The magic being the flying scenes in Harry Potter movie
Christmas in Hogwards
Introduction
Christmas scene, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 2001
It’s almost winter, and we are slowly moving closer towards the holiday season—a time of year that, for many, is associated with rewatching the Harry Potter film series. This past season was no exception. While watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, specifically the Quidditch match scene, something captured my attention. The scene was not only exciting but also visually impressive from a technical perspective. This got me curious: how was this scene actually made? More importantly, what techniques were used throughout the entire Harry Potter series to create the flying scenes—one of the most iconic elements in the franchise?
This visual research is going to answer exactly that question. It explores the different methods used to bring flying scenes to life across the Harry Potter films, from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001) to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 (2011). We’re not only going to look at the visual effects used during the Quidditch games but also investigate other flying sequences throughout the series, including broomstick chases, enchanted objects, magical creatures, and characters like the Dementors. What makes this research particularly interesting is that after digging a little bit deeper, to my biggest surprise, not all of the flying effects in Harry Potter are computer-generated. In fact, a good number of them were achieved through practical, on-set effects—something that has become increasingly rare in modern blockbuster filmmaking.
Under the supervision of special effects supervisor John Richardson, who worked on all eight Harry Potter films, the series became a perfect example of blending practical and digital effects. Richardson, who has over five decades of experience in the industry, has openly stated his preference for practical effects. «My preference is obviously practical effects—that’s what I’ve done for the last 50 years or so. There’s room for both in filmmaking; the challenge is getting the right balance,» he said. This approach resulted in a seamless integration of physical rigs, wirework, puppetry, and CGI, creating a world where magic felt real and believable. It is this combination of techniques that makes the Harry Potter series a perfect subject for this research.
Harry wearing his invisibility cloak, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 2001
The goal of this visual research is to provide a clear look at how flying scenes in the Harry Potter films were made. The study will cover three main areas: practical effects, where objects and actors were physically suspended or manipulated on set; the use of various rigs and wire systems to simulate flight; and the use of full CGI for characters and sequences that required complete digital creation. These categories often overlap—many scenes used a combination of all three methods. However, by breaking down the process into these main techniques, we can better understand how the magic of flying was brought to life in these films.
This research will guide you through how these techniques evolved across the film series. We’ll look at early experiments with simple wirework and green screen work, the development of advanced rig systems like the Matrix rigs used in later films, and the creation of fully digital characters such as the Dementors. By analyzing specific scenes and using information from the VFX teams and crew members involved, this study aims to show both the creative vision and the technical work behind some of the most memorable flying moments in the Harry Potter series. Ultimately, this visual research shows that visual effects are more than just tools for creating spectacle—they are essential to storytelling. In Harry Potter, the ability to fly is more than just a visual effect; it represents freedom, danger, courage, and magic itself. Understanding how these effects were made allows us to appreciate the work and creativity that turned a beloved book series into a cinematic phenomenon. What follows is a detailed look at the methods, challenges, and innovations that gave flight to the magic of Harry Potter.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 2001
When things where actually made to fly
Behind the scenes, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 2001
At the beginning of the Harry Potter journey, in the early 2000s, the production team used a lot of physical effects on set, a more traditional take without heavily relying on computer-generated imagery (CGI). This means a lot of special effects were created physically on set; this included the use of tangible props, makeup, costumes, animatronics, and mechanical technologies.
The magical candles that were used to light the magical Great Hall were suspended physically, each one of them one by one, on the ceiling. This was done with the use of tungsten wires—metallic wires that are fire-resistant and known for having the highest melting point. However, this was not a technique that was used in all of the movies since the candles had a tendency of melting down and, as a result, flipping over, which was dangerous and not as efficient as candles that were later on made using CGI.
Candles attached to the ceiling with the wires
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 2001
This was not the only place where John Richardson, the special effects supervisor, opted for physical on-set special effects without overcomplicating things. We see this again when we are introduced to one of the first magic spells in the Harry Potter movie. In this scene, we see magic come to life when the students attempt to cast their first spell that allows objects to float in the air and move them around.
Hermione successfully levitates the feather using Wingardium Leviosa, making it float and move in the air as she controls it with her wand. What was happening on set was some sort of puppetry control. The feather was attached to a fishing rod, moving it around and matching the movement of Hermione’s magic wand. John Richardson said, «Doing it the simple way puts a natural feeling to things.»
John Richardson showing the fishing rode that was used to film the Wingardium Leviosa scene
Wingardium Leviosa scene, Harry Potter and the Harry Potter and the Chamber of secrets
Such a simple and a perfectly working technique was used in multiple places in the movie. One among them was the scene where Ron’s hat strings are seen to be flying, in the 3rd movie of Harry Potter.
Ron’s hat strings being pulled with a fishing rod and strings, behind the scenes
Ron’s hat strings flying, Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban, 2004
Making small and light candles fly by actually suspending them on set might sound like nothing crazy, but you might be surprised when bigger things were made to fly, like humans, let’s say. Like the time when Harry’s Aunty was sent into mid-air.
