The Harry Potter saga films are full of curiosities and secrets to achieve their magical effects on the scenarios or with the spells that the magicians perform. One of the most popular and iconic of all is THE PATRONUSwhich is a defensive spell that is capable of generating a powerful positive energy force and is the one used above all to deal with the fearsome dementores.
One of the greatest characteristics of this magic is that adopt the form of an animal which varies depending on each magician. Seeing it on the screen could give the impression that it is simply a special effect carried out digitally, but the truth is that the production team managed to be able to carry out a trick that allowed them to involve real animals in the elaboration of this spell.
To represent the patronus of Harry Potter, which is known to adopt the spectacular form of a deer, perfectly trained animals were used to which they were equipped Special costumes composed of a network of LED lights They were placed around the body. The reason behind this idea is that it served as a great help to the actors to have a reference point to know where they had to look exactly, since having a light source came wonderfully to get more fully into the scene.
Even so, the greatest reason for everything was a visual basis for the team to be clear about the lighting offered by this technique and thus achieve the final design with the appropriate visual effects during the post-production process. In this way, photography directors and lighting managers were able to plan better How the light affected the elements of the environment and the actors themselvesguaranteeing greater coherence between real lighting and the effects that were subsequently implemented.
Likewise, the capture of the movement and the intensity of the lights located in the body of the animals were an excellent way to have a solid base to leave from an excellent point when designing the patronus that we finally saw during the feature films, especially in Harry Potter and Azkaban's prisonerwhen the spell was used for the first time.
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