Heyman: Hi, everybody. I'm David Heyman.

Yates: I'm David Yates. p>Goldenberg: I'm Michael Goldenberg.

Yates: Two Englishmen and an American.

[Press laughs]

Media: So, what was the biggest challenge of – I mean, I think this is one of the most exciting of the Harry Potter novels and it's not a three-hour epic movie – what was the biggest challenge of doing Order of the Phoenix for the three of you?

Yates: You know, fundamentally, it'd be the huge book to convent. So the first challenge you face is the adaptive process and making choices, really. Making choices about what you keep and what you loose. And I think we're probably all Harry Potter fans. I mean, these films are made by fans, people who love this material. So, it was a very – you know, that's the hardest part: starting that series of choices about what you're going to let go. Because you know every time you let something go, a fan somewhere is going to really miss it and we really miss a lot of that stuff that we let go. So, that's probably the biggest challenge – deciding. And then I think the other – what we really felt we wanted to try and achieve is a story that felt organic and felt like it had an arc and felt like it wasn't a series of episodes or chapters. So we all set out to make sure that we had a film that felt cohesive and felt like it had a really clean crew line.

Media: Specifically, what was the arc or the crew line?

Yates: Well you know, for Dan and for Harry, it's really a journey of feeling isolated and misunderstood, feeling outside of the community, feeling that a place that had been very familiar and very special suddenly felt very cold and uncomfortable and then realizing suddenly that that community that had turned its back on him suddenly needed him and the skills that he had because of this intrusive political regime that suddenly arrives at Hogwarts. And it's about him coming to terms with that fact that it's probably better to work with his friends and to help them to fight the dark forces from without and parallel with that is a journey about a kid just wrestling with his own inner demons and trying to – you know, that stage where a lot of us have been through when we're growing up which Jo captures beautifully in the book. That sort of teenage stage where you kind of struggle with yourself a little bit. You fight and you kind of get – you know, that's probably the most dramatic part of growing up because anything can happen. A lot of kids go badly wrong between the ages 13 and 17 because you've got all these hormones raging around you and that's a very dramatic phase of childhood. And Jo captures that in the book and we were really keen to express it metaphorically in the story with Dan's kind of obsession about "is he becoming dark" or "is he losing control?" And the whole Voldemort thing allowed us to respect that in a metaphorical, magical way.

Heyman: It was really nice to hear that David just said that all of his demons went away between the ages of 13 and 17.

[Press laughs]

Yates: Almost

Heyman: Mine haven't. p>Goldenberg: I actually believe that of you.

[Press laughs]

Media: How much work on the film do you do with J.K. Rowling? And can you recall which things, specifically, she had a hand in?

Heyman: Jo is a big part of all these films. Obviously the books apply the foundation from which we build – upon which we build. She is a dream collaborator in many ways. She's busy, she's writing books - so she's not on set and she's not intrusive in any way. But she's there when we need her in terms of answering questions and an example that I've – the one about the Black Family Tree, which you know, something that is – I don't know how many names are in the book but it's very few. When you're making it into a film, you're visualizing it so it needs to become – there need to be more than four or five names. And so I called Jo up and said, "Help!" And 15 minutes later, this drawing arrived which was the family tree with 75 names and five generations, with birthdates, death dates, marriage dates, who is married to whom, who has been exorcized from the family – like Sirius Black. She's remarkable. We talked quite a bit about the ending, actually. We tried to make that – I think that was one of the challenges I would say in the film. Was providing a language for the end of the film. It's a very incredible journey and we talked to each other about the prophecy. But really, the books provide the lion's share of the information that we begin with and then David and Michael – really, Michael, alone in his room [laughs] manages to put in down in the script and David brings it to life.