According to special effects supervisor John Richardson, «My preference is obviously practical effects—that’s what I’ve done for the last 50 years or so. There’s room for both in filmmaking; the challenge is getting the right balance.» Across the eight Harry Potter films, he noted that the team managed to achieve «a good blend of practical and CGI that fit together pretty seamlessly,» ensuring that whether it was floating candles or flying characters, the effects worked together to create movie magic.»
We all remember this memorable scene that we have at the beginning of the third movie of Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. A little bit about the scene: during a family dinner, Aunt Marge kept on speaking badly of Harry’s parents that passed away. This makes Harry Potter lose control and lose control of his magic, sending a curse on Aunt Marge. As a result, we have Aunt Marge inflating just like a balloon would.
In this scene, Nick Dudman, the supervisor of makeup effects and animatronics supervisor in this movie of Harry Potter, and his team wanted to shoot this scene specifically relying on practical effects only. A group of around 20 people worked on building a complex inflatable costume that was made out of multiple layers of prosthetics, rubber chambers covering both the body and the face of Aunt Marge. The costume was so big that it ended up weighing almost 23kg. In this scene, CGI was used only to remove the strings that the actress was attached to.
Use of wire rigs for flying scenes
Now let’s dive into the use of rigs in flying scenes of the Harry Potter movies. Rigs include harnesses, wire rigs, and mechanical setups that support actors during stunts, flying scenes, or other physically demanding shots. As mentioned before, the special effects supervisor would opt for a perfect combination of physical effects and CGI.
When filming a flying scene, the actor first wears a special harness and is lifted using wires attached to rigs in front of a green screen inside a studio. The actor performs the flying movements while the riggers control the wires to create smooth, safe motion. After filming, the green background is digitally removed, and a new environment, such as a magical sky or castle, is added behind the actor. Visual effects artists then adjust the lighting, shadows, and colors so the actor blends naturally with the new background. Finally, additional effects like wind or sparkles might be added to complete the scene, making it look like the actor is really flying in that fantastical place.
Filming a Flying Scene from Harry Potter — Harness, Green Screen, and MPC VFX Breakdown
This mechanism was used to make considerably larger objects fly, even bigger than what we had seen with the Aunt Marge situation, and here we are talking about cars. In the second film, «Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,» we see the scene where the two best friends fly to school in a magical flying car, the Ford Anglia.
The flying Ford Anglia was brought to life using a combination of practical effects and visual effects by studios like MPC. To film the scene, different versions of the car were utilized—in fact, 16 cars were employed. Some were equipped with race car engines for scenes requiring high-speed movement, some were cut in half to capture close-up shots of the characters inside, and some had most of their internal mechanical components removed to reduce weight so that they could be suspended in mid-air. Rigging the car to a crane allowed the filmmakers to manipulate it in various ways to achieve the desired movement for the scene. This included different tilts, changes in direction, and rotation in mid-air, precisely as a flying Ford Anglia would be expected to behave.
Behind the scenes of Ford Anglia on a Rigg
Flying Ford Anglia from the movie, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Use of broom rigs for flying scenes
Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets scene with the flying brooms
The Harry Potter movies, like no others out there, are highly associated with broomstick flying. This is not only because of the high presence of broomsticks but also because of a whole new sport that came to life in the movie—Quidditch, a sport that involves flying on a broom.
John Richardson, the special effects supervisor, mentioned that one of the main difficulties the team faced was the absence of ready-made broom rigs that they could use in the market. «Broomstick flying is something that hasn’t been done well in movies before,» he said. This meant they had to build these rigs on their own, and that’s exactly what they did. The technology of building broom rigs went through a very long experimentation and innovation process throughout the 8 years of movie production. One of the very first rig samples looked like a plane broom attached to a manipulatable rig. This made it nearly impossible for the actors to stay on the brooms for a long time because it was very uncomfortable to sit on them. Later on, the rigs had a seat attached to them, something that looked very similar to a bicycle seat.
Behind the scenes of the broom rig on set
Actors were filmed on a green screen stage, where they sat on the broomstick rigs. These rigs, moved with the actors to simulate the motion of flying, giving a more natural look to the scenes. To capture their movements accurately, motion control cameras were used, allowing the actors’ actions to be recorded with high precision. In post-production, the green screens were removed, and the VFX team seamlessly integrated the actors into digital environments.
Behind the scenes of shooting the Quidditch game
As production continued across the Harry Potter films, the broom rig technology underwent significant improvements. When the team worked on the later movies, particularly Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, they introduced Matrix rigs—representing a substantial technological upgrade.
What made these rigs special was their capability to perform multiple movements at the same time: they could spin both horizontally and vertically while also moving in all directions—up, down, forward, and backward. This multi-directional capability allowed for much more versatile movement patterns, capturing the chaotic and unpredictable feel of high-speed aerial flight. The Matrix rigs were built to provide actors with a more authentic sensation of flying, recreating the kinds of acrobatic maneuvers seen in actual extreme sports and action sequences.
