To say that the response to their shot-for-shot parody of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” blew away expectations is an understatement for the creators who produced the video while finishing their degrees at UNC Greensboro.
“We had a ton of doubts about it going anywhere online,” says Cooper Atkinson ’23, who worked on the film while earning his bachelor of arts in arts administration. “In the end, we’d made it for ourselves. And the first couple days after we posted it on YouTube, it seemed like it flopped.”
That changed when their passion project “Harry Potter and the Stone,” a reenactment of the 2001 film based on the popular book series, made the front page of /r/videos on Reddit, gaining roughly 7,000 views. From there, YouTube’s algorithm picked it up and brought in more than 100,000 views per day. It now sits at a pretty 2.5 million views on YouTube.
It stars UNCG students and uses the University campus as a set, replicating Hogwarts, the wizarding school where most of Harry’s adventures take place.
Perhaps none of it would have happened if not for a house just off campus on Walker Avenue. While Harry Potter’s story began as a boy living in a cupboard under the stairs, the aspiring filmmakers’ breakout into the entertainment scene began with the place they called “Doggie House” and a broken trampoline.
House Shows Bounce Back
Greensboro has always had a vibrant live music scene, with downtown festivals, bar stages, and traditional venues like First Horizon Coliseum. However, there has also been a local appetite for house shows and concerts, a more intimate, casual setting for friends to gather and for bands to build a following. UNCG students have long embraced house-show culture.
The COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in the works, according to David Snee ’23, a resident of Doggie House who wanted to do local performances while he majored in acting. “We thought we would learn some song covers and perform,” he says. “We were shopping it around the local venues, but none were biting because of COVID. So, we said, ‘Guess we have to do it ourselves.’”
Their solution came in the form of a broken trampoline left behind by the previous tenants of the house they rented on Walker Avenue.
“We disassembled it, poured buckets of cement, and stuck the poles in them. Then we had a scaffold that we could move around the yard and drape lights over,” says Atkinson.
With this new outdoor stage, they could host backyard shows as crowd restrictions relaxed. Houses that host shows usually get a name – Ice House, Bird House, etc. – so they named theirs “Doggie House.”
“We’d be on the porch, and people would come up and ask, ‘Are you Doggie House? We want to play here,’” says Amanda Walton ’24, who majored in sociology with a concentration in criminology and became photographer for the shows. “The community lent really well to what we wanted: an open space for people who want to create and an open door to just show up.”
“Being next to downtown and next to campus meant we connected with both those sides of Greensboro,” says Atkinson.
In October, they were interviewed by Triad City Beat. Tyler Motley Ellis ’24, another arts administration major, says. “The quote for us was that we were ‘the catalyst to the return of house shows in Greensboro post-pandemic.’ That was cool to hear. And it was all a happy accident.”
“We wanted to be something very inclusive,” says Atkinson. “We never wanted it to have a leader or be super organized.”
While Doggie House made waves as a new destination for live entertainment, not many knew its student occupants were in the middle of an ambitious leap into filmmaking, which would grow their reputation beyond Walker Avenue, UNCG, and the Greensboro city limits.
Feature-Length Ambition
It began when Atkinson picked up a discounted set of the eight “Harry Potter” films. While they watched them at Doggie House, they whittled magic wands out of sticks they’d picked up outside.
They posed a challenge: what if they recreated the first installment, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” shot for shot – 2,335 shots in total – but with their own humorous twists? For instance, Headmaster Dumbledore was played by two actors, side by side.
Recreating an effects-heavy Hollywood production with a student budget is a bold endeavor, and they acknowledge that their success was partly achieved in ignorance. At first, they thought it would only take a few weeks.
“There was no budget, but that doesn’t mean that money wasn’t spent on this,” says Ellis. “You ask us our budget, and we say zero. That’s the technical answer.”
In reality, Snee adds, their budget was “what we could afford to spend on that week.” As the full scale of their ambitions became increasingly obvious, the students blazed forward, even if it took their whole academic tenure.
It nearly did. The project evolved into a three-year production.
Making Magic
Just as house shows thrive through semi-disorganized collaborations, Doggie House was the perfect environment for learning on the fly. The group put together a cast and crew of multitaskers. Atkinson played Hermione Granger and one of the Dumbledores. Ellis played Draco Malfoy and composed the soundtrack. Snee played the Weasleys and was Foley artist supervisor. Walton voiced the Sorting Hat while animating 2D special effects.
“Most of our team did not live at Doggie House, but they spent most of their time there; they called it their second home,” says Atkinson. “It’s all very nebulous, who did what. But that was the magic of it.”
They say most of the jokes were made up on the spot. “I was worried that no one would find it funny because there was no master plan,” says Ellis. “We really wouldn’t know until other people could see it.”
Walton, first brought on as a photographer for house shows, joined the editing and special-effects team. One of her favorite shots is the opening “Doggie House” logo. She traced it on roughly 100 transparent sheets to create a flip-book style.
“I’d never done animation before,” she says. “But that’s the fun of having options and space to try something and people to support you. They may not know exactly how to do a particular thing, but they will help.”
Snee says filming on campus was a bonus when showing it to friends. “If you spend a lot of time at UNCG, you can pick out all the different buildings and places on campus where we filmed. Even having that resource to pull from was pretty invaluable.”
Not only are they grateful for all the praise they got at home and online, but there’s also the perk of graduating with such a big achievement already in their portfolio. “I was so ready to sink my teeth into a massive music project,” says Ellis. “I want to compose, particularly for film. So, I get to use my experience here at Doggie House.”
What’s next after Hogwarts?
Since graduating and moving out of the house on Walker, the group kept the “Doggie House” moniker and made it into a production company and recording studio.
Atkinson says that, as an arts collective, they never want to become too organized and lose that collaborative spark. “It is really important to us that we were founded in this community, that everything that we did was possible through the community,” he says. “That’s why we got our arts administration degrees. Eventually, we hope to get back to a place where we can do different kinds of programming that are inclusive and appreciative of building community.”
The crew is working on short films and is in the early phases of a new feature-length film. This time, it’s an original story and with pre-production efforts. The remake turned out to be an incredible proving ground, according to Walton. “There’s more confidence here from having done ‘Harry Potter,’” she says.
“Because we were crazy enough to take that leap and learn along the way, and it went so well,” says Ellis. “We’re willing to do it again.”
Atkinson likens “Harry Potter and the Stone” to a time capsule of their time at UNCG. “In two and a half hours, we see three years of our life, with so much effort and in so much detail. It’s really incredible.”
Story by Janet Imrick, University Communications
Photography courtesy of Doggie House
Additional photography by David Lee Row, University Communications
