Browsing “YVRShoots Series”

This series had its genesis when I began photographing Vancouver area location shoots in the summer of 2010 to get over a long post-Olympics funk. Film and TV productions like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Fringe, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time showcase our city in similar fashion and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame.

After months of construction, dark fantasy movie The Seventh Son started filming this week on its gigantic castle set on the gravel field at Boundary and Kent in Vancouver, known as the Kent Hangar field.  A set so big that @tessacpliu tweeted on a drive-by: “Holy! HUGE production #SeventhSon bus drove by to see the whole sizzle! Wow! Blue screen too! #yvrshoots.”

In addition to the vast wooden set, I counted eight generators, several giant blue screens attached to a wall of forty-two stacked shipping  containers on the north side (crew had turned one of the bottom containers into a makeshift props department) and several more giant blue screens attached to a smaller wall of stacked shipping containers on the south side. Crew park, tents, craft services for background performers both human and equine, trailers, trucks and a large steel pool took up most of the remaining space.

Unfortunately, I could only a see a sliver of the filming on Monday afternoon through a gap in the blue screens, revealing an interior market with background performers dressed in medieval garb and real horses tethered to wood railings. Main cast must have been on set, judging by the waiting “star cars”, but the actors were being driven to and from their trailers in the southeast corner of Kent Hangar field to the north entrance to the castle set unseen.

The Seventh Son, which began filming in Vancouver on March 19th, is about an apprentice Tom (Ben Barnes) — the seventh son of a seventh son — to the County Spook (Jeff Bridges) who has imprisoned an evil witch Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore). A young girl tricks Tom into helping the witch escape. The movie is based on the first book in  The Wardstone Chronicles, …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

This series had its genesis when I began photographing Vancouver area location shoots in the summer of 2010 to get over a post-Olympics funk. Film and TV productions like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Fringe, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time showcase our city in similar fashion and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame.

Tonight’s Fringe — called Letters of Transit — promises to be epic, apparently set in the year 2036 in a world ruled by the Observers, with big scenes of background performers dressed in their grey suits and fedoras filmed at the Olympic Village and on a concourse in B.C. Place stadium. Can you remember any TV production ever renting out even part of new B.C. Place for filming?

This is huge. Why is John Noble’s Walter Bishop in the future with Lost’s Desmond, aka Henry Ian Cusick? Vancouver’s own Fringe star Joshua Jackson has said this is where “the door to [Fringe's] fifth season is opened” and plays into the decision to film two season four endings, one that would be used if Fringe is renewed (presumably related to the future Observer world) and the other if the show is cancelled.

.Joshua Jackson will be live-tweeting tonight with his handle @VanCityJax using the Fringenuity hashtag #FighttheFuture, along with Fringe showrunners Joel Wyman, @jwfringe, and Jeff Pinker, @jpfringe.

The Fringe Campaign, launched by Fringe fans at Fringenuity and adopted by Fringies the world over, is now backed by Fringe producers and the American broadcaster FOX. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

This series had its genesis when I began photographing Vancouver area location shoots in the summer of 2010 to get over a post-Olympics funk. Film and TV productions like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Fringe, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time showcase our city in similar fashion and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame.

Imagine two Vancouver-as-Vancouver TV series filming here, with B.C. Place stadium, the central Vancouver Public Library, Woodwards’ revolving “W”, Granville Island, Stanley Park and other local landmarks as themselves. It’s so rare for us to have one Vancouver-set series filming here, far less two. So come to our city’s first Fan Expo this Saturday, where you’ll get sneak peeks of both, as well as the chance to meet the showrunners and casts.

Continuum is about some kind of future officer named Kiera Cameron who travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver in the year 2012, chasing a group of terrorists who plan to change the future from the past. You may have seen some of the spectacular-future-downtown-skyline teasers on Showcase, where the 13-episode series debuts in late May. Or the 2012/2077 split skylines on the Continuum show poster.

Continuum stars Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, who joins the local Vancouver police force with Victor Webster as her 2012 detetective partner. You can see Nichols as her character filming in Vancouver with the Woodwards “W” in the background in a promo photo from the show. I’ve photographed Continuum filming at Victory Square, outside and inside the central Vancouver Public Library, The Centre and CBC Vancouver so far with prop Vancouver Police cars and VPD extras alongside real ones. Below is my photo of Nichols exiting an unmarked police car with the Vancouver Public Library reflected in the windshield. And below that is my photo of  Nichols and her co-star Victor Webster filming in a snowstorm at Victory Square. It will be a veritable Vancouver-palooza in each episode.

The 10-episode Primeval: New World, which will air on SPACE in Canada and ITV in Britain, is also about the future and the past, but this time it’s dinosaurs not terrorists who are suddenly appearing and causing havoc in downtown Vancouver, Stanley Park and dare we hope, Yaletown. Like the original British series Primeval, the Vancouver spinoff is about a team of animal experts and scientists who must battle these creatures who enter our world though temporal anomalies, aka time portals. The real fun will be seeing these CGIed creatures running amok in your neighbourhood on TV.

