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Susan Gittins

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.

SHOOT: CULT’s Matt Davis & Jessica Lucas Film Near Hastings Overpass for 1×04

Upcoming midseason CW series Cult has been filming inside the old Terminal City Ironworks complex for a couple of days, but unexpectedly emerged yesterday afternoon for a big scene with Matt Davis and Jessica Lucas near the Hastings Overpass and BC Sugar in east Vancouver. All I could tell from a distance is that it involved people running, simulated gunfire, a culprit being nabbed and some yelling.

Matt Davis (The Vampire Diaries) stars as Jeff an investigative journalist searching for his brother whose disappearance may be linked to the fans of a horror TV series called Cult recreating what they’ve seen on the show. Jeff enlists the help of Jessica Lucas’s production assistant from the show-within-a-show. “When the line between the imagined and reality is broken” is the meta tagline.

Read More »SHOOT: CULT’s Matt Davis & Jessica Lucas Film Near Hastings Overpass for 1×04

ARROW Turns Downtown Heritage Bank Building Into Starling Trust Bank for Robbery Scenes in Ep. 1×06

Upcoming CW series Arrow started its day today filming scenes of robbers entering the rear of a downtown heritage building and former bank at 330 West Pender Street turned into Starling Trust Bank. Then shortly after morning rush hour, Vancouver Police closed both east-bound lanes in the 300 block at the front of the building so that Arrow could film scenes of prop police cruisers arriving at the robbery and Roger Cross (Continuum’s cold-blooded Liber8 killer Travis) as a police officer with a megaphone telling those inside the bank to come out with their hands up. The bank hostages emerge wearing white playing card masks. Are the robbers among the hostages? Police then storm the building. Arrow wrapped the arrival of police scene around 2 p.m., the lanes re-opened and production moved inside the building to film the robbery.

What do these bank robbery scenes remind you of? The Dark Knight? Or maybe Inside Man with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen? Arrow has big aspirations for a new TV series but from what I’ve seen of filming, it will meet them.

Read More »ARROW Turns Downtown Heritage Bank Building Into Starling Trust Bank for Robbery Scenes in Ep. 1×06

TIFF: Robert Redford’s THE COMPANY YOU KEEP is Tonight’s Gala Presentation at Toronto International Film Festival

Robert Redford’s political thriller The Company You Keep gets a Toronto International Film Festival gala presentation tonight at Roy Thomson Hall. Filmed last fall in the Vancouver area, The Company You Keep stars Redford as widowed civil rights lawyer Jim Grant, who’s really a former Weather Underground militant and fugitive wanted for over thirty years for a bank robbery and murder of a guard. Shia LaBeouf is the young reporter Ben Shepard who exposes Grant’s secret, forcing him to go on the run to find the one person who can clear his name before he’s caught by the FBI in a nation-wide manhunt.

The official TIFF trailer opens with these typed words: “In 1969 a group of radical anti-war protestors began a campaign of bombings on American soil. They were called the “Weather Underground”. Some were sent to prison. A few … vanished…until today.” Then we see fugitive Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) arrested at a gas station. Ben Shepard (LaBeouf), a reporter for a struggling local newspaper, watches this on TV — Breaking News: Sharon Solarz Arrested. Jim Grant reads about the arrest in the newspaper — Weather Underground Most Wanted Caught — at home with his young daughter (Jackie Evancho, an 11-year-old finalist on America’s Got Talent): “What’s wrong? You look weird.” Grant: “I’m fine, honey. ” With help from an old college friend now FBI agent (Anna Kendrick), Shepard begins to focus on Grant, catching up with him at a shoot filmed in Gastown. Shepard: “Mr. Grant, I’m just trying to put the pieces together.” Grant: “I don’t have time for this…”

But Grant decides to run. He tells his daughter: “We’re not going to school. We’re gonna go on a little trip.” Wearing a baseball cap, Grant (Redford) and his daughter (Evancho) check into the remodeled Hotel Georgia complex downtown made to look like a Manhattan hotel with prop NY cabs coming and going.

