Short post for today!
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m not sure about some of the details inside the quad. It’s hard to find good reference. One particularly mysterious spot has been the wall that cuts the southeast corner at a 45° angle in this old render:
But then I found this video from Plowman Craven, a company that worked on some of the films. About halfway through, there are partial CG models of the OOTP castle. The last few frames of one of the shots give a low-res view of part of that wall. It’s not much, but along with the other glimpses we have, a better sense of what that wall looks like is starting to emerge.
First of all, I’m taking this as confirmation that the big window to the marble staircase was really there – and slightly higher than where I had it. There’s also a horizontal ledge just above it, and the top of the wall descends toward the right. This actually shows up vaguely in a few other images, now that I look again. It even looks like there might be multiple levels to the flat triangular roof area.
Anyway, I still don’t have anywhere near as close a look as I’d like, but here’s my revised attempt at recreating that wall as it might have appeared in the first three films.
In GOF through HBP, it would have looked similar; the floor was just moved up and the cloister removed.
Speaking of HBP…let’s start that version of the castle! There were numerous changes in this film, but by the far the most prominent one in the final cut of the film is the new astronomy tower. Here I’m prepping the surrounding areas:
The Durham section’s central tower (toward the right) has been shortened by 24 feet so that there are only 3 rows of small windows in the middle section rather than 5. I’d imagine this was for the sake of balancing the silhouette with the new astro tower.
But that tower is going to be a project unto itself, so I think I’ll save that for the next post!
Hogwarts 4D 
Hi,
This new post is so interesting! I am excited about your project and I am following it day by day.
The quad is maybe the most mysterious part of the castle. I have some questions about it, and I’d like to hear your opinion.
First of all, I wonder why they didn’t make a passage to connect the entrance hall to the quad courtyard. It simply doesn’t make sense to me! They designed that giant arch overlooking the quad interior but doesn’t allow you to go to the courtyard. Maybe at the beginning they had another idea about the quad. In fact, it’s also strange that in the movies we see a lot of different courtyards but they never show the quad one: a very big area of the castle apperas totally useless.
I would also like to know if PS and COS videogames can be in same cases a reference for you; in XBOX, Game Cube and PS2 versions the model of the castle seems to me overall quite accurate but some details are totally wrong and I can’t explain why. Do you know which references they used? if they used blueprints or the Warner Bros giant model, why same parts of the castle are accurate but others aren’t?
Thanks a lot for you attention!
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*Anyway, I don’t know why but in the previous post everytime I used “some” my phone replaced it with “same”
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The quad is mysterious indeed! I think it came into existence as a way to fit the Gloucester Cathedral filming locations into the castle. They may have planned to get some shots of it – might have even done so, but they ended up on the cutting room floor, other than that one shot in COS. In any case, the front walkway was evidently going to be higher up at one point – same level as the stone bridge – so it may be that it was so far above the quad they never even thought of it.
As for the games, none of them seem to feature an accurate quad. I think they had more reference in terms of blueprints and stuff in the later games, but they also made changes for the sake of aesthetics, efficiency, or gameplay. For instance, the later games have these unique cloisters still in there, plus a rather awkward staircase up to their roof. That was all added to suit the gameplay.
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Thank you for you reply! Thinking about the quad “mistery”, it seems to me that at the begging they wanted to use it to fit the Gloucester Cathedral locations into the castle, but at the end they decided not to show the courtyard in order to avoid inconsistencies; in fact, they used Gloucester Cathedral corridors for places that should not be near each other (Gryffindor common room, girls bathroom etc…). If they had clearly shown that the corridors faced the same courtyard, this would have created inconsistencies.
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Wow you’re flying through this at a blazing pace now. Never noticed the Quad did that. Astronomy tower here we come!
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if you dont make a book with all this pages, I will do it! I need to have this in a big hardcover encyclopedia. Think about it, all the persons here will buy that
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Oh, I’m sure Warner Bros. would never let that happen. That’s the hard part with fan projects like these – profiting off them (legally) is rare!
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well, It doesnt have to be legal, if you know what I mean XD
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