Harry Potter may have been overjoyed at going to Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry, but the children playing Harry, Ron and Hermione in the forthcoming HBO TV series will vanish from their own schools for the rest of their childhoods.<\/p>\n
Instead the child actors \u2013 along with those playing Draco Malfoy, Ginny Weasley and the other Hogwarts pupils \u2013 will get much of their education from tutors at a \u201cmini-school\u201d to be conjured up at Warner Brothers\u2019 Leavesden studio in Watford, north of London, when filming starts later this year.<\/p>\n
With HBO\u2019s chief executive, Casey Bloys, saying the project will run for \u201c10 consecutive years\u201d, the child actors now aged between nine and 11 will spend their teens fitting lessons and exam revision around learning lines and sitting in makeup trucks.<\/p>\n
Jo Austin, of Tayberry Tuition, which has supplied specialist on-set tutors for Netflix and BBC productions, said: \u201cThis Harry Potter series is fairly unique in that it is child-based. The children are the stars and they are going to be on screen all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t imagine many days filming when you haven\u2019t got any children on set, so I think they are going to be in there most of the time and working very hard. They will be out of school for a period of six to nine months to film and complete each series.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nathaniel McCullagh, a co-founder of Simply Learning Tuition, who has worked on both sides of the camera as a tutor and a director, predicted: \u201cThey\u2019ll probably have a school at Leavesden that is essentially a series of classrooms with subject tutors, and they\u2019ll wheel the children in and out of class just like a mini-school.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you start building that level of establishment you\u2019ll need management \u2013 a head teacher, a director of studies, individual tutors. It\u2019s far more complex than a typical on-set tutor who is tasked with looking after a couple of kids for a few hours each day for a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know who is going to get the gig, but it\u2019s a wonderful opportunity to look after maybe 30 children for months at a time and maybe longer … They have got those children for 10 years or thereabouts, and they\u2019ll be responsible for their entire education.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint starred in the Harry Potter film series for 10 years from 2001. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau\/PA<\/p>\n
Judith Phillips, who worked as a tutor on the original Harry Potter films, has previously told the Guardian<\/a> that the aim is for children to get at least 15 hours of teaching a week, with tutors on call from 8am. For crowd scenes such as Quidditch matches, up to 400 children could be involved.<\/p>\n \u201cTime is money on the film set, so when you get a knock on the door saying they need your pupil on set, it\u2019s not a case of finishing up what you\u2019re working on \u2013 it\u2019s put your pen down and go,\u201d Phillips said.<\/p>\n Austin said the child actors she worked with were usually eager to be tutored. \u201cThe students we meet are very hard-working in general, I\u2019ve yet to meet one who is a precocious brat. There are long, very boring days on film sets. Maybe in Hollywood it might be different, but we\u2019ve worked with a wide range of child actors and we\u2019ve never had an issue with any of the students.\u201d<\/p>\n McCullagh said chaperones played a vital role in managing children\u2019s workload and making sure productions stick to the legal time limits on work, which vary with age.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem with being on a film set is that there\u2019s never enough time,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how much money you\u2019ve got behind the film; things go wrong. The lighting changes, the actors don\u2019t quite pull off the performance they need or the director wants something different. So there\u2019s always the temptation to say to a child: \u2018Can you just do another take?\u2019 That\u2019s when the chaperone has to step in and say: \u2018No\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cIf children are on set being filmed two hours a day, they\u2019ll be in makeup and wardrobe for another two hours,\u201d McCullagh added. \u201cThey\u2019ll be transported from wherever they are staying, but as soon as they get in the car or step into makeup, the clock starts ticking. It\u2019s an enormous race against time to try and get them in front of the camera and do some acting.\u201d<\/p>\n