The trailer continues with more typed words: “One reporter. Has discovered a secret. That can connect them all. And reveal the truth.” Shepard: “I don’t think he’s running away. I think he’s trying to clear his name.”

The biggest and most public scenes in Vancouver took place at the west entrance to the Vancouver Art Gallery (the former Vancouver Court House) with Grant (Redford) scrummed by media as he gets into a car driven by Chris Cooper. Reporter Shepard (LaBeouf) is there but at a remove from the scrum.

Kokanee’s THE MOVIE OUT HERE On Location in Golden Ears Park

Kokanee and Alliance Films invited (social) media to visit them on location deep in Golden Ears Park  yesterday for the upcoming feature film The Movie Out Here. They lured us out with the promise of seeing a real Sasquatch (he has his own VIP trailer) but we saw a “fake” one instead filming a “fake” Kokanee commercial within the real movie — it has the working title Big Hairy Movie. No one seemed to mind about the fake Sasquatch though because of the Glacier Girls changing their bikini tops on camera and the Kokanee Ranger (John Novak) looking on.

The Movie Out Here is more than an extended Kokanee beer commercial, although I’m sure that would be entertaining too. But it’s no serious drama. Think Caddyshack not Schindler’s List. Or “Hot Tub Time Machine meets Old School” as one marketing manager put it. Robin Nielsen, Viv Leacock and James Wallis co-star as old friends who band together to fight a land developer in the ski town of Fernie in Kokanee country (the movie will film in Fernie before it wraps mid-month). Two of the buddies came out to set to chat with us even though they weren’t in the Kokanee commercial scenes.

Glacier Girls changing bikini tops on camera for fake commercial and real movie.

Electric Playground interviews stars Robin Nielsen and Viv Leocock on the set at Alouette Lake.

Robin Nielsen (grand nephew of Leslie Nielsen), who plays the straight man Adam, a Toronto lawyer, in this buddy movie.

Viv Leocock who plays Jason.

Winners of  the Live Auditions for new Kokanee Rangers.

A Kokanee beer truck on the beach for the fake Kokanee commercial.

Read More »Kokanee’s THE MOVIE OUT HERE On Location in Golden Ears Park

SHOOT: FRINGE Family Films at Pacific Central Station As Monorail Station Circa 2036 for 5×04

Fringe crew transformed Pacific Central Station in Vancouver into a New Jersey Monorail station circa 2036 on Thursday with bilingual signage in the English and Observer languages, Observers, Loyalist troops, Native citizens dressed in 1940s fashion, armoured jeeps and check points. I missed the day shoot outside and inside the main entrance to the station but caught the evening one on the north side with cast Joshua Jackson (who did his own stunt running across the hood of the Bishop mobile), John Noble and Georgina Haig in gas masks as the Bishops, who make their getaway in the faster-than-it-looks half-a-century-old family station wagon. One of the oddities of this shoot was seeing Observers and Loyalist troops with no eyes or mouths (which made it very difficult for these background performers to go to the craft table or anywhere else).

Read More »SHOOT: FRINGE Family Films at Pacific Central Station As Monorail Station Circa 2036 for 5×04

SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME Makes Rain & Lightning in Steveston for 2×05 – Updated

On a clear, warmish Thursday night in Steveston south of Vancouver, Once Upon a Time made rain and lightning as Lana Parrilla drove Regina’s vintage Mercedes to the main intersection of Storybrooke in take after take. Fans lined both sides of Moncton Street to watch and cheered when Josh Dallas came by to say Hello. The lovely woman beside me with the iPhone couldn’t contain herself, calling out, “You’re so cute.” Which he is. And real-life charming too. Fans also got to see [an unidentified double in the Daniel costume who I assumed was Noah Bean because he was on set later in the dark when we were asked not to take photographs of the scene. My apologies for the confusion.].

And then the main event: the biggest rain tower I’ve ever seen deluged Regina’s Mercedes with water again and again.

Once Upon a Time had spent the afternoon filming scenes on Moncton Street in front of Granny’s Diner and inside Mr. Gold, while other crew Read More »SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME Makes Rain & Lightning in Steveston for 2×05 – Updated