Harry Potter Took An NFL Approach To Filming The First Quidditch Match

One of the best elements of the "Harry Potter" franchise is how, even though most of its world-building doesn't make practical sense, the story and characters are so engaging that you don't dwell on it. Quidditch, for instance, is a terrible sport once you start thinking about it. 

There's no mention in the books of how uncomfortable it would be merely to sit on a flying broomstick for hours on end, nor does anyone complain in the franchise about how unfair it is that the seeker's job usually renders the rest of the team's efforts pointless. Does it make sense to design a game so that catching one ball will override 150 points earned by the other team? No. Does it make sense that this is the only game that the entire wizarding world cares about? Also no. 

But it doesn't matter, because the books and films give the games enough emotional stakes to help gloss over those other details. Harry usually spends the game being antagonized by Draco Malfoy, Deementors, or another mysterious threat, and as long as those conflicts are front and center, we won't worry about why the school never created separate Quidditch leagues for different grade ranges.

For Chris Columbus, director of the first two "Harry Potter" films, it was important to maintain the illusion that Quidditch made sense. He did this in part by staying true to the books' approach of always connecting Quidditch to the larger storyline, and partly by taking the game's rules as seriously as possible, making sure the audience always understood the stakes of Harry's matches. 

"The most intense pressure I had as a filmmaker was trying to figure out how Quidditch worked," Columbus explained back in 2018. "We had to approach it as if the audience was watching an NFL game for the first time. The rules needed to be absolutely clear."

"It was important that Quidditch felt dangerous, that it felt fast, and that — for lack of a better word — it felt cool," Columbus said. "You wanted every kid who saw the movie to say, 'That would be my favorite sport, if I could play any sport.' My dream would be to get the feeling we get at the Warner Bros. theme ride we have at Universal Studios, where you're actually on a broomstick with Harry. I would've loved to have been able to do that in the year 2000."

The NFL turned out to be the perfect comparison, as "Sorcerer's Stone" depicts Quidditch as a brutal, violent game where everyone involved should probably be wearing a helmet. The sound and sight of kids getting hit by bludgers invokes the same sympathetic wincing as when a football player gets tackled a little too hard. "My sound designer Martin Cantwell thought it was a great idea to record his voice for the Bludger," said the film's supervising sound editor, Eddy Joseph, "That weird little nasty sound — the thought of it like the Tasmanian Devil — was him."

Although the special effects in the first film don't quite hold up to scrutiny, that first game stills maintains a strong enough sense of wonder to be a fun watch today. Like the NFL, the rules of Quidditch are long and complicated, borderline nonsensical to a newbie's eyes, but its twist and turns still make for an exciting watch. It wasn't easy to bring this new sport to life on screen, but Columbus and the rest of his team somehow pulled it off.