#Chris Columbus Says He Struggled Shooting These Harry Potter Scenes

As all Potter fans surely know, when Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) isn’t busy saving the world from a magical, genocidal lunatic, the young wizard can be found hovering above the Hogwarts field, searching for a lightning-fast golden ball. Wizards on brooms may be a staple of magical worlds, but for “Sorcerer’s Stone,” Columbus had to transform that cliche into something entirely new: Quidditch! It’s the only magical sport so powerful that it’s managed to seep into the real world, now played globally on college campuses and with a major league of its very own. But unlike the version you’ll catch in real life, there could be no tucking a mini broomstick between your legs and running across grass in “Sorcerer’s Stone” — Columbus had to get 12-year old Daniel Radcliffe soaring through the air. He detailed the process in the special, saying:

“The hardest scene to shoot was Quidditch. And the audience had to understand the rules immediately. So Jo Rowling basically did a rulebook for us, a Quidditch rulebook, explaining every detail of the game. Then Stuart Craig, our production designer, designed the look of the quidditch pitch and really created a pitch that felt authentic and real for a game that is completely unreal.”

The signature sport of the Wizarding World has a big role to play in the series (just ask Oliver Wood!). In the first film, it had to enchant both Harry and the audience by showcasing the lighter side of becoming a wizard and injecting magic into something as mundane as sports. At the same time, the stakes had to be clear and we had to understand the game — at least on some level. And as all readers know, Quidditch is nothing if not chaotic. Fans have spent many years combing through the rules of the made-up game and trying to make sense of its insane scoring system and the fact that catching a single ball (albeit a magically fast one) can cause an automatic win. Given all he had to grapple with, it’s no wonder Columbus thought the Quidditch game was “the hardest scene to shoot.”

“Harry Potter: Return to Hogwarts” is now streaming on HBO Max.