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In the third year of this series, expect me to photograph and write about more of the film and TV productions which showcase our city and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame. 2013 brings Man of Steel and Elysium to theatres and filming of Godzilla, Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, Arrow, The Killing and Continuum. You can find more on my daily blog yvrshoots.com.

Five American broadcast networks unveiled their fall plans in New York this week and four of the seven TV drama pilots and one TV presentation we saw filming in Vancouver this spring made the cut for next season. Once Upon a Time ’s Victorian-era spinoff Once Upon a Time in Wonderland is scheduled for Thursday nights on ABC. While Almost Human, starring Karl Urban (Star Trek’s Bones) and Michael Ealy as futuristic human and android police partners, will air Monday nights on FOX after the World Series. Intelligence starring Josh Holloway (Lost’s Sawyer) as “The Six Billion Dollar Man” will debut on CBS on Monday nights next year. And post-apocalyptic The 100 about a hundred juvenile delinquents sent back to Earth from space almost a hundred years after nuclear disaster is slated for early 2014 on The CW. Not a  bad outcome, considering there were  fifty odd drama pilots vying for thirty prime time slots this year (double the 15 drama openings  from last year after a slew of cancellations including locally-filmed Emily Owens, M.D., Cult and Red Widow).

Unfortunately, even in a big year for new dramas, some star vehicles didn’t make the cut. Uncle Jessie won’t be returning to film in Vancouver anytime soon. John Stamos (Full House/ER)’s  pilot Victor stayed in the mix until the end but NBC opted not to put the drama about a high-powered L.A. divorce attorney, who helps his clients find new faith in life, on its schedule.

Nor will Dwight Schrute be back. CBS held onto Rainn Wilson (The Office)’s pilot Backstrom in round after round of cuts but ultimately passed on the drama about a Portland detective version of Dr. House — self-destructive, offensive, irascible and brilliant. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

In the third year of this series, expect me to photograph and write about more of the film and TV productions which showcase our city and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame. 2013 brings Man of Steel and Elysium to theatres and filming of Godzilla, Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, Arrow, The Killing and Continuum. You can find more on my daily blog yvrshoots.com.

How do you survive in a frozen world? The next ice age forces humans underground in Canadian sci-fi thriller The Colony, which opens nationwide tomorrow. Directed by Vancouver’s own Jeff Renfroe, The Colony explores what happens when hunger and desperation below an icy surface lead to the kind of savage, animalistic behaviour we’ve seen shades of in real-word disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

Reluctant hero Sam (Kevin Segers) accompanies Colony 7′s leader Briggs (Laurence Fishburne) on an expedition to the only other known outpost Colony 5 after receiving a distress call. Briggs leaves his below-ground colony at the mercy of hardass Mason (Bill Paxton) who’s itching to impose his own harsh regime where the sick are executed at the first sign of illness. “You’re a dick,” yelled a woman beside me at an advance screening. Deservedly so. But what the expedition find at Colony 5 is so much worse than Mason: wild, feral survivors who’ve lost their humanity completely.

How do you film a frozen world? Jeff Renfroe shot his $16 million feature in twenty-eight days in North Bay and Toronto, Ontario. On the first day of filming outside in North Bay, crew battled -30 temperatures which froze the camera lenses. Watching them fight the cold and pull it off, Bill Paxton dubbed the Colony crew “film animals”. Laurence Fishburne called another North Bay shoot the toughest location he’d ever seen. Weren’t you in Apocalypse Now?, Renfroe reminded the actor. Yes, Fishburne replied, but North Bay still ranked as his toughest. The frozen surface is almost all VFX. Colony crew shovelled snow into an airplane hangar, surrounded the set with green screens and shot through an open doorway.

The underground scenes are two locations cut together. The Colony crew were the first civilians to bring cameras into the recently-decommissioned circa-Cold War NORAD army base in North Bay, …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

In the third year of this series, expect me to photograph and write about more of the film and TV productions which showcase our city and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame. 2013 brings Man of Steel and Elysium to theatres and filming of Godzilla, Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, Arrow, The Killing and Continuum. You can find more on my daily blog yvrshoots.com.

A year ago, Fan Expo Vancouver hosted the first panel for Vancouver-cop-from-the-future series Continuum. And what a year it’s been. Continuum debuted on Showcase as an out-of-the-box hit. Almost one million Canadians watched, making it 2012′s  number one cable drama here. Since sold to more than fifty countries around the world. Canadian Screen Award, Writers Guild Canada and Saturn Award nominations racked up. A debut in January on Syfy in the U.S. which led to rave reviews from The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly TV critics. A second Continuum panel at Fan Expo Vancouver yesterday. And the premiere of a second season tonight on Showcase at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET. No wonder the cast and creator got giddy yesterday in Ballroom A at Canada Place.

Continuum is part sci-fi, part police procedural about a future police officer Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols) who travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver today, swept up in an escape by a group of terrorists — Liber8 — who plan to change the future from the past by targeting the corporations that will come to rule the world. Cameron ends up being partnered with Vancouver police detective Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster) and tasked with bringing down Liber8, with the unexpected help of teen tech genius Alec Sadler (Erik Knudsen), a boy who will grow up to become the head of mega-corp SadTech and seemingly the man responsible for sending Kiera and Liber8 back in time in the first place.

