Yeah, no, I had just turned 13 when the first Harry Potter movie came out.

According to Warner Brothers, nearly 60% of the people who saw that movie were 17 or younger.

But for a whole generation of us, the Harry Potter series spanned our adolescents and printed onto our lives.

A love of reading, but less has been said about the films.

I think their commitment to good cinematic work was potentially just as important for young people's filmic education as J.

K.

Rowling's accomplishments were for our literary upbringing.

For me, that all starts with Alfonso Cuaron and the third film in the series, The prisoner of Azkaban coming at a crucial time in both the books and the films.

Azkaban marks potters transition from perilous adventure stories for Children, not in the restricted section to increasingly dark, increasingly nuanced treatments of character and plot picking quaranta handle This passage seems perfect in retrospect as it set the tone for the grimmer and grimmer final installments of the series, but Warner Brothers has to be credited for taking a chance on a director whose previous film was an explicit mexican road trip drama about sexual discovery.

A lot of the style of that film in Cuaron's previous work is readily apparent in Azkaban, most notably his fondness for a moving, often handheld camera, just take a quick, sped up look at this early scene from the great hall, not a single shot is stationary.

This gives the scene and the film a feeling of forward momentum and establishes a curious camera, but it also lends to the film a sense of unease, an inability to find stable footing now for a film that is to be haunted by a feared killer throughout such a style is Fitting, and this isn't the only signature technique Warren brings to potter his famous use of the long take is here as well.

This shot right here is a minute and 49 seconds long, and as the critic, Kristen Thompson has noted, it marks a crucial tonal shift in the film.

The first two scenes, one in which Harry blows up his horrible aunt and one in which he takes a ride on the ridiculous night bus are both pretty lighthearted.

You could almost say that these two scenes are a nod to the two comparatively lighter films that came before this in this scene and this shot, Harry learns of the true danger he faces, and what's important to notice here is that with deeper, more significant peril comes deeper, more significant isolation.

Mr Weasley pulls Harry into another part of the leaky cauldron separating him from his friends while keeping the specter of Sirius Black in the foreground, When the conversation turns explicitly to black, his image is placed between them with family and friends framed in the background.

Then Mr Weasley pulls Harry into an alcove so that they are alone, asking Harry not to go looking for black and finally, for the key dramatic question and period on the scene, Sharon frames Harry completely by himself.

Now, this is great filmmaking isolation will go on to be a key theme in Azkaban and the rest of the series.

Despite its constant message of friendship and its focus on the bond between Harry Ron and Hermione.

The series returns repeatedly to Harry's feelings of being alone, the chosen one, his gradual realization of a burden that he must carry without help.

The prisoner of Azkaban reflects deepens and foreshadows these feelings by separating Harry out from his surroundings or else placing him apart from those around him.

Warren never misses a chance to return to this theme.

Whether it means separating Harry from his friends in a shot about something else telling Emma Watson to kneel out of a shot or ending the movie by having Harry literally fly away from a crowd, internal consistency.

This is one of Cuaron's major strengths and that's what makes the prisoner of Azkaban a cut above the rest of the films in the series, some of which are quite good motifs shoot back and forth across the runtime, like magic spells and comment on each other tightening a web that laces meaning throughout.

Little things like following empty footsteps in the snow before introducing a key object that visualizes people moving through Hogwarts castle with footsteps, some immediate foreshadowing there.

But what about some longer foreshadowing?

Maybe a little bird that flies around the grounds in the beginning of the film to places?

It will only later occur to us that map the sites of significant scenes in the movie or what about something more meaningful?

Like Warren's recurring motif of moving the camera through glass, a motif that pays off twice in this scene where the students fight off a braggart, a creature that visualizes your worst fear twice in this scene into beautiful shots.

The camera moves through the mirrors of this wardrobe, suggesting that while it's important to look through windows and see the world, you can also look through mirrors, which is to say into yourself not to mention that these shots just make you think, wait, how did he do that?

A great question for any young filmgoer to ask.

And that's the point here, isn't it?

We hear so much about a film industry that continues to pump out crap films that's ruled by lowest common denominator fair.

There are a number of reasons for that, but one of them is that a lot of the movie going public suffers from cinematic illiteracy.

We don't know what makes a good film.

So the industry serves up superficial projects that play on cheap emotions and make us into passive viewers.

But learning film is always an active enterprise.

All great movies are teaching movies because they encourage us to participate with them and with the whole of cinema, this is why the prisoner of Azkaban is so important like anything, it's easy to develop a taste for something when we learn it.

Young harry potter is a mega franchise, won millions of kids bought tickets for and millions more will watch and rewatch at home, having a great film like this in that roster.

Well, the results could be exponential, A small light that in the end shines much brighter than anyone I would expect everybody.

Thanks for watching.

Obviously I'm a huge harry potter fan.

I grew up with those books, those ages at the beginning, we're actually my age is um so this was a blast to make.

I want to thank you guys actually, because a lot of people actually pledged a dollar or $3 after last week's video.

Um and those small pledges really mean so much because what matters to me is that if you have the ability to pledge, um trying to do so over a long term period because the Patreon is really my salary.

So knowing what I'm going to get, gives me the ability to plan new projects, bigger projects in the future just makes everything a lot more stable.

So I'd rather you do a dollar, you know, over a year, then, you know, $5 or $10 over a couple of weeks.

Obviously if you can do $5 over a year, you're amazing and I can't even believe it.

Um but thank you guys for everything you've donated to this channel, it's been amazing.

It's helped me grow this thing and it's growing really fast now and it's really exciting, People are watching and paying attention, which is all I ever wanted to start.

So thank you again.

I will see you guys next Wednesday.