Media: Hi. From one of the questions about adapting this pretty thick book down into a two-and-quarte= hour movie. Do you set it out, kind of by pages or do you just go and see whatever works out? You know, then you'll trim later. And secondly, I wanted to ask David Yates about collaborating with the kids who are already familiar with their roles and how much, regarding dialogue, you talk to them about where they are with these characters and developing them? p>Goldenberg: It's actually – it wasn't as daunting as it might appear, at least to me, in the sense that, even though it's a very long book, the amount of story in it I don't think is considerably more than in the other books. There's a lot of wonderful digressions and wonderful details and sort of side-journeys, but when you boil it down to the basic narrative, it's – it was pretty self-contained and the decision that we all made very early on was that the point of it was going to be Harry's emotional journey. And what that particularly - and that made things much easier and that became the sort of organizing principle for the entire film.

Yates: He is painfully modest.

[Yates and press laugh]

Heyman: It wasn't elegant at first glance, let me tell you.

[Laughter]

Heyman: No offense, Michael, but Michael worked long and hard – we all did – but Michael and David worked long and hard to make and to shape it. I mean, I think you're right that the story – the fundamental structure that Michael defined in the first draft remained the fundamental structure that we carried on, but the script was worked and worked and worked and worked right up until the last stage.

[Goldenberg laughs]

Yates: A very secure creative environment where you're prepared to kind of test things and kick the tires and when you make something like this you've got the responsibility to kind of exceed the audience's expectations because they're waiting to see it and there's not an absolute complacency. What I find remarkable about David – we've made five of these films now and he's still got the enthusiasm of a fifteen year-old. Any normal human being probably should be thoroughly exhausted by it and he's not, and so - and that spirit is infectious. So we really – we did have a really jolly time making the film and pushing the script. And as far as the actors go, Dan and Rupert and Emma – what's unique probably about this franchise compared to any other – the audience are witnessing these characters and these actors grow older in front of them. That's the kind of really extraordinary thing and for me, as a director, that they weren't the same people at the end of the shoot as they were at the beginning. They changed. They've just, you know, they're more curious, more inquisitive, they have more confidence, they're physically different. They just got bigger. And that change continues, so, for me, as a storyteller, it's wonderful; I get to take advantage of the relationship they've shared for all these years, which is very tender and supportive with each other. To see them away from camera is wonderful sometimes because they really watch out for each other. They're very – they're just great kids, basically, and great young people. You really work with that. What was great with this film, for me and for them, was they were doing things that they hadn't done in some of the other films, necessarily, you know – stretching themselves, certainly Dan, with Harry's character, was a bit more emotionally complex for him this time. It was a bit more difficult for him. He was going through things that he had never been through in any of the previous films. And Emma was really getting confident about changing gears as an actress. She loved to turn something on a six-pence. We'd try something – we'd try a line that was funny one way and then we'd just say, "Well, let's put it on its head - try it another way," and she really embraced the opportunity too. I think for me, it's all about the script and all about the performances. They particularly responded, I think, to someone who really cared about how good they were in a particular moment and I pushed all of them a lot and they really liked that, I think, and they really responded to it.

Media: The film, like the books, seems to get darker with each installment and this is your darkest one yet. You don't seem to shy away from any of those elements that were then brought in – Harry's anger, some scenes that might be quite scary for ten year-olds or younger kids who may be Harry Potter fans. So, could you talk a little bit about those ones?

Yates: Did you never enjoy being scared when you were a kid? When I was growing up, one of my favorite moments was I would watch TV and "Dr. Who" would be on and I - you know, I loved being scared. I think children love to kind of be taken into that territory because it makes them feel vital and alive and, you know, it's a really important thing, I think. And I also think it's important that children aren't patronized, too. That we give them story-telling and material that means they just have to stretch their fingertips that bit. We tested this film in Chicago. We went over and we showed it to a very young audience and for two hours and ten minutes, or however long this movie is, they were - they were kind of buzzing around before it and, you know, they have gallons - they have Coca-Cola cups this big.

[Press laugh]

Yates: And they've consumed so much chocolate and bloody - kind of. Before they start the movie, they're all like this [makes crazy child noise] and then the movie plays and you could feel this stillness in the room, and these are very young kids, and they like things that don't talk down to them. They like things that maks them think and I think that's a really beautiful thing if we can achieve that.

