Harry Potter: Page To Screen Review (5/5)

Potter fans should be shouting 'Accio' already! A perfect, quintessential rendition of the hard work of thousands of cast and crew to bring one of the best book series of all time to screen.
For me and I suspect for the majority of the fanbase, it's still quite hard to believe that the days of new Harry Potter novels and films arriving in stores and theatres every year on end are over, and that we have to 'move on' with our lives in order to leave the tales of the Boy Wizard behind. Thank goodness, then, for Page To Screen, a beautifully designed reference book that covers the full adaptation of each of the seven novels into eight feature films in immensely intricate detail! Perhaps Warner Bros were holding off on the release of Deathly Hallows: Part 2 to package this as a full collection (a great move on their part, even if it pushes the RRP to a whopping £50), but I can't help but wonder in some ways why they didn't release the seperate 'volumes' of the piece alongside their respective movies at the time of their worldwide debuts, as they would have made stunning visual companions at the time. Nevertheless, what we get here is a sublime rendering of the hardships directors like Columbus and Yates, the crew and the vast array of cast members went through in order to bring J.K. Rowling's fantasy magic children's series to the big screen without a hitch. The visual and script changes that were made under each new production team are intriguing to look at in detail, and for once Warner Bros and co seem to have taken a 'no holds barred' approach, providing an extensive and broad outlook on the technical and tonal shifts that went on behind-the-scenes in order to fit the notions of each of Rowling's varied works. Of course, part of the reason the authors have clearly had so much access to the wide sources of content on offer here must be that production's all over now, and the press releases and interviews are on the interweb for everyone to see right now, yet it's the amazingly polished way in which Page To Screen presents itself that really makes it stand out from any compilation I've seen in a good while, easily enough to convince the most hardcore fans of the Boy Who Lived that they're reading totally new words from the fabled men and women who transferred some of the most acclaimed pieces of children's literature of all time from page to screen as the title notes. In essence, this really is what it says on the cover- Harry Potter: Page To Screen is the only place where you'll ever see such a magnficently respectful rendition of the production process of this wonderful film franchise, and a fitting farewell to quite possibly one of the best series of all time.