David Yates with Daniel Radcliffe

When you finished the final film, did you feel relief or did you want to go on for four more movies?

By the time I got to the end of Deathly Hallows Part 2, I was really glad we’d finished, quite honestly. It’s very tough making these movies. They’re really complicated. We were filming right through the winter on Deathly Hallows, and the spring and the summer as well. So, it was a real relief to finish. The reason I think I lasted longer than anyone else is because I enjoyed the world very, very much. The people gave me a lot of energy — Dan [Radcliffe], Rupert [Grint], Emma [Watson], the crew, my producers — the great bunch of people I worked with. And I didn’t want to be the director who’d done the two in the middle. There’s something about that that made me feel really uncomfortable. And Half-Blood Prince, Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows Part 1 ended with commas; I wanted a movie with a really big third act that kind of finished and rounded everything off, so that’s why I stayed.

Can you talk about doing the 3-D conversion on this film?

I was very nervous about it, but I decided that there was a very elegant and beautiful way of doing 3-D, which would help the experience of enjoying the film. And, basically, we just took a much deeper approach. Very little comes out the front of the screen, which I find distracting and disturbing to enjoying the story.

I used 3-D like music. In quiet, intimate scenes, it’s very shallow, and in big, more dynamic scenes, it’s very deep. My brief, to the people we were working with, always was that it’s got to help the story. It’s got to tell the story. We took a lot of time with the 3-D. I would see shots that would go back and get changed all the time. So, every single shot in the movie had a lot of attention and a lot of care devoted to it to make sure that the 3-D experience enhanced the story and made watching Harry Potter more enjoyable, not less.

Since this is the last Harry Potter movie, did you feel any additional pressure to ensure its place in cinema history?

Whoa, that’s a good question. I did feel a lot of pressure and there’s always pressure when you make movies, but especially with this one because it’s legacy filmmaking, I guess. But you know what you do? You just go to work and every day you’re just trying to tell a story in the best way possible. The minute you start over-thinking that, it would cripple you. So, I just really went to work, wanting to make the best film possible without thinking about its place in history or without thinking about how people would receive it or respond to it. I just wanted to tell the best story possible, and that’s how I dealt with the pressure, I guess.

What was the most challenging scene for you, and the one that you’re most proud of?

I love a number of scenes in the film, but the one I really enjoyed and am proudest of, I think, is the end scene at King’s Cross. For me, it’s very moving. There’s not much magic in it, but it feels very magical. And the most challenging scene was Gringotts bank vault. Surprisingly, it doesn’t look very complicated, but when those three characters get into that small room and that treasure starts to replicate, we had to design a hydraulic floor which would kind of lift all the treasure up. We had to figure out ways of putting cameras in there, and it was a completely enclosed set. It took months and months of planning, even though it runs for about two-and-a-half minutes. It was tricky.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

How did you decide on the running time for this film, and will there be extra scenes on the DVD?

Yeah, we got a whole bunch of DVD extra scenes, which I took out of the movie. We never ever say, ‘Oh, it’s going to be three hours or two-and-a-half hours or 90 minutes.’ It’s whatever feels right when you watch the film in the dark. Ultimately, that’s what determines the length of the film. And this film felt the right weight and the right shape and the right rhythm at two hours. But we’ve saved all the bits we cut out and we’re going to put that on our DVD extras reel.

Can you talk about the decision to draw out the confrontation between Harry and Voldemort?

In the book, they circle each other in the Great Hall in front of lots of students, and I wanted to extend it across the school. I thought it was a great visual opportunity to see those two figures fighting, amongst the rubble, through different parts of the school.

I was sitting in my garden in Warwickshire trying to think of a way of giving it a bit of extra, I don’t know, meaning because two guys fighting all the time kind of gets exhausting after a while. And I came up with this notion of Harry just looking at Voldemort when they’re on a precipice and pulling him over. That was my ‘Eureka’ moment in the garden one Sunday as I was having a cup of tea. I thought that could be really beautiful, that these two figures just tumbling into this abyss and then conjoining in this really weird way would be quite haunting and very expressive.

Did you go on holiday after you finished?

I didn’t go on holiday, unfortunately, but I am going on holiday now. I’m going to head off in a couple of weeks for a few months off to rest and to recover and to just clear my brain from everything.

How do you follow this?

With something much smaller and leaner and meaner. It would be crazy to chase another blockbuster for a bit. So, I’m going to make not a tiny film, but a smaller film. I’ve got some great scripts.

The great thing about directing Harry Potter is that Harry Potter is a story. It’s kind of a thriller. It’s a comedy. It’s a horror movie. It’s an action picture.

So, as a director, what’s happening is I’m getting sent comedies, action pictures, thrillers, everything you can imagine. So, I’m just deciding at the moment.

What do you want us to take away from Part 2?

Just a sense of emotion, that a circle is being completed, a 10-year journey has come to a satisfying but moving conclusion, and that is the end of this.

We went to Chicago, tested the picture, and you get these cards that everybody fills out. And this young girl just had one note. She didn’t criticise anything. She just said, “Goodbye, childhood.” So that kind of summed it up for me.