Heyman: I think - I think, you know, it's like David said. I think kids do like to be scared a little bit. And there's a literary tradition of children's fiction that - that most certainly is every bit as scary as this is. Read some of Grimm's fairy tales. [whistles] And I - it's funny. People talk about it's been dark and I actually think it's maybe while it's dark, it's more emotional and you connect with it more emotionally. And, to me, that's really exciting because I think that means we're being really true to the book and you're right, the films are really growing up, the books are growing up and I think that if we were, as David said, to be anything other than what we are, then children would feel patronized and we would lose our audience.

Media: Dolores taken by the centaurs. Is that how it was in the book?

Heyman: She wasn't - no. No. Reporter: She was taken away in the forest?

Heyman: Yup. I mean, you can imagine what happened off camera. Dolores and the centaurs, but I don't - no, no, it's not in the book. p>Goldenberg: The great thing about it being Harry Potter is you have not only the opportunity and the responsibility to be true to the books and so I found that terrifically liberating because of the whole element of those wathcing you have to be true to that and Jo had very ambitiously stated out that territory and with each book, she maps it out and honestly, what's great is she's using, you know, the capital of her success to really push the envelope and make it interesting. She writes the books as she wants to write them and have an absolute integrity to them, internally, emotionally. And they function as nothing less.

Media: In the previous session, the actors were laughing about the filming of the scene of the off-screen kiss and the after-scene to that. I was wondering if you could kind of tell us - talk about that some more.

Yates: Ah, the kiss. Yeah, I think, you know, we just wanted to create a really, for the kiss itself, an environment that felt very - we cleared the set. If you've ever done sex scenes in the past with a - with a film, you get anyone who's nonessential out of the way because everyone wants to gawp, for start, and of course, just outside the set, there's a monitor and everyone's gawping.

[Press laugh]

Yates: So everyone can see. And Katie was very sweet and charming and Dan was very sweet and charming and I just wanted - we talked about first kisses, generally, and about what first kisses felt like and I just wanted it just the way Michael had written it, in this way, and to be as tender and as true as possible. And what was really charming was the fact that many people who'd spent a lot of time with Dan, growing up through this films – Amanda, who does his make-up and, you know, he's got a lovely chap who dresses him as well and looks after him, and they all gathered around the monitor and they felt very - you know, they were watching someone they love very much snogging for the first time.

[Press laugh]

Yates: And they got - they got very emotional actually. It was quite sweet. They got quite choked up watching that. It's a very odd, strange thing, but a very beautiful thing. And then afterwards, that scene afterwards, what was lovely about that three is that they know each other so well, Emma, Rupert, and Dan, and we used a lot of improvisation. Michael had written a beautiful scene, but we kind of improvised a little bit and I encouraged them to kind of - because sometimes you turn up on the floor and you're working a scene and you can feel something in the room. You can feel an atmosphere, and that day there's was just something about the way they were all a bit like giggly together and it. And I just encouraged them to kind of embrace that and have fun with it. And Emma, in particular - it will be in outtakes one day, but she had such a fit of hysterics that went on for about five minutes and she couldn't stop and it was - we kind of caught it in a bottle and I'm very proud of that scene.

Heyman: The end of the scene was is literally when Emma and Rupert are laughing is not spontaneity - but that's not acting. That's actually - sorry, I do not mean to take away from your brilliant work, but - sorry, Dave - but literally, the scene was over, they were just being. and David - one of the things I love about David is - is about finding moments in unexpected places and he just let the camera roll because they were having a good time together and it was really beautiful. Going back to the kiss, it is, you know, as one person up here who has been with them since the beginning, it's a weird - and it was a very weird and emotional thing, that kiss. Here's somebody who you're very protective over about, who you cared for immensely, who you're close to and you've seen grow up from the age of ten and, you know, I saw Dan - I remember when I first saw Dan in the theater. It was - it was obviously a very significant moment for me. And then to be, sort of, 15 feet from him kissing is the most - really moving and also really uncomfortable.

[Press laughs]

Heyman: I mean, let's face it, it's not really comfortable being - standing fifteen feet from anybody when they've got their tongue down someone's throat.

