OOTP

[Richard]

Eggplant replied to mine:

>Richard wrote:
>
> > Things which can easily be left out:
> > Most of Capslock!Harry (Please!)
>
>I strongly disagree, I like Capslock Harry. One of the things I'm most
>looking forward to is Harry wrecking Dumbledore's office. I think it's
>important to show that Harry is a Human Being who has faults so I want
>to see him yell at people who don't deserve it as well as those like
>Dumbledore who do.

As I said before, I too want to see Angry!Harry in Dumbledore's office: 
this is a very different relationship to the debriefing scenes in other 
episodes and I'm hoping that Dan and Gambon can pull off the one ranting, 
and other sitting there stock-still and passive. Although I have my doubts.

The main reason I'd like a limit on Capslock!Harry is similar: I simply 
don't think Dan can pull off Harry being seriously unlikeable without 
undermining the viewers' sympathy. Much as readers are encouraged to 
dislike Harry's excesses during the book, we understand part of what he's 
going through and empathise with his predicament. If his energy and rage is 
less petulant, he can still be a believable teenager without alienating the 
audience.

>The Room of Requirement as such isn't necessary but the DA certainly
>is because we need to show Harry is becoming a leader, and where
>better for them to meet than that room.

Of course the DA is important. Where did you get the idea I might feel 
otherwise? (my list of required scenes included two DA lessons, plus the 
setup meeting). The point of that item is I'm trying to find a way to write 
Dobby out of the story. I'd like to see something like the Map showing 
Harry the existence of an unplottable room or something like that. I'm not 
sure there's a need for the room itself to be inherently magical in a 
magical castle. (This has repercussions in HBP, of course, as that's where 
Malfoy fixes the cabinet, and that needs to be shown.)

> > Hagrid's tale & Grawp (much as I dislike the idea, but we know it's
> > included)
>
>We do? How do we know it's included?

Heyman said various things during GoF-related events. Reported here, 
http://tinyurl.com/82hvr , for instance.

And, eslewhere, from Valerie:

 > OK, that's it! Richard gets my vote for directing the next HP film!
 > He's got it all figured out down to the closing shot. :-)

Thanks for the vote (for what it's worth) but that final comment should 
speak volumes: I have no desire to direct OotP (or any other HP movie; 
indeed any other movie at all), but I would LOVE to edit it. I suspect that 
if it does fall down, it'll fall in the editing, and I have some very 
specific ideas (many, many more than I have voiced).

As for my last shot idea, I'd like to return to PoA for a moment: a lot of 
people disliked the PoA freeze-frame ending. All the other HP movies 
(including GoF) have gone down the cliched Hollywood route of zooming out 
towards the sky which, frankly, bores me. As (pretty much by definition) 
the last shot is the last thing most viewers will remember, I've always 
been a great lover of ending movies on freeze-frames, especially if the 
resolution of the film can be summed up in a single shot: OotP, the 
narrative of which is all about the Ministry admitting that Voldemort is 
back and entering the fight, is a perfect example. I'm prepared to bet, 
though, that we'll get some kind of receding horizon *yet again*. (YAWN.)

 > All I know is, I will be really disappointed if they decide to drop the
 > Snape/marauders/Pensieve backstory. At SOME point in this series they 
need to
 > explain why Snape has been so nasty to Harry all this time!

Indeed, but is that point *NOW* (i.e. OotP)? Seeing as we don't have the 
full story of the Pensieve scene (at least not to my satisfaction), I can't 
help feeling that we have more to come. Snape's and WMPP's back-story is 
fragmented over the course of the series, and it's possible that the 
movie-makers are keeping it all back to make a single storyline of it at 
the climax. A different kind of satisfaction to being drip-fed the 
information, but still satisfying.

The main reason I think that the Pensieve scene deserves to be kept in OotP 
is the fact that WMPP & Co are the same age as Harry (which is not a 
situation we've been in before with the pieces of information we've had), 
not to mention that Sirius & James being revealed to be jerks (not 
*entirely* unlike Harry in his fifth year, which in turn is the main reason 
why Petulant!Harry must remain) is important to Harry's development. So 
it's largely about the sequence's symbolic rather than narrative importance.

 > I know there is so much detail to get into this film, but I just love that
 > whole marauder storyline. It's past history, but ties in substantially to
 > current day HP, imo.

See my other post (most of which is about something else) for some of my 
thoughts on the issue. However, I do feel that some HP fans over-estimate 
the importance to "current" events of some of the aspects of the MWPP 
relationship.

--
Richard, who's only got another 40 or so posts to read to have caught up