Interview conducted by and © Edward Gross
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: When you look at Deathly Hallows Part One, overall what is your feeling about it?
DAVID YATES: I feel really excited, I feel quite jazzed. It's interesting to be away from the school – that's always been a big feature of these movies, so it feels very different, simply because the enormous character of the castle and Hogwarts isn't present. It feels quite grown-up, which I like very much, and it feels quite emotional and scary. We actually watched it this morning and it was the first time the whole film actually felt, rhythmically, like it was flying. We took a cut to L.A. five weeks ago, the studio was really enthusiastic and they liked it a lot. We took it to Chicago three weeks ago for a sneak screening, and they liked it a lot, but when I watched it both in L.A. and Chicago I was thinking about a bird taking off. It flies a bit and then just comes down to earth, but today was the first time the film really flew and it was an amazing feeling.
SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: It sounds like the material is allowing you to tap into different aspects of yourself?
DAVID YATES: Totally, and Deathly Hallows is so different from Half-Blood Prince, and very different to the last two movies. It's a road movie, — it's got much more variety, it's much more about the emotional states of these characters growing older, and it's more nuanced than either of the previous films. And then there’s Jo Rowling's writing; there are so many routes you can take, and so many rich things to pick off the branches as it were, and it feels like it's evolving. I think there are different advantages to having a single director to carry it through as well, so we're good actually. We're all excited and pleased. I'm really looking forward to Part Two, which is very different from Part One . Part Two is more of an opera —bigger, more expansive, operatic, lots of battles – and much more of a fantasy movie. Part One has got it's big action set pieces, but it's much more about the delicacy of the relationships between the three characters, who are, you know, refuges on the road, and Part Two is big, epic – they're almost back to Harry Potter's fantasy roots as it were, so there's enough variation in the journey over those four pictures.
Check out full blown coverage of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 in the new issue of Movie Magic magazine, on sale November 8th. It features interviews with cast and crew, a set visit, and much more.