[Press laughs]

Heyman: But when it's somebody that you - that you care for as any of us care for Dan, you know, care for Dan, it was - it was weird, but really moving and when you saw it, people were really choked up and really moved by it. It was - it was really beautiful. And I think one of the things that David captured, not just in the kiss, but throughout the film, he talked about a little bit, is he really encouraged - he really encouraged the kids to push their craft, but he also encouraged them to bring as much of themselves to the table, I think more so than ever before. He also - they're older now. They have more experience. They've got more to draw upon and he encouraged them to participate in their performances much more than, I think, they ever had before, partly because they're able to. And they thought it out and they really took it and what I love about the way David works and what I think I really love about this film is the truth of it. It feels to me very real. It's one of the reasons why, way back when, you know, I was interested in David Yates doing the fifth film because I wanted it to be - I wanted it to feel real and true and honest and emotional and living in all that. That's the thing I'm most proud of in these films. For all their special effects, and for all the fantastical things that, no question, people are drawn to and people come to see, what really makes the books what they are and what makes the films what they are is the characters and David allows and enables his characters to live in the film. I mean Jo's done it brilliantly in all the books. Michael has done a brilliant job at adapting it and making it come to life. What David did with the film is just beautiful.

Media: I wanted to talk a little about the contribution of Imelda Staunton. How difficult was it to cast that role?

Yates: Oh, it was very easy to cast. [laughs] We kind of, like, I walked into the office and the Umbridge conversation of who we should cast went like this: David said "How about Imelda Staunton?" and I said "Great."

[Press laughs]

Yates: And then I went off, I had coffee with Imelda, sat down with her, looked her in the eye, and I just thought, "Oh god, she is - she can do this so good." We just knew. So, it wasn't really a competition or a kind of - it was just, we just knew, really. And I think Imelda is such a gifted actor and what was lovely about Umbridge as a character is she is actually quite - all sorts of layers of a character, you know. A character - she's desperate to be liked. She's so officious, she's such a bureaucrat. She's quite a fundamentalist, really, and yet she's deeply repressed, and so it – actually, there are quite a lot of complicated corners. And also, she had to be quite a good fan, as well. And Imelda got all of that, and so we just had a ball sort of running with that, you know? And I love Imelda when - one of my favorite scenes in the film is when she takes Harry into detention, and what we explored there was this slightly religious, this cleansing thing. She's convinced that Harry had done something terrible in lying and she just wants to cleanse him of his sins, and I thought that was something that we both found could be very interesting for the audience. It's actually quite interesting seeing the younger audience, as well as to see that, you know, an adult can be quite abusive in that way. And so, because that's something I don't think we've quite seen in these films before. It's a very subtle form of abuse, and so - but it was great fun, and we had a blast, anyway, with Imelda. Yeah, she's a bloody good actor, actually.

Media: Matthew Vines from Veritaserum.com. Mr. Heyman has been on this ever since the very beginning, whereas Mr. Yates and Mr. Goldenberg, it's your first involvement in the series. So I was wondering, were there any aspects or revisions for this film that were conflicting versus how it fit as a piece in the overall puzzle, and how the film works in its own right, and how did you reconcile those? p>Goldenberg: Well, David has this quill...

[Press laughs] p>Goldenberg: No, I actually, I think, I mean, I thought that we were all on the same page from the very, very beginning.

Heyman: But it all comes from the books. I mean, you know, it's a really organic process. Jo has created a really vivid world and Michael - you know, I spoke to Michael about the first film, and we, you know. Michael is someone that I've liked - no, have admired, for ages, has been a Potter fan, and we've known each other for quite a while, and he's been a part of, you know, he's a huge part of that. And he didn't come to the fifth - the fifth book wasn't the first one he had read. He's a big fan, so there was not really any, you know, question about this is not - we discussed amongst ourselves, as Potter fans, all of us, what you can get away with and what you can. I mean, get away may be not the best way to put it, but you know, how far you can push things and would this exist in the Potter world? And if we ever got into too much conflict, it wasn't that - it's not a poor environment, except for David.

[Press laughs]

Heyman: No, David. He is the most collaborative. We all are in it together. If there really was anything that we would be uncertain about, we would call Jo.