Creator Simon Barry led the panel by getting the cast — Erik Knudsen, Jennifer Spence, Roger Cross, Omari Newton, Victor Webster, Rachel Nichols, Lexa Doig, Luvia Petersen and Stephen Lobo (third photo below) — to Q&A themselves. American Rachel Nichols, who plays the cop-from–2077, was asked how she became so bad-ass on screen. She recalled her first appearance on genre series Alias as a Russian hooker in a red wig. “When you start there you want more”, she explained, especially after scenes are cut together with the stunt double’s and “you see yourself kicking ass”.  Attention also focused on young Eric Knudsen. Without spoiling exactly what’s coming, cast implied that his young Alec will be “going to a dark place” in season two.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

In the third year of this series, expect me to photograph and write about more of the film and TV productions which showcase our city and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame. 2013 brings Man of Steel and Elysium to theatres and filming of Godzilla, Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, Arrow, The Killing and Continuum. You can find more on my daily blog yvrshoots.com.

Jesse James Miller’s feature film Becoming Redwood is rooted in some of his own experiences: his love of golf which led him to turn pro at the age of 19 and hero-worship Jack Nicklaus’s six green-jacket wins at The Masters golf tournament; his hippie father’s flight to Canada as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War; and the shuttle back and forth between his parents after their divorce. But Miller never dreamed as a young boy that his parents would reunite if he beat Jack Nicklaus at the Masters, as 10-year-old Redwood Forest Hanson (Ryan Grantham) does in the Vancouver writer-director’s endearing film.

Becoming Redwood opens in Vancouver today at the Cineplex International Village, one day after the 77th Masters got underway in Augusta, Georgia, with the legendary Jack Nicklaus. who’s won the tournament more than any other golfer, as an honourary starter.

The Story: In 1969, two-year-old Redwood watches helpless from the backseat of a Volkswagen van as his mother Jade (Miller’s wife Jennifer Copping) leaves his draft-dodging father Ethan (Chad Willett) at the Canadian border. Eight years later, his  father is arrested for dope dealing in B.C. and golf-obsessed long-haired Redwood (Ryan Grantham) must return to the U.S. to  live with his mother, her two teen sons (Tyler Johnson and Todd Potter), her red-neck husband Arnold (Derek Hamilton) and Arnold’s basement-dwelling elderly father Earl (Scott Hylands) in northern California. How to deal with all this trauma? Redwood imagines beating the “Golden Bear”, aka  Jack Nicklaus, at the Masters will solve all his problems. Or as the movie’s poster puts it: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Turn Pro.

Vancouver born-and-raised Jesse James Miller filmed his movie in rural Langley for twenty-four days in the late spring of 2011. Everything went smoothly until the big driving scene of Redwood and his mother in a truck heading back to B.C. to visit his father in jail. Some time during the filming of two-and-a-half pages of dialogue, the process trailer (car rig) ran out of gas in Fort Langley. Lesson learned. Next time, Miller will write less dialogue for driving scenes.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

In the third year of this series, expect me to photograph and write about more of the film and TV productions which showcase our city and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame. 2013 brings Man of Steel and Elysium to theatres and filming of Godzilla, Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, Arrow, The Killing and Continuum. You can find more on my daily blog yvrshoots.com.

The Bates Motel set out in Aldergrove on 272nd Street is the spitting image of the 12-room Seafarer motel and Gothic house set from Alfred Hitchcock’s horror classic Psycho, except for the missing top of the Bates house which was CGIed in post-production for tonight’s premiere on A&E.  This contemporary prequel  focuses on a younger version of Psycho movie killer Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) in a coastal Oregon town called White Pine Bay and explores his relationship with his unhinged mother (Vera Farmiga) as he approaches his evil destiny. Is this the relationship that turns Norman into a killer who stuffed his mother?

Lost co-showrunner Carlton Cuse penned most of the 10 episodes which he described as a cross between Friday Night Lights, Lost and Twin Peaks at his SXSW panel last week in Austin. The premiere is racking up rave reviews so tune in tonight to spot the local location and play voyeur on this creepy-good bastardization of motherly love. Or as the show’s poster put it – Man’s Best Friend is His Mother.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

In the third year of this series, expect me to photograph and write about more of the film and TV productions which showcase our city and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame. 2013 brings Man of Steel and Elysium to theatres and ongoing filming of Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, Arrow and our own Continuum. You can find more on my daily blog yvrshoots.com.

Kokanee’s The Movie Out Here hits theatres next Friday. It’s a B.C. version of Hot Tub Time Machine meets Old School populated with your favourite characters from the beer commercials like the Sasquatch, Kokanee Ranger and Glacier Girls plus a new buddy ranger duo Glacier and Fresh. Robin Nielsen, Viv Leacock and James Wallis co-star in the movie as old friends who band together to fight a land developer in the ski town of Fernie as itself. I met the Kokanee Ranger and his successors Glacier and Fresh and interviewed Nielsen and Leacock on set at Alouette Lake (before the two-week Fernie shoot) while crew filmed Wallis watching Glacier Girls change bikini tops on the beach for a Kokanee commercial within the movie.