Article for Harry Potter: The Complete 8-Film Collection

The Harry Potter Collection Extras

You’ve found the article listing the extra features that come with the Harry Potter films. If you want the review of the films click this link...

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

If there was one thing I loathed about the DVD of this film, it was the extra features disc. It was aimed specifically at children, filled with awkward and tedious games you had to play to unlock the deleted scenes, and very little in the way of making of featurettes and extra features aimed at the film fanatic and collector.

The Blu-ray at least makes accessing the extra content straightforward with a simple menu screen, but it’s all the same content, and still in SD format.

In Behind the Story, you get that same ‘making of’ featurette that has input from the filmmakers, which lasts 16:24. You get the Jim Dale narrated clippette, Ghosts of Hogwarts that lasts 38 seconds. You get 20 Yearbook character clips, some half a minute to each, you get a 44 second Quidditch lesson, and you get a 31 second Dragon Egg Lesson.

Fun and Games lets you watch the same clip nine times over, in English and then in eight other languages. This lasts 8:33, although you can play the language clips individually.

You get the Teaser and the Theatrical Trailers, and you get the 7 Deleted Scenes, 9 minutes worth.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Once again, the Blu-ray merely repeats the DVD extras, and just like the DVD, they offer a better mix of features aimed at both mature and young audiences than the first film, and as you would expect, they are all presented in SD format.

The Conversation with J.K. Rowling and Steve Kloves lasts 16:09.

Lockhart’s Classroom takes a look at certificates awarded to and books written by the vainglorious wizard, and a Play All option lasts 1:28.

Behind Hogwarts: Building a Scene lasts 17:20 and looks at set construction to post-production for a scene in Dumbledore’s office.

There are soundbite interviews with the cast, 8:11 with the students, 9:42 with the professors and more.

There are 19 deleted scenes on this disc running to 16:25 in total. A trailer for the Philosopher’s Stone entitled Year One at Hogwarts, and finally the theatrical trailer for the movie. Some of the more trivial, child oriented features remain exclusive to the DVD.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Once again the extra features are selected from the DVD release, leaving out much of the games, and keeping the featurettes.

You get the Creating the Vision Featurette with Alfonso Cuaron, J.K. Rowling and the crew interviewed. This lasts 11:45.

You get a series of interviews with the cast conducted by Johnny Vaughn and Shrunken Head, which once Play All-ed last 43:47.

Choir Practice lasts 1:41 and lets you karaoke for a bit.

Care of Magical Creatures lasts 4:46 and reveals the world of the wrangler.

Conjuring a Scene lasts 15:37 and takes a look behind the scenes of the filming.

There are 5 unfinished and deleted scenes running to 4:48 in total.

You get trailers for the first three movies. Once again, all this footage is in SD.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I never saw the Goblet of Fire two disc release, but I’d assume that we get the same deal here, with the more in-depth featurettes ported over to the Blu-ray disc, although The Goblet of Fire Blu-ray does up its game in one respect.

Behind The Story is where all of the featurettes lie, looking at various aspects of the making of the fourth film.

Harry vs. The Horntail: The First Task (6:08), In Too Deep: The Second Task (9:48), and The Maze: The Third Task (6:48) look at the making of those particular scenes, and there should be a sign warning ‘CG artists at work’ for these featurettes.

Meet The Champions (13:03) is a little more conventional, spending a day with the three actors that portray the school champions, and you get some idea of what filming a movie involves for an actor.

He Who Must Not Be Named (11:09) takes a look at how Voldemort was created for the big screen, with a nice interview with Ralph Fiennes making this more interesting, although the CG Artist at Work warning is absent for the intricacies of nose flattening.

Preparing for the Yule Ball (9:03) offers some views on dancing from the young cast members.

Reflections on the Fourth Film (14:13) offers soundbites from the Hogwarts students on their experiences on this fourth film, and how things have changed since the first.

All of these featurettes are in SD.

Conversations With the Cast lasts 30:36, and sees Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint interviewed by Richard Curtis, before answering a few fan questions. While this was on the DVD, here we get HD presentation in 1080i resolution.

You also get 10:08 of deleted scenes, and the theatrical trailer, again in SD.

Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

This is where the Harry Potter series catches up to the Blu-ray revolution, with most of the extra features on this disc offered in some flavour of HD. You might think that this means the quality of the extra features will also improve, but that turns out not to be the case.

Behind the Story: Focus Points offers featurettes that you can watch inserted into the film at appropriate points, or separately from a menu listing. There are 28 in total, but it’s not the wealth of information that you might have hoped for, with none running over 4 minutes, and most just a couple in length. In total there is 63 minutes, but who wants to add another hour onto the movie, cutting away every time, most likely to see a digital artist sat at a workstation explaining how the next CGI effect was created. Clicking them individually is just as unsatisfying, and there really needed to be a Play All option for just the featurettes. It’s still soundbite EPK stuff, but presented in 1080i HD.

Trailing Tonks is a bit like the Meet the Champions featurette on the previous disc, as a camera follows Nat Tena around the film studio for a day. It’s fun and ephemeral at 19:25, presented in 1080i.

The Hidden Secrets of Harry Potter 43:54 SD takes a look at how key moments in the fifth film are foreshadowed by events in the first four, but what little I sampled of it felt more like an extended trailer for all five films.

There are 10:55 of Additional Scenes presented in 1080p.