[Press laughs]Yates: [laughs] We can always call Jo.

Heyman: And that really actually never was an issue. I mean, there was one time there was a character we were going to cut out, and we sort of discussed that amongst ourselves, and then Jo reads each draft - reads the screenplay, and she said, "No, I wouldn't do that if I were you."

[Press laughs]

Heyman: Or "You can, but if you get to make a seventh film..."

[Press laughs]

Heyman: "...it will - you'll be tied in knots and it will cause you some difficulties, so you might want to..."

I know, I can see your mind racing Mr. Veritaserum.com.

[Press laughs]

Heyman: This man probably knows Potter better than anybody in this room, no disrespect. But, you know, she made sure that that character, you know - she didn't make sure, she just recommended it, and... Press: What character was it?

Heyman: I thought you might ask that question. I'm not going to say.

[Press laughs]

Media: [poses inaudible question]

Yates: Do you know what? It was the same process I always engage in any actor. It's ultimately, you just talk about the story, you talk about the character, and for example, Dan's got an amazingly vivid imagination, and there was a moment we were doing at the beginning of the film, and he sat on the swing, and he's had a long, hot summer and Harry's been kind of neglected by his friends. He's feeling very lonely, and he said, "I think this is probably what it feels like to be a Vietnam vet, you know? One of those guys who came home from the war and no one understood them and they were ignored by everybody," and so he's really well-read and intuitive, and he, so - but it's a process, and the word "truth" is used a lot, and it's basically, you want to talk about what must it feel like to experience this? What - so, it's easy with these big films, I think, often for it all to become a bit generic, and a bit "with one bound, you're free."

[Heyman laughs]

Yates: But we would say if Imelda points that wand at you, it's like she's a loaded gun at you, and it would kill you, and your friends won't ever see you again, and so I would always try to pull in something from the real world to try and allow them to lock into. With Dan, we got this bereavement counselor in, and Dan and I spent an afternoon with a bereavement counselor to talk about her experiences dealing with people who had witnessed horrible things, because in the previous film, he had seen Cedric Diggory get killed, and so - and Dan listened to this lovely, lovely lady talk for several hours about how traumatizing certain events can be for people and what happens to them after they've witnessed these things, and he asked some really bright questions and so - and they really responded to taking their journeys and stories within the film, taking it that seriously, you know, and really sort of thinking about it deeply, and they loved that. And it made them work really hard. And that's not to say that the film isn't playful and eccentric and all the other things hopefully that all the other lovely Potter films have achieved. We wanted to do all of that, but we just - because they're getting older and the characters are old, and Michael had started us off on this wonderful journey of something that felt richer and darker. It was just a process one felt we had to do.

Media: The film seems to raise some interesting political questions about law and order and about threats of terrorism, and whether they're real or not and developing a project where you tie in things between this story and Muggle world that we all live in.

Yates: It's always nice to have a bit politics with a small "p," I think. But you are never to be affected by what's actually going on a little bit, but we weren't really aiming to do anything too clever in that direction, to be perfectly honest. We just wanted to make a really entertaining, witty film. But there are some interesting things in Jo's work, which are - I mean, one of the most interesting things is the kind of educational parable. This notion that, you know, what is education and how do you deliver the best education for kids and, you know, there is something very interesting. In this country, for example, in the UK, our administration, the labor governor has introduced all these kind of measures and tasks for teachers. You know, which, they spend more time, kind of getting assessed and assessing, than they do teaching. That's how some of them feel. And so, there are things that Jo's introduced in the books, which, I think it did put in a mainstream, popular film, and good for kids to see and experience, you know, because they might be - so, it was nice to have a sprinkling of some of that Muggle paradox stuff, actually, because I think it makes the experience a bit richer. I feel, anyway, it makes it a little bit more relevant, but you don't want to hang the whole film on that, I think.