I found the upcoming Primeval: New World season premiere filming in Stanley Park during a west coast windstorm which blew off a branch the size of a tree near set. I thought the branch could be incorporated into the show as something left in the wake of whatever creature was terrorizing our city that day but have a feeling that this critter flies. The next day on the other side of Coal Harbour I spied fan favourite Andrew-Lee Potts, aka Connor Temple from the original Primeval series, guest-starring with the Vancouver cast Niall Matter, who plays a rich Vancouver software developer, and Sara Canning, who plays a conservation officer, to investigate the death a parachutist. The week before, Primeval New World had filmed a dead drop fall off the roof of a downtown Vancouver office tower at night.

We’re fortunate that the main cast of both series are frequent and funny tweeters. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

This series had its genesis when I began photographing Vancouver area location shoots last summer to get over a long post-Olympics funk. Film and TV productions like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Fringe, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time showcase our city in similar fashion and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame.

In mid-May, the five American broadcast networks start to unveil their fall plans in New York and we will know if Arrow, Midnight Sun and six other TV pilots we saw filming in the Vancouver area before the Easter weekend will make it to series for next season. Add one more pilot to film later this year for a total of nine and Vancouver ranks second in production of drama pilots, behind New York’s eleven and ahead of Los Angeles’s eight. Why is our city so popular for American dramas?

This series had its genesis when I began photographing Vancouver area location shoots in the summer of 2010 to get over a post-Olympics funk. Film and TV productions like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Fringe, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time showcase our city in similar fashion and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame.

The second season of sci-fi summer hit Falling Skies takes place three months after Noah Wyle‘s father of three boys boarded an alien spacecraft in a bid to protect his middle son. It’s said to be an even darker look at the trials and tribulations of a small band of insurgents fighting against an occupying alien force which has killed most of the world’s adults and captured their children. So it’s appropriate they filmed it in Vancouver over the fall and winter durng our Rainocalypse, instead of in the Toronto area over the summer and fall in the mainly sunny weather of season one.

Noah Wyle (from ER) is former History professor Tom Mason, the civilian second-in-command of a Boston insurgent group named after the 2nd Massachusetts of the American Revolution and made up of about 300 fighters and civilians. Mason, whose wife was killed in the initial attack, has three sons –  Hal, played by Drew Roy, and Ben and Matt, played by  Connor Jessup and Maxim Knight.  Middle son Ben has been captured by the insectoid multi-legged aliens known as Skitters and harnessed. These harnesses are attached to the children’s spines and act as some kind of biomechancial device that allows the aliens to control their minds. Much of the first season is spent trying to get Ben back and to figure out how to remove his harness without killing him. But even when they do get the harness off Ben, it’s clear he’s not free from alien mind control. And that’s why his father boards the alien spaceship in the season one finale to find a way to protect Ben and stop the harnessing of kids.

This is the family show in a post-apocalyptic setting that legendary director Stephen Spielberg had envisioned. Other key civilians are Moon Bloodgood as pediatrician Anne Glass and Seychelle Gabrielle as Lourdes, who’ve formed a makeshift medical clinic for the group. Will Patton is Captain Dan Weaver, the military leader of the 2nd Mass and Mpho Koaho as Thomas (a former Boston cop) and Peter Shinkoda as Dai are two of its best fighters. Jesse Schram is Karen Nadler, who starts off as Ben’s girlfriend and fellow scout until she is captured and harnessed. Sarah Carter‘s Maggie takes her place on the frontlines of 2nd Mass and maybe as Ben’s girlfriend too in the upcoming season.

Maggie happens to be the survivor of a gang of marauders headed up by Colin Cunningham’s charismatic and wickedly funny John Pope, an ex-con who causes mayhem wherever he goes, nicknaming Tom Mason, “Papa Smurf”; Karen, “Sexy Freedom Fighter”; Hal. ”Strapping Young Man”; Anthony, “Black….Looks Like a Gangbanger”; and Dai, “Oriental of Some Kind” when they’re briefly in his custody early on. No one has better lines than Pope in this series, like his protest, “What am I? Canada”, when his 2nd Mass captors insist he go unarmed on a sortee. Here is Cunningham in character as John Pope on set in Vancouver.

At the Falling Skies panel at the Emerald City ComicCon last Friday in Seattle, new showrunner Remi Aubuchon (an SGU Stargate Universe writer/producer) and cast Colin Cunningham (SG-1′s Major Paul Davis) …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

This series had its genesis when I began photographing Vancouver area location shoots in the summer of 2010 to get over a post-Olympics funk. Film and TV productions like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Fringe, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time showcase our city in similar fashion and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame.

The  investigation returns this Sunday night with The Killing‘s two-hour second season premiere on AMC and a new marketed tagline — Be Careful What You Uncover — on the show’s poster. Following a Twitter riot over last season’s finale, showrunner Veena Sud has promised that the central mystery and last season’s marketed tagline — Who Killed Rosie Larsen? — will be solved in this season’s finale.

