Movies - TV
Harry Potter’s Time-Turner Special Effects Were Surprisingly Old-School
By MICHAEL BOYLE
The Time-Turner scene in "Prisoner of Azkaban" is one of the hardest scenes that effects supervisor Roger Guyett has ever done. To do it, he relied mostly on old-school effects.
"It's a multi-element shot stitched together with digital technology, but mostly, it depends on old ideas," Guyett revealed to Vulture in a 2019 feature.
Basically, Harry and Hermione are being filmed in one take, everyone else is being filmed in another take, and then that second take is reversed and combined with the first one.
To realize director Alfonso Cuarón's vision of a scene that truly "capture[s] the spirit of seeing time reversing itself, circling around you," they also used lots of miniatures.
"Miniature clock tower, miniature grounds — really relying on graphics and planning," Guyett noted. All of the effort into such a small scene was worth it, too.
Although it’s easy to understand the gist of how the trick is being done on the second watch, that doesn't take away from the magic of the finished scene that still holds up today.