Heyman: And you said it's politics with a small "p," but I think Jo does clearly in the books, the threats of Nazism, racism and you know, the feel... I think Hogwarts.. And again, one of the reasons I was really drawn to David as the director for this was I this thought he would handle this sense of resistance movement - World War II, French Resistance movement, which, in a way, is what Dumbledore's Army is - really well. And I think there are - history does unfortunately repeat itself and there are - you know, I think the book, and the film, does have echoes of what's going on today, but, alas, it also has echoes of what's gone on in many years past, many times in years past.

Media: This question is for David Yates. You've signed on for Half-Blood Prince. Can you talk about that?

Yates: Well, we just had such a nice time making this film, and it just seemed – I don't know. I just felt like it was really fun. It's a very difficult world to leave. I mean you have to ask David, because David was instrumental in this.

Heyman: You know, these are marathons. We've been very pleased with the directors we've had. Alfonso Cuarσn was on set for the fourth, and Mike Newell for the fifth, but they didn't have the stamina, frankly, because these are - and that's no disrespect to them, these are really tough films to make. They're big. There's so many component parts. They're really fun, and I think everybody – each of the directors would say it's been a good experience and it's been a fantastic world to be a part of. But David did have the fortitude and the strength to carry on. And I think he is – he's done such a great job, and the kids formed such connections for them, and what's the most important thing is for – to keep the kids challenged and to keep it fresh. And David kept it fresh right until the very last day of shooting for them, and each of them whispered in my ear, "It would be great if David came back." Now, they don't have director approval, they don't have anything like that, but their enthusiasm spoke volumes of the experience they had working with him. And for me, it's been a dream experience working with David and with Michael. It's such an open and collaborative place, and yet you know you have a leader, someone who is leading you to nnd then pushing to make the very best film possible and is as determined as we all are – as everybody involved – to make a great film. And, you know, there was something - I just want to go back, somebody may have – I think you may have mentioned, somebody talked about the audience. I know this sounds really strange, but the audience – it's all about the audience, but for us, it's not about the audience when you're making the film, in the sense that you're making the best film you can. We're huge Harry Potter fans. We are more critical of – we know everything that's not right, every breath of these films. I do, David does, Michael – we are hard, hard, hard. And we love Harry Potter. We love it. It's a passion. And so, for us, it's about making the very best film we can, and if we make the best film, we will be pleased, and if we are pleased, the world will be pleased, the audience will be pleased. And I know that David's standards are about as high as they can be, so for me, it was – you know, it was an obvious thing, an exciting thing and I know that you'll make a great film.

Yates: Yeah, I find it very difficult leaving the world, having had such a brilliant time, and also knowing that the next one going to be very different to this one. I'm very, very proud of this film and what we've achieved and I think it – and the next one's a very different ribbon, and it will be very different for the kids as well. It's almost like making another movie - a different movie, you know? I couldn't bear to just leave it.

Heyman: Because in a way they are sequels, the books have the same plots inherited, but they explore such different things. They each have a similar world, but the characters are growing up, they're exploring different things, and it's like Michael said, you know, when he came to write, he said it was like a different Harry that he was writing, or Harry at a different stage. And that's exciting, that's why I think – that's my enthusiasm, the amount of a 15 year-old. Because each one is so different, and it's not too difficult to be enthusiastic about this film. p>Goldenberg: It really does start out with David. From the very first day, he created an environment where both David and I felt completely protected and safe to try anything and he's the one who would create this incredibly warm, familial, and inviting work character, and I think we attribute that – I mean, he's been an amazing steward of these stories, and he's an encyclopedic resource on the films. It's not... I mean, sometimes you don't want the producer in the room to say, "I'm a pain in the..."

[Press laughs]

Heyman: [laughs] Most of the time. p>Goldenberg: But he's an incredible resource, because not only does he come from the fundamental love for the books and the stories and the determination to protect them, but when - any real Potter problem he's come across before, he's just incredibly creative and inventive, in a way that sometimes isn't the case, and David was always there with a great idea or an unexpected solution and really supportive of risks that David and I wanted to take and be flexible.

Heyman: Thank you, Michael.

Media: What's the schedule for the next one?

Heyman: Comes out next year.

Media: And you start shooting?

Heyman: September.

Yates: We start shooting in eight weeks.

[Press begins asking questions of the three men separately]>/b>