Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

To get this blog going with its actual mission, let's take a look at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The saga of Harry Potter draws to its end with a larger-than-life story that brings his battle with the forces of evil in the wizarding world to an end. In the way an epic of this magnitude requires, people die, things we know are changed forever, and the stakes are no less than the wizarding world, but our own as well.

The film will no doubt capture some of this, but the trailer falls short of expectations for me, relying mostly on its music for its epic quality. David Yates, the director of Harry Potter films 5, 6, and the final two films from one book, has never been particularly good at crafting a 'money shot' in his films. No easy task given the incredible sights and their general abundance in a Harry Potter film.

Where this becomes a problem is that the trailers for his film, while action-packed, lack a visual quality that was rich in the first four films of the series. This is not to call Yates weak, as he has directed two very interesting chapters so far, but rather to say that his training from television and not cinema has had the visual effect of not looking for the money shot. The trailer shot. The shot of the bomb squad guy pulling up six bombs out of the dust in the Hurt Locker.

Structurally the trailer is messy, with a slow dialogue beat to start, followed by intense montage, then stopped with a further awkwardly not-as-tough-as-you-want exchange, followed by more action.

Again, the music soars and helps elevate the material, but the visuals don't quite rise to meet the audio, and one is left longing for something a bit more.

For the best trailer the Potter saga has to offer, brimming with mystery, magic, fun, and built with purpose and class, they will never top the original teaser for "Prisoner of Azkaban."



Until next time!