility cloak).  If so, then why does he hold it 
out in front of him?  

Anyway, did the filmmakers make maximum usage of the ability to 
deviate from Harry's POV, and were there places where they could have 
used POV shifts to greater advantage?

Cindy