Longtime mainstream media (MSM) journalist and author Susan Gittins began writing about and photographing Vancouver’s many film and TV location shoots in the summer of 2010 after the Winter Olympics put the city and its beauty on the world stage. Movies and TV series often showcase the Vancouver area in similar fashion. Vancouver is Awesome commissioned her YVRShoots series in the fall of 2010 and it ran regularly for three years. She launched her own daily YVRShoots blog in the spring of 2012.
Leven Rambin, last seen on the big screen as Glimmer in box office smash The Hunger Games, showed up on the set of Percy Jackson: Sea… Read More »PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS Films on Camp Half-Blood’s Greek Ampitheatre Set in Robert Burnaby Park
Back in late March, I did a double take walking up Granville Street in the rain towards the Shannon Mews estate in Vancouver. All of sudden, Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki rounded the corner below on scooters, turning into the lane where the extras van is waiting, on their way to their trailers parked behind the church. It was a hilarious sight, especially 6′ 4″ Padalecki astride the tiny bike. While I did have a camera in my pocket, I couldn’t get it out in time so you’ll have to imagine how funny the two Js looked riding these mini-bikes.
‘They must have used the bikes as a fun way to get to and from the shoot on the grounds of the Shannon Mews estate where they filmed scenes of Sam and Dean sitting in the orange not-the-Impala looking at the main mansion and then walking up to the front door.
And then inside the mansion which plays the home of the Alpha Vampire (Rick Worthy) from last season. From a sneak peek, it seems that in order to kill Leviathan head Dick Roman (James Patrick Stuart), the Winchester brothers must wash a bone in the three bloods of the fallen: the blood from a fallen angel, which could be Castiel (Misha Collins)’s; the blood from the ruler of fallen humanity, which could be Crowley (Mark Sheppard)’s; and the blood from the father of fallen beasts, which could be the Alpha Vampire’s from last season’s Live Free or Twihard, the first episode of Supernatural I ever saw being filmed.
Read More »Alpha Vampire’s Mansion in #Supernatural’s There Will Be Blood – Updated
After months of construction, dark fantasy movie Seventh Son started filming today on its gigantic medieval castle set at Kent Hangar field in Vancouver. In addition to the huge wooden set, I counted eight generators and several giant blue screens attached to a wall of forty-two stacked shipping containers (crew had turned one of the bottom containers into a makeshift props department).
Seventh Son 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. I don’t know who was on set today because I could only see a sliver of the filming through a gap in the blue screens, revealing an interior market and real horses tethered to wooden rails.
Read More »SEVENTH SON Starts Filming on its Mega Medieval Castle Set – Updated
Why did Once Upon a Time crew put an apple tree in the middle of an intersection in Steveston dressed as Storybrooke in mid-March? We’ll find… Read More »ONCE UPON A TIME’s Apple Tree Scene in Steveston for 1×21 – Updated
Upcoming TV series Continuum didn’t wrap its first season quietly: filling a downtown block all day Saturday with 125 extras, flashing prop Vancouver police cars, emergency vehicle and firetruck to film scenes of a bomb scare evacuation featuring stars Rachel Nichols and Victor Webster, with guest star Nicholas Lea in the Vancouver police vest. People stopped, photographed and tweeted the shoot, giving Continuum some extra social media buzz before its debut on Showcase on Sunday, May 27th.
Read More »CONTINUUM Wraps First Season With Big Downtown Shoot
Did you catch the amazing demolished building set that Continuum filmed on today in CBC Vancouver’s Concord Pacific Courtyard? I’d spotted the styrofoam concrete blocks under a tarp on Tuesday but didn’t expect the set would be this spectacular, with smoke machines blowing smoke and a wind machine blowing office paper all over the area for each take (I would not want to be part of the crew that has to clean up and restore this to the grassy little courtyard it is in regular life).
As if the set wasn’t enough of a reason to stop-and-stare, Continuum put its star Rachel Nichols in the centre of it wearing a black cat suit.
Read More »Rachel Nichols in a Cat Suit at CONTINUUM Demolished Building Set
I’m so relieved that tonight is not the start of Fringe Division’s last stand. We have a whole new season of thirteen episodes for that. Instead, Fringe Division only has to face off against this season’s Big Bad, David Robert Jones, to save two worlds in the season four finale Brave New World.
At some point in the two-part finale, we will get to see the full might of Olivia Dunham’s cortexiphan powers, hopefully aimed straight at David Robert Jones. But first she helps Rebecca Mader’s Jessica, a victim of another of Mr. Jones’s experiments. I photographed Anna Torv’s Olivia Dunham saying goodbye to Lost’s Charlotte in downtown Vancouver’s Cathedral Park on Friday, March 23rd.
The following week, I spotted Fringe filming a fight scene between Joshua Jackson’s Peter Bishop and Jared Harris’s David Robert Jones in the pouring rain on the roof of a building in east Vancouver, near the old British Columbia Sugar Refinery. I have not shared these photos until today, but noticed a clip of Anna Torv’s Olivia Dunham with a satellite antenna like the one below in a FOX promo.
This was just one in a week of night shoots for Fringe all over the Vancouver area.Read More »PREVIEW: FRINGE Season Four Finale – Brave New World
For the first time in a long time, I have seen four of the feature films nominated for Leo Awards on the big screen, thanks to a Vancouver International Film Festival pass from Vancouver is Awesome dot com.
As expected, Carl Bessai’s Sisters & Brothers, the third in his trilogy about dysfunctional Vancouver families, leads the feature film nominations with twelve in total. How could it not with local talent like Corner Gas’s Gabrielle Miller and Benjaman Ratner as sister and brother; Intelligence’s Camille Sullivan and Amanda Crew as half-sisters on a road trip to L.A. with a sleezy hustler played by Tom Scholte; and The Killing’s Kacey Rohl and Leena Manro as another pair of half-sisters, whose mother is none other than local acting legend Gabrielle Rose? All eight of these B.C. actors are nominated either for lead or supporting performances in the film.
TV rules at B.C.’s Leo Awards, which is the opposite of most American award ceremonies where the hierarchy goes film, then television. So it’s fitting that this year’s hosts on May 26th at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver will be Amanda Tapping and Robin Dunne, the stars of homegrown sci fi series Sanctuary, which earned a whopping 18 nominations, including lead performance nominations for both Tapping and Dunne.
If you follow either of them on Twitter or tracked their progress at Comic-Con last year you’ll know that Amanda Tapping and Robin Dunne are a madcap comedy duo off screen.
