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Graphics > Miscellaneous Multimedia
On 31 July 2001, John Williams presented the world premiere of the 4 1/2 minute "Hedwig's Theme" at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts, USA. (Tanglewood is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with which Williams has a long association as a former Boston Pops conductor.)
This beautiful song, named in honor of Harry's loyal pet owl, is our first preview of Williams' soundtrack for The Sorcerer's Stone. Parts of it can be heard Warner Bros. trailers. This recording presents the entire song. The MP3 tune originally appeared on from the John Williams Fan Site and was recorded by J. Joseph Mixdorf, who attended the Tanglewood show. The site has since taken it down.
However, I found a new connection for it: click here. It is a mono (single sound channel) recording, but still not bad in its fidelity. Be warned: this is a HUGE -- 4.5 megabyte -- MP3 file in terms of saving it to your hard drive. You must have an audio plug-in to hear it, such as Winamp or RealPlayer. After you're done, click the BACK button on your browser to return to Arabella Figg's Hogwarts Express.
To save this file to your hard drive, right click the link above and select "Save Target As..." A dialog box will follow that will ask if you want to open the file or save it to disk. Save it to your hard drive in your favorite folder for best results. Then use Winamp, RealPlayer or the sound software of your choice to hear it.
By the way, if you are a John Williams music fan, be sure to visit JWFan.net for regular updates on The Sorcerer's Stone and other film soundtracks.
Scholastic, as the official U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter series, created a fun screensaver for PC and Mac, based on the first three books. Its graphics are based on Mary GrandPre's book illustrations and discuss creatures, magic items and other elements of the Harry Potter universe.
You can download the screensavers here:
Click for PC.
Click here for Macintosh.
Other multimedia through Scholastic includes "Owl Post" letters to write. The Scholastic site may be reached by clicking here.
The following screensavers are from the Warner Bros. official Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Web site and are based upon the first poster released for the movie in early 2001.
A title along the bottom shows the movie's name in languages around the world (all of them are translations, actually, of the British title, Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone, except the French, which is Harry Potter at the Sorcerers' School.)
You can download them here:
Click here for PC.
Click here for Macintosh.
Another screensaver, available at the official site, features the Golden Snitch. Other multimedia include full-color bookmarks to download and print, and the chance to send Owl Grams to friends and Howlers to people who have annoyed you (or on whom you want to play a prank).
NOTE: These downloadable files are zipped; that is, they have been shrunk using software so they take up less space on my site and, in turn, on your hard drive. To open them, you should have a zip-unzip file, such as Winzip, or one of the originals, Pkunzip, from Pkware Inc.
If you'd like a preview of some scenes from the movie, I have some pictures from the Warner Bros. site. These are black-and-white images that can be printed out and colored (or should that be "coloured," since they're all English?). One question, though: why are Harry's eyeglasses still taped together in these scenes, when a tap of the magic wand repaired them? The following images are here:
Catch the Key Harry catches the right flying key. Hermioine and Ron are up in the air too, as part of their journey toward the secured room where the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone is held.
Passing the Fat Lady Harry, Ron and Hermione sneak back and are about to enter the Gryffindor living quarters after they found out Draco's "Midnight Duel" was a lie. Password: Pig snout.
Going for the Snitch. Harry looks both bewildered and attempting to concentrate in these Quidditch action scenes.
From an ancient land where dragons are part of culture and legend comes this wallpaper scene for your computer. I found them at an all-Chinese-character site (www.harrypotter.net.cn) which may or may not for People's Literature Publishing House, Rowling's publisher in China. It could also be a bookstore or huge fan site, but it's definitely in mainland China (".cn" means China).
The scene depicted on the wallpaper is from The Goblet of Fire and features Harry taking on the mother dragon in the Triwizard Tournament. Fun, fun, fun! Click below to select your resolution size:
To save, click the right mouse button, and a little menu will pop up on your screen. You can choose "Save Image As" to store it on your hard drive, or "Set as Wallpaper" put the image on your screen background right away.
If you have a Harry Potter Web site of your own, have to create a book report, or just want to do something artistic about the books, fonts can add that extra touch. I discovered two free Harry-inspired fonts, which I feature below. An example of a character set is featured for each font; click on these graphics to download the fonts.
Lumos was created by Sarah McFalls and was offered for free on her Carpe Saponem site. It is based upon the title page and chapter typeface seen in the United States HP books. It also is named for the spell that turns a magic wand into a flashlight.
In addition to the two HP-specific fonts above, I also include Burton's Nightmare, the font I used on this site. It was originally at Halloween Fonts/Castle Fontenstein. It is named in honor of director Tim Burton and his 1996 classic, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and is based on the film's title design.
Downloading and installing fonts is easy! Home | What's New | The Dictionaries | The Library | The Author
Parry Hotter (yes, the name is backwards) was created by Anke Arnold, a graphic artist in Wendlingen, Germany. This font is based upon the popular sharp-edged "lighting bolt" title used on the U.S. editions, and later most of the foreign translations.
1. Click on the images above to download the font. If you have Windows, the computer will ask if you want to open the file or save it to disk. Choose "Save" and place it in the folder of your choice on the hard drive.
2. To open the files, you'll need an unzipping program, such as WinZip or Pkunzip, as mentioned for the screensavers above.
3. Unzip the file. You should have at least one file with the extension ".ttf" showing. This extension means "TrueType Font," which means that the font will appear the same way on your computer screen as it would on paper or a Web page.
4. Place the ".ttf" files into your Windows\Fonts directory, usually on the C:\ drive. After they have been installed there, you should be able to use your new fonts!
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