David Yates Takes Harry Potter to His Darkest Hour

[Minor Spoilers]

The audience-dividing tent scene:

David Yates: We felt very early on...[writer] Steve Kloves said to me – we were working away in the office – and he says to me, 'This might sound really weird, but I could see them dancing,’ and the minute he said that, I said, 'My God, you’re right, that would be great. Let’s make that work. Let’s try that.’ And it’s a scene that seems to divide people – some people love it, some people absolutely hate it. I love it, that’s why it’s in the movie. I find it very tender, very funny, very moving. For me, it’s about them becoming grown-ups, growing up in a very painful way.

I got a wonderful choreographer named Anthony Van Laast, and I know it doesn’t look very choreographed, but actually, it is. It was all about the awkwardness of the moment, letting go a little bit. I like the notion that they find comfort in each other when everything seems to be falling apart. It seems like a very natural thing to do. Trying to provide warmth for each other as friends. For me, it’s a very special moment in the film – but I know it drives some people nuts [laughs].

Finding the right piece of music in Nick Cave’s “O’ Children”:

David Yates: Yeah, I needed to find a piece of music that was melancholic. It had to fit the tone of that section of the movie, but also lift you up, in a weird way. It’s hard to find that tone in a song. I had a chap named Matt Biffa, who is a wonderful music guy, send me lots of tracks from everything. I listened to hundreds of these things and I was almost giving up hope, and I thought, 'Oh, there’s nothing quite like what I can feel in my head.’ And then I pressed play and Nick Cave started, and I was like, 'This is it.’

My biggest fear was playing it for Dan [Radcliffe] and Emma [Watson], cause I thought, 'God, are they going to understand?’ Because it was important to me that they understand the music as well, that they felt it. So I played it for them and it was my most nervous moment, and I played it for them and I was like, 'Oh God, are they going to like it?’ and they loved it.

The decision to tell the legend of the Deathly Hallows with animation:

David Yates: That all started with Stuart Craig, who’s the wonderful Production Designer. We were thinking of a live-action route, but I don’t think it would have worked. It would have felt a bit clunky. And then Stuart came up with these wonderful shadow puppet images from the Victorian era, which were absolutely glorious. Then we looked at some Chinese images...this whole notion of shadow puppets came in to mind. Then we found this found this wonderful guy named Ben Hibon who’s an animator and he supervised the whole sequence for us.

I just wanted it to feel really elliptical. I wanted it to feel like we were going to a different place, basically, to transcend where we were. It’s actually really hard to step outside the movie for three minutes and stop the movie for a story [laughs], so it had to be really beautiful. And Ben is hugely gifted.

Tackling massive chunks of exposition:

David Yates: It’s always a problem. It’s always our challenge – there’s so much exposition in these movies and in the books, and I swear, we cut so much out. I try and keep it in the moment. We feel like, by the time we got to the end of it, 'Wow, we’ve taken out all the exposition out!’ But when you guys see it, there’s still quite a bit of exposition [laughs]. But we take as much out as we can to keep it moving.

And we all felt the same – it’s a fun way to go out. It tees you up for Part 2, which has lots of fights and battles.

Jump ahead to:

How Yates made Deathly Hallows darker and gritier

Yes, more about that steamy kissing scene

Deciding on Deathly Hallows' beginning and end