Use of Matrix rigs for the movie Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
The difference between the two rig technologies can be clearly seen in the shots attached below. The first image shows a scene from the original Harry Potter movie, where the flying sequences were more limited in their range of motion. In contrast, the second image from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince demonstrates the advanced capabilities of the Matrix rigs, with more dynamic angles and complex aerial movements that weren’t possible with the earlier technology.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets quidditch game
Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince quidditch game
Not all the time were flying broom scenes on rigs filmed indoors in a room with a green screen. In some cases, some flying scenes were even shot outdoors.
Like during the first flying lessons that were held at Hogwarts for the first-year students in the movie Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001). In the scene where Neville had his first not very successful ride on the broom, they had young actor Matthew Lewis sit on a broom rig that was attached to a truck that would simulate the lack of control movement, making the actor fully immerse into the reality of this scene.
Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) on a broom rig attached to a truck
Neville Longbottom loosimg control on the broom, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 2001
Use of full CGI for flight simulations
Dementors in the movie Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban
Dementors were among the characters in the movie that appeared flying or, to be more precise, floating throughout the film. This is a case that we couldn’t miss out on in our list. The characters that we see in the movie were among the ones that were created fully with CGI, or maybe not? Let’s have a closer look.
The idea to make the Dementors full CGI was not the initial idea; the team came to that decision after a couple of experiments with physical effects. Alfonso Cuarón, the director of the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, wanted to bring this character to life by building a physical puppet but didn’t achieve the result that they wanted. The team got closer after they submerged the puppet into water and animated it with the help of underwater puppeteers, recorded the video, and reversed it backward, but there was a little problem with that—filming underwater was nearly impossible. That’s when the team opted for going full CGI.
Underwater puppeteers animating Dementors puppet underwater
The Dementor maquette, sculpted by Kate Hill and Rob Bliss.
As a result, the team got the main idea to use underwater simulations as their main reference, and the task of creating the Dementors digitally was assigned to Industrial Light & Magic. The team used the third-scale physical puppet that had been built earlier as a scanning reference for their digital model. This puppet had been sculpted by Kate Hill and Rob Bliss. Lead CG modeler Michael Koper then built all the skeletal details digitally, and digital artist Tom Fejes covered it in fabric, keeping everything very dark and mysterious, just as director Alfonso Cuarón wanted. ILM had to recreate that underwater floating effect digitally, but this time with full control over every movement. The digital model was rigged with a single cloth-simulation mesh, and animated wind sources were used to push the fabric into the rib cage, giving glimpses of the Dementors' skeletal anatomy underneath.
Dementors 3d modeling following water simulations
Dementors in the movie Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban
Dementors form the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
After looking closely at how the flying scenes in the Harry Potter films were made, one thing becomes very clear: the magic of these movies comes from a mix of both physical special effects and digital visual effects. Before doing this research, I expected most of the flying scenes to be fully CGI. But what surprised me the most was how many of them were actually created physically on set, using rigs, wires, puppetry, and practical tricks. Harry Potter is a magical movie series not just because of the story, but because of the way this magic is created behind the scenes. The films use the best of both worlds: practical effects that make the magic feel physically present, and digital effects that make the impossible possible. Together, they create a believable world where flying on a broom, floating objects, or drifting Dementors feel real.
In the end, this research shows how much work, creativity, and experimentation went into making these movies. The combination of physical and virtual effects is what makes Harry Potter visually unique and why the magic still holds up today.
Additional sources for the information gathered about the making of Harry Potter include the following websites:
SOURCES AND LINKS Great Hall Floating Candles — Harry Potter Wiki https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Hall_floating_candles
Making the Dementors Fly — YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDlnjT08YyA
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban VFX Breakdown — YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EgdcJ0D7-E
Dementors in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — Monster Legacy https://monsterlegacy.net/2017/03/04/dementor-harry-potter-azkaban/
Dark Magic: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban VFX — Computer Graphics World https://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2007/Volume-30-Issue-8-Aug-2007-/Dark-Magic.aspx
Real Magic: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban VFX Breakdown — VFXWorld https://www.awn.com/vfxworld/real-magic-harry-potter-and-prisoner-azkaban
Behind the Scenes of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrNVAmFNi6Q
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets VFX — MPC VFX https://www.mpcvfx.com/en/filmography/harry-potter-and-the-chamber-of-secrets/
Broomstick Flying Rig Setup Photo — Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/karen_roe/7385984364/in/photostream/
Harry Potter Flying Sequences: Making the Magic Real — YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrhiP9BiwHs
Image sources
Most of the images used in this research are screenshots taken from the actual Harry Potter movies. These images showcase various scenes and behind-the-scenes moments, highlighting both practical and digital effects used in the film series.