Harry Potter: The Magic Of Editing begins with a 5:21 1080i featurette that looks at how films are edited before allowing you to have a ‘limited’ go, with some scenes, music, and SFX tracks allowing around 18 permutations. I got bored after 1, but then again it’s not really aimed at me.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

This is the first two disc release of the Harry Potter series, no doubt offering the film more room to breathe on the disc. But there are still a few extras on the feature disc, including of course the inevitable BD-Live content, which you can access via an Internet connection from the animated menu screen.

There is also the Maximum Movie Mode, which offers picture-in-picture content, focus points, galleries and more as you watch the film, the kind of thing I find a distraction. You can access the Focus Points separately on the disc, although there is no Play All Option. They’re short, behind the scenes snippets, 14 in all, running to a total of 37:26. I added up the runtimes. Thankfully, to save me changing the secondary audio settings back and forth on my player, subtitles are provided for the picture in picture bits.

The rest of the extras are all on disc 2, presented with a static menu, and all of them in HD.

In Behind the Story, you’ll find two offerings. Close Up With The Cast of Harry Potter offers 8 interviews with a difference. Running to 28:34 courtesy of a Play All Option, it sees the young cast of Harry Potter go behind the scenes and look at various aspects of filmmaking, from editing to make-up. One Minute Drills is a 6:45 bit of fun that sees the cast get pop-quizzed on their character arcs over the last 6 films.

In Extras, You can take a 1:50 look at the 1st Footage From The Deathly Hallows.

J. K. Rowling: A Year in the Life is a documentary following the author as she completes her final Harry Potter book, and also looks at her life, where she came from, the story behind the story. It’s a nice, in depth and candid profile, one that I saw originally broadcast on television, but is very fitting here. This lasts 49:46.

What’s On Your Mind lasts 6:43 and is a bit of silliness with the cast facing some quick questions.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Sneak Peek is an 11:40 advert for the theme park in Orlando Florida.

Finally there are 8 additional scenes for the film, running to a total of 6:51.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

The film’s presented on 2 discs again, with the first containing the feature, accessible from an animated menu screen. Load time is a little slow, as are the menus transitions. As for extras on disc 1, you get a link to some BD Live Content, and you also get the Maximum Movie Mode again, with optional Focus Points. You can access these six mini featurettes separately and they run to a total of 19:21 HD.

I gave the Maximum Movie Mode a try again, and it’s wholly different animal on this disc, as opposed to the picture-in picture offering of Half Blood Prince. This feature runs 20 minutes longer than the movie, is presented by Jason Isaacs, and I suspect it’s recorded on the disc separately from the movie, as it doesn’t use secondary audio, will constantly drop in and out of the feature as its playing, even pause it, to play some featurette, offer a behind the scenes look, an interview, a clip of an earlier movie, often with the featurette in focus, the film running in a small window. I watched about half an hour, but I definitely want to watch the whole thing when I have time. Subtitles are provided.

The rest of the extras on disc 2 are disappointingly brief and few. You get the same animated menu again presenting the content.

In Behind The Story you get 5 featurettes running to a total of 34:02 HD, with three behind the scenes featurettes, and two more devoted to the actors’ off-time and goofing around.

You get 8 additional scenes running to 10:54 if you play all.

And somewhat mislabelled in Trailers and Spots are a Behind The Soundtrack featurette lasting 3:51, and looking at the work of Alexandre Desplat, and a 6:25 featurette about the opening of the Harry Potter them park in Florida.

Really, the meatiest and most satisfying extra for this film is the Maximum Movie Mode.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

This is another 2-disc release, like the previous two films.

The feature disc begins by autoplaying a trailer for The Green Lantern, and an advert for Lego Harry Potter, although what a caped Lego figure trying on a wig has to do with Harry Potter escapes me. The disc boots up, eventually to an animated menu, and there’s a BD Live button in one corner should you wish to press it.

On this disc you’ll find among the extras, Final Farewells From Cast and Crew, running to 3:07, which is just what it says.

You can also choose from 8 Focus Points, 26:27 of small featurettes surrounding the making of the film.

Once again the big extra is the Maximum Movie Mode, this time presented by Matthew Lewis (Neville), running to 2:47:25 as the cast and crew watch and comment on the movie, break out to look at some behind the scene footage, interviews and even some deleted scenes.

At least this time the second disc doesn’t feel like an afterthought, with a couple of substantial and interesting featurettes to enjoy.

In the Behind the Story section, you’ll find A Conversation With J.K. Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe, lasting 53:03, as the two look back at 10 years of the Harry Potter movies, interview each other about their Harry Potter experiences, and reveal some secrets of the story, as well as some roads not taken. It’s an interesting and engaging conversation.

When Harry Left Hogwarts is a 48:11 documentary, as a documentary team get exclusive access to the set during the last two films, catching the cast and crew as they prepare for the end of the journey. It’s another worthwhile watch.

The Goblins of Gringotts lasts 10:56, and looks at the casting, the make-up, and the filming of the Gringotts scenes.

The Women of Harry Potter lasts 22:31, and offers interviews with J.K. Rowling and the cast, as they look at the female role models the story established.

You’ll also find the 8 deleted scenes running to a total of 6:33, viewable separately here, although you’ll also have seen them in the Maximum Movie Mode.

Finally there is a 1:33 trailer for the Warner Bros Studio Tour London, and a 1:07 promo for the Pottermore website.