Casting schedule; greenboard

[bloubet at incanmonkey.com]

GulPlum said:
>In terms of scheduling, it should be borne in mind that unlike most
>movies, HP are filmed pretty much in chrononogical order (as the kids
>are constantly growing and changing). 

Not true. I wish it were sometimes. <grin> I'm assuming they'll probably do what they did for the second movie -- film anything that needs computer enhancement first, then do other scenes. Even on the first movie, though, scenes were not filmed in order. I'm guessing that availability of sites for filming may have something to do with it. There was an interview with Chris Columbus shortly after Richard Harris' death where he talked about shooting the hospital scene with Harry a couple of months before filming the Mirror of Erised scene. And if you watch the film with an eye to the kids' heights, they fluctuate back and forth as to who's tallest and by how much. Dan Radcliffe is obviously older in the final chamber tests than he is just before, talking to Snape and McGonagall, and at the end, at the train station. I'm hoping they're able to minimize that in the third film, though to be honest, I didn't really notice it until the third or fourth time through the film. <grin>

Re: the backwards writing on the greenboard. Two possibilities, I think: something arcane having to do with production that we'll never be able to confirm <grin> ("That blank blackboard looks awful -- fill it with a reverse of the other one." "We don't have time to draw both boards! Flip and insert it later."); a nod to an old superstition about mirror writing being magical. I don't have any documentation for it, but I do remember when I was a teen going through the "write your favorite guy's name and your name backwards, and he'll ask you out". Or he'll dream about you. Or whatever. The key was that writing it backwards used the power of the mirror, the life reflection, the scrying surface.

Again, just guesses all round. <grin>

bel