Harry Potter - The Ministry of Magic

The Ministry of Magic:

• This set took 22 weeks to build
• The Ministry of Magic is set underneath the Ministry of Defense in London
• 50 London buses could fit inside the Atrium
• There are over 30,000 tiles in the Atrium made out of lacquered medium density fiberboard (MDF).
• The whole set, including boxes and boxes of tiles, were stored at Leavesden in between films
• There is a coffee stall called Ministry Munchies, located in the Atrium where wizards can sit at one of twelve (real) marble tables from France while tucking into refreshments such as coffee and bagels.
• A team of props men regularly polished the wooden floor between takes as it would get so dirty and dusty.
• The gold fountain was made of fiberglass and sculpted by the sculpting department at the Studio.
• 14 offices were built on scaffolding in the Atrium. Weight was a problem in the offices so most of what can be seen (including filing cabinets) is made out of photographic images stuck on cardboard boxes with token bits of real furniture inside. Only stuntmen were allowed in the offices, when it needed to look like people were busy working in them.
• 42 brass oil lamps burning in the office windows were made especially for the film.
• There are twelve lifts in total (two decks of six lifts) in a semi circle. The lifts go up, down, backwards and forwards.
• All of the lifts also have control panels on the inside and a scrolling map. It"s an interpretation of the London Underground map, but all the paths are illuminated tubes, with little floats which run through the tubing and show your lift and the other lifts moving around within the complex of the Ministry of Magic. It has a mechanism behind it which controls it.

The Room of Requirement:

• In Order of the Phoenix, the walls are all mirrored and five chandeliers hang from the roof, which were made at the studio. Because they had to shake, they couldn"t be made out of glass. Instead, they were made of a very high quality plastic.
• The grates on the floor allowed for the room to be lit from under the ground, to help with mirror reflection.
• All of the surfaces, including the windows, are mirrored for an 'enigmatic quality"
• The crew had to wear blue plastic protective overshoes all of the time on this set. Even the cast had to wear them in between takes.
• 4000-plus pieces of furniture were bought to make up the massive piles of furniture in the Room of Requirement scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.

Shell Cottage:

• 4,500 individual giant scallop shells were needed for the roof.
• Hundreds of tufts of grass were individually dressed into the sand dunes at Fresh Water West in Wales.
• Over 12 tons of water was used to weigh down the set.
• The set was 90% completed at Leavesden studios and then cut up and transported to the Welsh location. A tractor had to be used to get the set along the beach and then it had to be carried up into the dunes by the crew.
• Because of the very public location of Shell Cottage, it is probably the set most photographed by fans.
• The design of the diamond window was based on a national trust property called 'A La Ronde" in Devon