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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.

SET: GODZILLA Turns Watchmen’s Main Street Set in Burnaby into San Francisco’s Chinatown

Update: Godzilla filmed four or five massive SPFX explosions on this set overnight Saturday (June 22-23). See photo of one blast.

Godzilla blast

Godzilla lit up the south Burnaby night sky at Marine Way and Byrne Road on Tuesday to shoot scenes on the Main Street set (built for the 2009 movie Watchmen) dressed as San Francisco’s Chinatown — a ravaged Chinatown in the wake of a Japanese sea monster. Not much can be seen from outside the private back lot except for glimpses of Chinatown’s iconic hanging red-and-gold  lanterns, 1920s-era Dragon street lamps and a destroyed pagoda-topped building, so you’ll have to imagine it dark and filled with smoke for scenes of the movie’s hero Lieutenant Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and soldiers running through it.

Related: Godzilla turns New Westminster into Streets of San Francisco – Chinatown

Read More »SET: GODZILLA Turns Watchmen’s Main Street Set in Burnaby into San Francisco’s Chinatown

SHOOT: GODZILLA Turns New Westminster Into Streets of San Francisco – Chinatown

The  U.S. military battled Godzilla in downtown New Westminster dressed as the streets of San Francisco a couple of weekends ago in three overnight shoots (June 7-9). On Friday night, the action started near the Arundel Mansion Hotel, a San Francisco-style apartment complex, on a strewn-with-debris-and-wrecked-cars Begbie Street. Crew wearing gas masks filled the half-block with smoke and pushed spectators back for safety reasons. A jump master (Jared Keeso) and about eight soldiers led Lieutenant Ford (star Aaron Taylor-Johnson) into a wall of smoke in Chinatown up at the corner, renamed the Jin Shufan Dim Sum Buffet (“Voted #1 in San Francisco”), in take after take.

Read More »SHOOT: GODZILLA Turns New Westminster Into Streets of San Francisco – Chinatown

SHOOT: Rebecca Romijn of KING & MAXWELL at Stanley Park Pavilion

King & Maxwell crew turned the Stanley Park Pavilion into the Leavitt Inn, the site of an attempted assassination at a Washington D.C. press conference. Today was the day for all the exterior scenes including one on the other side of former secret service agent Michelle Maxwell (Rebecca Romijn) coming around the side of a prop catering van with her gun extended after shots are fired. Crew called out “Bang Bang” as a signal for the background performers to scatter on each take. Tomorrow production moves inside for gunfire scenes in the ballroom and maintenance tunnel. Catherine Bell is guest-starring in this episode, one of several this season, but I haven’t heard how her character fits in.

Read More »SHOOT: Rebecca Romijn of KING & MAXWELL at Stanley Park Pavilion

WEEK: June 10-16, 2013

SHOOT: Mireille Enos, Joel Kinnaman & Elias Koteas Film THE KILLING Season 3 Finale

The Killing almost went unnoticed filming its season 3 finale in the 2100 block of Napier Street in east Vancouver on Friday. A few people stopped and stared for a bit but fans didn’t find the shoot until mid-afternoon. A prop Seattle police squad car and two unmarked ones lined the residential neighbourhood for scenes of our detective duo Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) and Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) meeting Lieutenant James Skinner  (Elias Koteas) , head of  Seattle’s Special Investigations Unit and Linden’s former lover, on site. Is this the house of a suspect? Or a victim’s parents? We’ll have to wait and see. Crew said there wasn’t anything spoilery about the day’s shoot but to watch out for episode ten. That’s the big one.

Read More »SHOOT: Mireille Enos, Joel Kinnaman & Elias Koteas Film THE KILLING Season 3 Finale

SHOOT: THE KILLING’s Joel Kinnaman & Jewel Staite at Vancouver Public Library

Holder has a girlfriend. And she’s sticking around. The Killing filmed scenes on Wednesday of detective Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman in his Holder hoodie) meeting his season three Assistant District Attorney girlfriend Caroline (Jewel Staite) on the level five walkway of the Vancouver Public Library’s curtain wall. He waits for her on a bench, approaches her and they have looooong talk with lots of endearing Holderisms I’m sure, because he’s smiling and at one point hugs her and then later kisses her. Best moment from this couple so far: Holder’s “hot” tat Serenity, a nod to Jewel Staite’s role on the Joss Whedon space western Firefly.

Read More »SHOOT: THE KILLING’s Joel Kinnaman & Jewel Staite at Vancouver Public Library