In addition to not solving the murder in last June’s finale, The Killing turned Joel Kinnaman’s detective Stephen Holder, one of the few likable characters, into a seeming villain, who betrayed Mireille Enos’s lead detective Sarah Linden and set up Seattle mayoral candidate Darren Richmond for arrest. So it’s not surprising that in early filming of season two in Vancouver (which began in late November and is scheduled to wrap in late April), I never found Enos and Kinnaman at the same location shoot.

The set-in-Seattle cop drama debuted last spring with what is considered to be one of the smartest, most stylish and rainiest pilots in years but lost its lustre along the way with too many red herrings and erratic writing. I balked in the third episode when writers clumsily explained gallons of blood smeared on the walls around The Cage in the high school basement as the product of a nose bleed and the rape video as a young girl (Vancouver’s own Kacey Rohl)’s desire for attention. But I stuck with the series to the end and will be back on Sunday night because I developed an attachment to these characters. And that’s the dichotomy: the performances are sublime even when the plotting goes array.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

This series had its genesis when I began photographing Vancouver area location shoots in the summer of 2010 to get over a post-Olympics funk. Film and TV productions like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Fringe, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time showcase our city in similar fashion and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame.

In 1963 the prisoners on Alcatraz disappeared. Now they’re coming back. You won’t believe what happens next on Alcatraz. – teases FOX’s Alcatraz Highlight Reel for the two-hour season finale tonight, almost all of it filmed in rain-drenched Vancouver, except for two-and-a-half minutes of a Bullitt-inspired car chase filmed on the sun-drenched streets of San Francisco.

The 13-episode first season of Alcatraz tells the saga of a secret agency dedicated to finding and catching inmates from the infamous San Francisco prison gone missing 50 years ago and reappearing today. It stars petite blonde-bobbed Sarah Jones as police detective Rebecca Madsen; Jorge Garcia from Lost as her partner, Alcatraz expert Dr. Diego “Doc” Soto;  and Sam Neill as Emerson Hauser, her mysterious boss with a past life on Alcatraz. The fourth person of interest in this secret squad is Hauser’s equally mysterious partner Lucy Banerjee, played by Parminder Nagra of ER, who was shot by the sniper convict Ernest Cobb during the second episode and then revealed to have her own past life on Alcatraz as hasn’t-aged-a-day psychiatrist-to-the-inmates Dr. Lucille Sengupta.

Showrunners teased several big moments ahead of tonight’s finale during the Alcatraz panel at WonderCon over the March break, including Lucy’s reintegration back into present day after finally waking up from her coma. Below is Parminder Nagra filming scenes with Jorge Garcia and Sam Neill in late February outside Belkin House downtown dressed as the MacAlister Institute. In the second photo there is little to suggest the romantic attachment which formed between Nagra and Neill’s characters in their past lives on Alcatraz, when Hauser was a young policeman. But I only caught part of their reunion.

The bigger reveal about tonight’s finale is that Sarah Jones’s Detective Madsen will chase after and confront her Alcatraz inmate grandfather Tommy Madsen in a Bullitt-inspired car chase filmed for three days in San Francisco (it took the crew of Bullitt nine to film the original chase for the 1968 movie). I’d hoped that they’d use the Highland Green 1968 Ford Mustang 390 GT 2+2 Fastback that Jones’s character Rebecca Madsen has been driving in Vancouver — the exact colour, make and model of the Mustang that Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt — but I guess there wasn’t time to ship it down to San Francisco for the shoot or to rebuild it so that it could do the stunt driving.

FOX promo photos show a Deep Impact Blue 2013 Mustang GT speeding down a San Franciso hill. Sarah Jones did fly down to film scenes there but a stunt double did the driving. Jones hadn’t filmed in San Francisco since the pilot, which I wrote about in my first #YVRShoots series post on Alcatraz.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

This series had its genesis when I began photographing Vancouver area location shoots in the summer of 2010 to get over a post-Olympics funk. Film and TV productions like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Fringe, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time showcase our city in similar fashion and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame.

Thanks to real bro chemistry between Chris Pine (Star Trek reboot’s Captain Kirk) and Tom Hardy (Bane in upcoming The Dark Night Rises), the bromance in This Means War works much better than the actual romance, which flounders on the premise that Reese Witherspoon’s character is so supremely attractive that these two men would risk their friendship to war over her. Witherspoon is beautiful and an acclaimed actress but she’s miscast in this role. On the other hand, I had no problem with the  idea of blending of action, romance and comedy – if done well – in a story of spy versus spy, who use their CIA resources against each other after they discover they’ve fallen for the same woman. But the execution of this movie felt choppy and clumsy in both writing and editing, as if three different movies had been spliced into one.

That might have been the case, judging from the number of Vancouver scenes cut in editing, including the ones I photographed below in Yaletown and North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Quay Market, as well as some at Gastown’s Incendio restaurant. Director McG (in my Yaletown photo with Tom Hardy & Reese Witherspoon) even shot three alternate endings to the romance, including a fun “homoerotic” one of Pine and Hardy in each other’s arms and Witherspoon with nobody — which I might have preferred.

This Means War opens with a spectacular action sequence on the roof of the Bentall 4 tower  in Vancouver as Hong Kong.  …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>