the best free entertainment i've seen all year

This last week i've been enjoying watching A Very Potter Musical on youtube. It's a most hilarious Harry Potter parody with fantastic acting and delightfully catchy songs!

The star of the show has to be Lauren Lopez who plays Draco Malfoy and spends most of the time rolling around seductively on the floor/bench/harry/hermione! Lauren's sense of comic timing is incredible, and the voice and facial expressions are just adorable!

Lauren Lopez as Draco Malfoy

Voldemort and Quirrel are beautifully played with some very touching moments together. Snape is hilarious, like all the characters, much exaggerated!

I think the best songs are near the end. "Not Alone" (Act 2 Scene 5) is a beautifully composed piece of music, and "Voldemort Is Goin' Down" (Act 2 Scene 8) is magnificently performed by the cast.

I've enjoyed it so much that i'm making myself a dvd to take to show friends and family. I love it that the whole thing is freely available. By the fans, for the fans, and yep, the fans are loving it!

I also love how linux gives me free tools to be able to create a dvd. This morning i did not know how to do it, but using todisc and tovid i've been able to combine all the scenes into a sequence, with a menu. I used mplayer to extract the audio of one song, and audacity to split out the song that i wanted to use as an introduction when the menu is shown. I used kino to look at the frames one by one and export a frame to use as the background for the menu. I used the gimp to darken the image and reduce the contrast.

The menu for my dvd is hopefully going to look something like this:

A Very Potter Musical dvd menu

I'll update again if it works! Currently it is encoding each of the scenes into dvd format, which seems to take a very long time … and creates files 5 times bigger than the originals!

Update: it worked!! From youtube to my television!!

A Very Potter Musical

Potter Musical on my television!

A Very Potter Musical

Thank you to StarKidPotter, youtube, keepvid.com and to free open source software and the ubuntu community! Now i can take A Very Potter Musical with me to show anyone who has a dvd player! :D

Posted: July 25th, 2009
Categories: amusing, harry potter, linux, open source
Comments: View Comments.
  • I'm not much of a Harry Potter fan, maybe this is what I need to appreciate it more. I'll check it out. I love me some good funny stuff.
  • Wonderfully done. I was amazed on how fabulous things are. More power. :-)
  • Hi there, I have just come across your site and have enjoyed reading the posts and you are so right if you do something kind it comes back ten fold and it doesn’t happen that often.
  • dopenisextenderswork
    Your post is such a inspiring that my eyes are really opened today.From your blog i can learn so many things which may help me to get success in handling my business.Thanks for sharing,Love your blog and keep sharing in future too.
  • Hi Aimee, thanks for sharing the youtube....it was excellent and hilarious
  • HI Aimee. This is funny. And the acting is great too isn't it? This can be really good to watch on stage.
  • bosubalancetrainer
    Hi Aimee,
    I've just had a look at it and it is hilarious. lol. I hope they don't get into any trouble at all. It's still up there in Youtube though. So that's a good sign.

    Thanks for sharing
  • U have to be careful though what u are doing is legal gray area. i learned the hard way; BT took down my fansite & contacted my employer; it's so not worth it. :-( WB legal hacks can find out ur full name & where u work from ur blog

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  • I love harry potter too but never know such performance in u tube. Thanks for letting me know the link. I'm gonna watch it tonight since I have spare time from my job. Thanks :)
  • thats great aimee! good to see the video has an ever growing number of views. i think it's okay to promote, youtube havent taken it down at least.
  • This does indeed look entertaining, thank you for sharing Aimee! :-)
  • Thanks for the link, just started to watch it looks fun so far!

    Shame about the fan site though, that's the trouble with these huge global fanchises they become megolomanical with their protection of rights!!
  • good article
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  • Simply awesome!
  • Great post, very informative. I think a lot of people will find this very useful.Keep post in coming future as well!!!
  • I enjoyed it so much. I'll watch it again. Thanks.
  • Kevin82
    Hi Aimee,
    I love harry potter too but never know such performance in u tube. Thanks for letting me know the link. I'm gonna watch it tonight since I have spare time from my job. Thanks :)

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  • Lol - really funny ! These people are very talented ! Thanks.
  • I will be visiting more often as you have done a good job, keep going..
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  • Great Article.This show much pretty cool.
  • Thanks I'd love to see this live. Great fun.
  • How hilarious!! I need to see this and I can't wait to look it up. Thanks for the great post.
  • thanks for sharing . ..
  • bencaricaturesfromphotos
    hmm..hey aimee. I've tried to post a comment using disqus several times. Let's see if this works.
    thanks for sharing those youtube vids, loved them!
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