page_title: David Yates
section_title: Harry Potter (2006–2011)
hierarchical_section_title: David Yates / Career / Harry Potter (2006–2011)
caption_attribution_description: David Yates at Harry Potter LA Premiere
context_page_description: David Yates is an English filmmaker who has directed films, short films, and television productions. He is best known for directing the later four films in the Harry Potter series. His work on the series brought him critical and commercial success along with accolades, such as the British Academy Britannia Award for Excellence in Directing.
  Yates also worked on various short films and became a television director early in his career. His credits include the six-part political thriller State of Play, for which he won the Directors Guild of Great Britain Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, the adult two-part documentary drama Sex Traffic and the Emmy Award-winning television film The Girl in the Café.
  Yates is a founding member of Directors UK. He has had a close partnership with Warner Bros. as a director and producer.
context_section_description: During the period of working on plans for Brideshead Revisited, Yates was told by his agent that he had made the director shortlist for the fifth film in the Harry Potter series and that Warner Bros. was eyeing him to direct. He was then shortly after confirmed to direct Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by Warner Bros. Pictures, with production scheduled to begin in early 2006. When asked how Yates got the job, producer David Heyman ("a big fan" of Yates's television work) said that "actors in David's television projects give their best performance, often of their career. It's important to keep pushing the actors, particularly the young ones on each Potter film. This is a political film, not with a capital P, but it's about teen rebellion and the abuse of power. David has made films in the U.K. about politics without being heavy handed."
  Before production began, Yates invited Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire director Mike Newell to a pub and "picked his brains about what it was going to be like to step into someone's shoes on a movie of this scale". The first scene that Yates shot featured a giant interacting with human characters. The scene was the very first high-scale visual effects piece Yates filmed in his career. After the film's post-production material was well received by the studio, Yates was chosen to direct the sixth film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which according to Yates was going to be "a cross between the chills of Prisoner of Azkaban [the third film in the series] and the fantastical adventure of Goblet of Fire".
  In 2007, Order of the Phoenix opened to positive reviews and commercial success. Yates won the title of Best Director at the Empire Awards and collected the People's Choice Award from the European Film Academy. However, the film was criticised by fans of the series for having the shortest running time out of the five released instalments; Yates said that the original director's cut was "probably over three hours", resulting in much footage being cut, condensed and edited to fit within the studio's preferred time frame.
  During production of Half-Blood Prince, Warner Bros. executive Alan F. Horn announced that the seventh and final novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was to be split into two cinematic parts with Yates, once again, as the director. Yates spoke of the decision to appoint him as the director of the final films, remarking that "they wanted to do a Harry Potter that felt ... more grown up. What's smart about the studio and the producers is they have always wanted to push it a bit. Chris Columbus did a wonderful job of casting and making this world incredibly popular. But rather than do more of the same, they said, 'Let's bring in Alfonso Cuarón and let him run with it. Then later, let's bring in David Yates, who's done all this hard-hitting stuff on TV.' It's a testament to their ambition to try to keep the franchise fresh. The bizarre thing is, I did one [film] and they asked me to stay for three more, so obviously they liked something."
  Half-Blood Prince was released in 2009 and became the only film in the series to earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography. Yates worked alongside French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel on, what Yates called, extensively colour grading the "incredibly rich" picture by making it look "very European" and drawing influences from the Dutch painter Rembrandt. The film garnered a mix of accolades and was acclaimed for its stylised character-driven approach, but some fans complained about the script's deviation from the novel and the film's slight romantic comedy nature. In response to this criticism, renowned BAFTA member and film critic Mark Kermode praised Yates's direction and ranked the film "second best" in the series, behind Prisoner of Azkaban.
  Yates began to film Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Deathly Hallows – Part 2 back-to-back in early 2009 and finished reshoots in late 2010. He stated that he had shot the two parts of the final adaptation differently, with Part 1 being a "road movie"
caption: Yates outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre at the premiere of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on 8 July 2007
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