For most creators, making wizard rock is a deliberate choice.  But sometimes, other creators can stumble upon wizard rock – as PattyCake Productions recently did with “The Boy Who Lived.”

PattyCake Productions is a YouTube channel, dedicated to creating videos with original music based on all things geeky, with an emphasis on Disney.  Their channel is a fun rabbit hole to dive down, where you can find everything from Disney villains plotting together in “The Villains Lair” to “Once Upon a Time – The Musical.”  So imagine my excitement when their latest video was titled “Harry Potter – The Musical (The Boy Who Lived).”

 

There has not been quite as much showtune wrock since The Butterbeer Experience retired from our scene, so this seemed like a welcome addition!  The song takes place in a moment between Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows, where Harry wrestles with the weight of everything that is expected of him.

In true musical fashion, there is an entire character arc that takes place in three and a half minutes.  In the first chorus, Harry is asking, “Can I do this?”  It progresses to the second chorus, where Harry is saying, “Maybe I can do this…”  And then it ends with Harry having talked himself into it, “I can do this!”  It’s a terrific bit of storytelling that immediately piqued my interest.

I sat down for an interview with the team behind PattyCake Productions, Tony Wakim and Layne Stein, all about how they crafted this music video.  They’ve long wanted to branch out into writing Harry Potter songs, since they’re both HP fans (and Tony, in particular, is a hardcore Potter fan).  Instead of crafting one song to encapsulate the whole story (like they recently did with Once Upon a Time), they chose to focus on individual moments in the series that cried out for music.

“I would like to tell bookmark moments from the story.  When Voldemort returns, ‘I can touch you now.’  When Lily sacrifices herself.  ‘Yer a wizard, Harry.’  Harry’s first flight.  There’s so many moments that lend themselves to be musical moments.  I would love to give Snape a song. 

We already have tons of ideas for Lily’s lullaby.  If it was a true musical, it would be reprised a few times, and ultimately given to Snape at the end.  I’m a big Harry Potter fan, so I would love to do all of it.  And hopefully you could do it all as an evening of ‘the best of Harry Potter.’  You just pick these defining moments, and do them that way.”

Near the end of our interview, once it was clear that the PattyCake Productions team was thinking the way wizard rockers think about the series, I asked if they were familiar with wizard rock.  They were not, but were very excited to hear that it was a thing!  “Did we write a wizard rock song unknowingly?”  I explained that they had, and we were happy to have them!

As far as wizard rock debuts go, this is a very auspicious one!  Tony says that they really wanted to write a song called “The Boy Who Lived,” to be Harry’s “Defying Gravity” moment.  He says,

“What kind of song would that feel like?  There would be doubt.  But he would talk himself into it, and realize this is so much more than him and his decision.  His success and his willingness to participate in this influences the entire wizarding world.

In the song, I wanted to talk about that.  In the books, you understand where he’s coming from, but you don’t get to see it.  I was keen to explore territory that you could figure out where this takes place, so that was definitely deliberate: I wanted to do something we hadn’t seen, but that was still very familiar.”

One of the things I found most interesting about the song was the emphasis it placed on Harry “learning to trust.”  A fascinating aspect of Deathly Hallows is how much of it is about Harry’s faith: Harry learning to have faith in Dumbledore even when he is riddled with doubt, which comes to a head in the Hallows vs. Horcruxes debate.  I asked Tony and Layne what the lyrics were intended to refer to.

“Justin Murdock [Harry in the video] is a nut for Harry Potter, he asked the exact same question.  ‘What is this “learn to trust”?  Is it Dumbledore, is it me, is it the process, is it hope?’  When we wrote that, I was crossing my fingers that people would ask that: what is he learning to trust.  And the answer is ‘all of it.’  Does [Harry] go ahead in blind faith, does [he] trust [that Dumbledore] has his best interests at heart?”

I was also eager to find out how they shot such a cinematic-looking music video for the song, and asked them about all the work that went into it.  They went through quite a lot of hassle to get their Harry Potter lookalike into Universal for the establishing shot, making use of the extra hours one gets from staying in a Universal hotel.  But then an unexpected challenge arose.

“So the first day we shot it, it was freezing, and we had FOG.  Really really thick fog.  So we shot the whole video foggy, and it worked.  It was a different video, and it felt heavier.  But as soon as it switches and [Harry] starts to say ‘I can do this, I’m gonna do this!’ it felt strange in that environment.

Then we played with maybe the fog lifting, and halfway through [the video] the weather gets better.  It ended up feeling weird, [so we reshot the whole thing without fog].  We ended up doing a lot of color grading from Prisoner of Azkaban, particularly the scene where they meet Buckbeak in Care of Magical Creatures Class.  Because it’s really the only time in the movies where it’s sunny and nice outside.”

There was also the fact that Justin Murdock looks just like Harry Potter, and particularly now, people are starved for wholesome costumed characters to take photos with.  When shooting in the forest, a cop approached the team – far from getting them in trouble, he just wanted a photo with Harry Potter!  But when PattyCake Productions had to get the establishing shots of Harry in front of Hogwarts, they had to keep Justin in full-on celebrity camouflage – mask, hat, backpack, everything – to avoid getting the attention of all the other parkgoers.

I think it’s safe to say all that hassle paid off – “The Boy Who Lived” is a fantastic wizard rock song, and the music video is really impressive.  I asked PattyCake Productions what their next projects are, and they have a few Disney videos in the pipeline – another entry in their Princess Academy series, and a video with the live-action Disney villains.  But hopefully, this song will be the first of many to come from their “Harry Potter – The Musical!”

If you’re interested in their work, please consider checking out their YouTube channel and their Patreon.

What did you think of “The Boy Who Lived”?  And tell us what other highly theatrical wizard rock songs you enjoy, because this writer really misses seeing musicals!