….
Of course, it wouldn't be real filming if everything just worked the way it was supposed to.
Regal called out. "Cut!"
Heads turned.
A few crew members froze mid-movement.
Someone near the playback monitor tilted their head, unsure if it was a joke or just one of his usual reflexive snaps.
Regal lowered his hand, exhaled through his nose, then gestured vaguely toward the frame. "What are the owls even looking at?"
He stepped away from the monitor, ducking past a C-stand, as he moved toward the line of perches at the edge of the set.
A few owls were blinking slowly in the diffused light, feathers puffed from the cool breeze of the stage fans.
One of them was still shifting in place, head swiveling in slow, unnatural arcs, not at the actor, or at the prop house, but dead behind the camera.
Regal crouched beside it, gently extending a hand, palm open.
The owl didn't flinch but its amber eyes darted sideways.
"You guys were supposed to be the calm part of this." He muttered, scratching lightly at the feathers near the back of its neck.
Another owl blinked in slow judgment from a neighboring perch. "First the letters flew wrong, now you are pulling this on me?"
He stood up, brushed the owl dander off his jeans, and scanned the stage again - just in time to watch another take go nowhere.
The owls were distracted, not hostile, just... curious.
Which wasn't ideal when what he needed was menace.
A quiet, crawling dread as Aunt Petunia peers through the blinds and sees the world going wrong.
"Right." He said to himself. Then louder: "Cameron!"
Cameron was mid-conversation with one of the lighting guys near the arch rig, but he turned, brow already knitted. "What's up?"
"I need something specific."
Regal motioned him over, voice dropping as he explained it.
He wasn't even sure if this scene would survive the edit.
It wasn't in the original.
But he decided to go for it anyway… He can't make a decision that he might regret later.
A quick insert, just a few shots.
Aunt Petunia looks out the kitchen window as the owls close in.
Nothing bombastic or big swell of music.
Just... her unease.
The first real moment that something in her world is undeniably off.
The problem was, the owls didn't care.
They would perch, yes.
Flap when prompted.
But none of them would hold eye contact with Fiona, the actress playing Petunia.
Every take, they looked off - sometimes at crew, sometimes at reflections, once at a light rig that shimmered wrong.
And Regal couldn't have that.
If the owl didn't look like it was staring at her - really staring, like it had come from some old, unknowable place - then the scene would just fall apart.
So he thought for a second, then said. "We are using a dead mouse."
Cameron blinked. "Come again?"
"We sewed it into the hem of her apron, back of the waistband, below the waistline so it's not visible to the camera. Like that, it won't make it into frame. But it will be close enough for the owl to focus on it."
Cameron blinked again, slower this time.
It wasn't even the strangest request the art department had fielded that month.
Ten minutes later, one of the animal handlers returned from their van with a tiny frozen rodent wrapped in cheesecloth.
They stitched it into the fabric with surgical precision, just enough scent exposure to keep the owl keyed in, not enough to catch on camera.
Fiona, surprisingly, didn't complain.
She just looked at Regal, then at the customer adjusting the seam of her apron, then back at Regal again.
"As long as it doesn't wiggle." She said dryly.
A snort came from somewhere near the grip rack - "If it does, that's a union issue" - but no one laughed too loudly.
They reset quietly.
Fiona moved into position, hands trembling against the old metal blinds, and the owl tilted its head sharply toward her - eyes fixed, body still, feathers bristled.
Regal didn't say a word.
He just watched through the monitor as the owl stared straight at her like it had known her name long before the letter ever arrived.
And in that moment… It worked.
Though it wasn't in the way he initially planned, it didn't matter.
That's what it meant to direct this kind of film, one hurdle after another, sometimes solved with quiet patience, sometimes with straight-up improvisation, sometimes with tricks that belonged in a magician's pocket rather than a script supervisor's binder.
Not everything worked… or could.
He had already swallowed a few compromises on day one.
Like the green eyes.
Regal had wanted Daniel's eyes to be green, just like they were in the book like his mother's. But the contacts had barely lasted twenty minutes - Daniel's eyes watered nonstop, then turned a worrying shade of pink.
It was clear he couldn't wear them.
They tried again the next day, with lighter lenses.
Same result.
The verdict was clear. Daniel was allergic to the contacts.
By day three, Regal had tossed the idea.
Blue it was.
And then there were the buck teeth.
They had built a small prosthetic for Lilly, hoping to mirror Hermione's overly large front teeth from the earlier chapters.
It looked convincing… until she tried to talk.
Regal sat through one take, quietly watching her stumble through the lines. Then another. On the third, she spat it out mid-scene and half-laughed. "This isn't going to work, is it?"
He had already made the call before she finished the sentence.
The teeth were gone by lunch.
But the strangest, and maybe the most frustrating situation yet - was Hagrid.
Not Robin Williams. Robin was perfect, warm, booming, gentle when needed, and every bit the character Regal remembered from the page.
But the problem was Robin was also just under six feet tall.
And Hagrid… well, Hagrid wasn't.
Making him tower meant cheating the frame - every time.
So, like the old team before him, Regal relied on four ingredients: oversized sets, miniature ones for the rest of the cast, forced perspective, and a dedicated stunt double for wide shots.
That stunt double had been Martin Bayfield, a six-foot-ten ex-rugby player who moved with surprising grace and knew how to wear Hagrid's silence like a second skin.
Until yesterday.
Martin had twisted something bad during rigging rehearsals near the hut exterior.
Ankle, knee - Regal hadn't caught the specifics.
All he heard was that he wouldn't be walking, let alone lumbering, for a while.
In the search for a solution to this problem… Regal was back in his chair, chewing a pen lid, staring at the slate.
Tall, big, heavy-looking, but agile.
Good posture, controlled steps, not camera shy.
The checklist was looping in his brain when someone passed in front of him, walking from catering toward the trailers.
He froze.
He didn't recognize him immediately - not as a solution. Just saw the boots first, then the bulk, then the silent ease with which the guy moved through the set without knocking over a single light stand.
It wasn't until he reached for a bottle of water from the props table that Regal blinked.
Wait.
Why hadn't he thought of this?
The man had been with them since day one.
Standing near the trailers, checking exits, holding back autograph hunters.
At that point carrying a water bottle in one hand and a security badge swinging from his waist.
The Rock.
Regal's personal bodyguard.
Six-foot-five, broad as a doorway, shoulders like an old church beam.
But more than that - steady and composed.
He moved with that rare kind of control that big men rarely had in front of cameras.
Regal stood up. "Hey."
The Rock turned, bottle halfway to his lips.
"Have you ever worn a wig and a beard?"
The Rock raised an eyebrow.
"Hey." Regal called out.
The Rock turned. "Yeah?"
Regal squinted. "How do you feel about wearing a wig, fake beard, and walking around like you are eight-foot-two?"
A pause.
"As long as I don't have to talk?"
A short nod.
"Done." Regal gave a thumb's up sign.
And just like that, the biggest casting problem of the week was solved.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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