Short(ish) comments on variety of posts

Richard hp at plum.cream.org
Sun Dec 18 17:28:43 UTC 2005


Valerie Flowe wrote:

> > Well I don¹t think Mrs. Norris was wearing red contact lenses, LOL!! I¹m
> > assuming they colorized her eyes in post-production.

My own assumption is that in GoF, Mrs Norris wasn't an actual live cat, in 
which case she could have had whatever eyes they wanted. (I don't recall 
seeing her walk; whenever we saw her, she was in Fitch's arms; if we ever 
did see her walking it would have been a long or back shot, in which case 
her eye colour would have been irrelevant).

>If they can colorize old
> > movies, not to mention do all the fantastic special effects on GOF, surely
> > they could have made Ralph have those cool snake eyes like he had briefly,
> > and/or colorize them red?? His scene after all was not that long.

Some people seem to have a somewhat exaggerated idea of what SFX can do. 
Colouring eyes while allowing them to remain realistic, especially in ultra 
close-ups (of which there were several) is not going to happen just yet. At 
least not in an economically viable way.

Lynda wrote:

>I don't know why they would color her eyes unless they're trying to  tell us
>she isn't "just" a cat.  Were her eyes that color in the other  films?  I
>can't remember.

Well, sort of. In shots in which she is clearly a live cat her eyes aren't 
*quite* as red as those in which she could just be a puppet, and in most 
cases the redness can be enhanced with the right lighting (eye colour, both 
human and otherwise, differs considerably depending on light conditions).

Steve wrote:

>As far as Dan's eyes, I don't think they will have to deal with that
>issue until it become important in the books. Which given current
>circumstances means not until the last book/movie. I suspect that Dan
>at age 11 would have problems with contacts irritating him, that he
>wouldn't necessarily have at age 16. So, until it actually becomes a
>necessity to the films, I don't think they have to worry about it. At
>that time they can give Dan green contacts which he will only have to
>wear a few hours a day while shooting.

Sorry, what makes you (and others) so certain that there is something 
important about Harry's eyes being *green*? My reading of canon and the 
comment JKR once made that gets everyone on their soap-boxes about this is 
that it's important for Harry to have *distinctive* eyes, and for them to 
be the same colour as his mother's. The fact that Dan's eyes are so 
magnificently blue, as are Geraldine Sommerville's, indicates to me that 
there is no need for any trickery or otherwise noting that they may be 
green. Besides which, wouldn't it be, well, stupid, for the last movie to 
make a HUGE deal about an intrinsic attribute of Harry's appearance that's 
suddenly changed?

Incidentally, Alan Rickman wears contacts as Snape. In one of the miriad 
interviews he gave, Mike Newell admitted that he didn't realise it until 
fairly late in to the shooting schedule...

Allie wrote:

>Does Dan Radcliffe have a slight speech impediment?  I remember after
>the first movie, I was shocked that he was the one cast for the part of
>Harry since he seemed to lisp a little on words like "such" and "much" -
>or is that just a British pronunciation?  I think he does a fantastic
>job and I don't notice the speech anymore, so if it was there maybe he
>grew out of it?

Not so much "British" pronunciation, but definitely part of certain areas 
of London (and, perhaps, strangely, Scotland), where an almost whistled 
"ch" or "sh" sound is fairly prevalent. I know lots of people who don't 
have lisps who do that. It's also fairly frequently present in 
"stage-speak", because attempting to enunciate the sounds very clearly 
tends towards the whistled variation. Note also a non-standard 
pronunciation of "j", especially at the beginning of words ("joke", "just", 
etc), which is part of the same pronunciation patterns.

Without resurrecting discussions of Dan's merits as an actor, you're quite 
correct in noticing him do it more in the earlier films, where he did 
indeed try to en-un-ci-ate everything very, very precisely, rather than 
speak naturally. Tom Felton did  it a lot in PS/SS too.

The difference is particularly noticeable to me and other Polish speakers, 
as Polish (and other Slavonic languages) have two distinct sounds (and 
spellings) of both the "sh" and "j" sound, which the majority of English 
speakers can't distinguish most of the time. It's fairly easy to spot Brits 
of Slavic extraction who've learned their parents' language "artificially" 
because they pronounce both pairs of phonemes as if they were the same 
(either whistled or the more "usual" way).

Jellocat wrote:

>I think he's going to be the next... hmm... Hugh Grant, perhaps? Could Dan 
>be that suave?

Erm.... I think you have it upside-down. The majority of Grant's characters 
have been, if anything, *anti*-suave. He usually plays a bumbling oaf who 
gets the girl  despite *not* being suave (or, in some cases, being 
distinctly oleaginous).

And elsewhere, Steve said, regarding the beginning of OotP:

>While I have absolutely no proof, I suspect that the opening scene
>will be Harry catching up with Dudley as they walk back from the park,
>which will be quickly followed by the Dementor attack, which in turn
>will be quickly followed by the 'rescue'.

Strange, I seem to recall that that was *my* suggestion, after you 
suggested that the whole sequence could be dropped with no harm to the 
story... :-)

--
Richard, who's been too bloody busy for the last two weeks even to read 
most of the list, never mind posting. 




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