Harry Potter #KeepTheSecrets SPOILER thread — Page 2

greenifyme2 said: "That would make a lot of sense! I could see the portable tank on their backs under their costume, but didn’t think that the “lake” could be so much longer than what we see. The three times I saw Part 2, Albus always pops up right on cue. Scorpius must hand signal to him somehow under the water is my only guess there."

Again, I have no insider information, this is just my take on it... I assume there's another person (a stage hand or member of the tech crew) who is in the water tank with whatever actor is in there, just for safety purposes. In my mind, the actor is using a small hand-held tank (or breathing off a second regulator from the stage hand's scuba tank) and the actor hands his tank or regulator to the stage hand before popping to the surface. I'd be surprised if an actor was under water alone just from a safety standpoint.

My assumption re: the telephone booth effect:

On entering the booth, the actor lowers below stage via trapdoor. The outline of her/his person is maintained using some sort of wire frame. For the disappearing effect, the wire frame and surrounding robe is collapsed and pulled through the telephone.

When Harry, Ron & Hermione enter the booth together, you notice they walk offstage into the dark and reemerge for a few moments before entering the booth. I think when they return from stage right, it's just one actor surrounded by dummy frames of another actor on either side. Then all three frames collapse for full effect.

I hope I'm totally wrong! The magic in this show was thrilling, I only noticed one effect and it blew my mind in its simplicity, but I won't give that one away :)

I'm also puzzled as to how they managed to light the dementors' flight so well as to hide their wires. Truly could not see them. It was a beautifully eery effect.

Updated On: 7/31/18 at 01:12 PM

Can someone describe what it looks like when Albus and Scorpius sabotage Cedric in the second task (in the lake)? The day I saw the show, something must've gone wrong because nothing was happening to him.

Scarlet Leigh said: "Skye8 said: "Can someone describe what it looks like when Albus and Scorpius sabotage Cedric in the second task (in the lake)? The day I saw the show, something must've gone wrong because nothing was happening to him."

When the spell is cast his bodystarts to expand like a balloon and he floatsupward. One of the very few less impressive effects for me because to me it looked like he was in an astronauts space suit the entire time. Like the costume already looks half filledwhen he appeared on stage when I saw it. As if it had been turned on to early."

Scarlet is correct, but the effect worked beautifully when I saw it. On cue, Cedric blows up into a sphere-reminiscent of Violet Beauregard in the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” movie, if you’ve seen that. Once he is essentially a sphere with arms, legs and a head sticking out, he floats upward, out of sight.

Lauren2 said: "Guys I am curious how much of the stuff in the Harry/Draco fight happen? Especially the bending back. Also when Delphi tortures Scorpius. Is there just wires we can’t see?"

The Harry/Draco fight involved "human puppetry," for lack of a more knowledgeable term. There were other people in all black, nearly invisible, that were interacting with the objects being struck by spells, lifting the characters, etc.

If you're talking about when Scorpius leans way forward, I suspect they're using the same process Michael Jackson used for Smooth Criminal. Basically, shoes bolt to the stage to keep you in place. There weren't wires for that - I was 10 feet away.

Updated On: 7/31/18 at 11:14 PM

This thread is a complete disappointment. They have put every effort to do everything right with this show, and ask the audience to keep the secrets.

If you don't want to read or discuss spoilers about the show, don't click on this thread. No one is forcing you to be here or to read it.

HBBrock said: "This thread is a complete disappointment. They have put every effort to do everything right with this show, and ask the audience to keep the secrets."

Why are you reading the thread?

Well, as OP of this thread, I feel terrible and responsible that it caused such hurt to PThespian. I'm fairly new to the board as a contributor, but I've been reading it for a while, and I always respected and learned a lot from PThespian. I understand the value of the desire to #KeepTheSecrets, and I was hesitant to even create this thread, and I think you can see this from the way the first post was written. But now that it exists, and I've been thinking about it, I am able to justify the need for it further. PThespian – if you are still lurking there, I hope you might read this and see this from another point of view.

1) I had a question about the plot, about something that didn't make sense to me. This continued to bother me. I have no one I can talk to about this – I have no friends who have seen this show. The only place I could resolve this was right here on this board. This wasn't about revealing a secret. But I couldn't ask the question without a major spoiler. This thread was the only way I could think of to do this. I purposely put "#KeepTheSecrets" in the title to remind folks about this. And I got an answer, maybe not 100% satisfying to me, but close enough, so now I can sleep at night!

2) There were already some questions coming up on the HP Seating thread. This seemed like a dangerous place for this kind of discussion, as it would be very easy for someone to accidentally wander into forbidden territory. It's clear that these questions are going to come up, so at least with a dedicated thread identified as a spoiler thread, they could be isolated from the more open discussion about the Cursed Child. In that respect, this thread is helping, not hurting.

3) I understand the value of the #KeepTheSecrets cause. It adds to the mystery of the show and the experience. But there's a bit of a paradox, that while everyone is being asked to #KeepTheSecrets, the entire script is published and available to anyone who has $20 or a library card. You'll find a lot more spoilers there than you ever will in this thread.

4) So with the script available, the only real other spoilers of concern are the stage effects that aren't described in the script. First of all, reading about them and seeing them are completely different things. If I go to a magic show and I read in advance that someone gets cut in half, that doesn't destroy my enjoyment of the act. But further, just as with the script, the effects are all over the internet – you just have to search "Harry Potter Cursed Child Magic Tricks." Still, this remains my biggest concern, but I would hope the SPOILER designation would minimize wandering eyes from folks who have not yet seen the show.

5) Now here's the real magic of #KeepTheSecrets! Even with this thread, we will never truly know how the magic and special effects are done. That's because anyone who contributes a possibility is only guessing. Even if someone guesses correctly, we won't know that that is actually how it's done. Why? Because anyone involved with the show, say good people like PThespian who actually know the answer, aren't going to tell us! They have sworn not to. It's brilliant, really!