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Grade 4 Class Adapts “Prisoner of Azkaban” into Their Own Movie!

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Over the years, we’ve seen many variations of Harry Potter adapted into different forms, proving how well loved the fandom is all across the world: We of course have seen the release of the eight Warner Bros. movies, along with Starkid’s A Very Potter Musical productions, Potter Puppet Pals YouTube videos, the Potted Potter stage show, etc. Now, a group of Grade 4 school children have taken it upon themselves to create their own version!

Pupils of Altadore School in Calgary, who have recently started recently started reading the Potter series, decided it would be fun to make a feature-length film (46 minutes to be exact) of Prisoner of Azkaban instead of simply writing a book report. Not only that, but they have also created their own soundtrack to go along with it!

About the children’s decision to make the movie, teacher Rob Mitchelson – who also stepped in as director – said,

We started reading Harry Potter earlier on in the year. Initially they asked if instead of doing a book report they could do a video … by the time we got to Prisoner of Azkaban they said, ‘Mr. Mitchelson, can we make a movie out of the whole book?’ And I said, ‘Sure, of course.’

Because the class is mostly female-populated, the majority of the main characters are of course female, and yes, this includes Harry! Production has been on-going for the past few months, and Mr. Mitchelson can vouch for the amount of effort and hard work that the pupils have put in to make this film happen.

We pushed really hard to make sure that the story held together and that the performances were solid. It’s not just, ‘Oh, these kids are so cute.’ It’s actually a genuinely entertaining movie event.

The class is even having its own red carpet event at the school on Tuesday, to debut their feature – although they won’t be getting their hopes up too much; they’re even hoping to contact J.K. Rowling herself about it.

They didn’t want to feel like they were trying to ‘one up’ Warner Bros.; they wanted to make sure they were making a film that showed that they cared.