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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.

BIG READ: Vancouver Director Jeff Renfroe’s Ice Age Thriller THE COLONY

Published April 25, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome

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.

Kevin Zegers and Laurence Fishburne in The Colony. Courtesy of EOne Films.
Laurence Fishburne, Director Jeff Renfroe and Kevin Zegers. Courtesy of EOne Films.

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver Director Jeff Renfroe’s Ice Age Thriller THE COLONY

TONIGHT: Felicia Day Returns as Charlie on SUPERNATURAL 8×20 Pac-Man Fever

Geek goddess Felicia Day returns to Supernatural tonight as hacker Charlie Bradbury and beloved Queen of Moondoor. This time Charlie is the one who brings a case to the Winchester brothers. Much of tonight’s episode was filmed in east Vancouver under the 2nd Narrows Bridge at and around the secret entrance to the Men of Letters mancave (interiors are filmed in studio). Here Jensen Ackles’s Dean Winchester teaches Charlie how to be a hunter.

Jensen Ackles as Dean and Jared Padalecki as Sam -- Credit: Diyah Pera/The CW -- © 2013 The CW Network.
And later that day at the Hastings Community Centre near the PNE.

Dean’s tutelage must be working because Charlie looks a lot like a fake FBI agent in the CW photo below.

Felicia Day as Charlie and Jensen Ackles as Dean -- Credit: Diyah Pera/The CW -- © 2013 The CW Network.

Read More »TONIGHT: Felicia Day Returns as Charlie on SUPERNATURAL 8×20 Pac-Man Fever

TONIGHT: Deadshot Returns on ARROW 1×20 Home Invasion

Diggle (David Ramsey)’s obsession with vengeance against his brother’s killer Deadshot (Michael Rowe) leads to a falling out between the dynamic duo — Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and Diggle — tonight. Not because Oliver doesn’t share Diggle’s desire to take out the assassin, but because he has [different priorities.]

Michae Rowe as Deadshot. Photo: Jack Rowand/The CW — � 2013 The CW Network.

Arrow filmed Diggle meeting with federal agent Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson) about Deadshot inside The Pinnacle Hotel in Read More »TONIGHT: Deadshot Returns on ARROW 1×20 Home Invasion

SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Robert Carlyle & Emilie de Ravin at The Rabbit Hole In Steveston for 2×20 – Updated

Update April 28 2013. Greg and Tamara hold Hook captive in the clock tower of the Storybrooke Library. To get Hook to help them with their plan they show him Rumplestiltskin is alive and happy coming out of The Rabbit Hole below. 

Once Upon a Time set up cameras on the roof of the Storybrooke Public Library in Steveston early this March to film a scene of  Mr. Gold  in a dark suit and Belle’s cursed self, barfly Lacey in a sequined blue, tight, short, backless dress, stumbling and weaving out of The Rabbit Hole pub, arms round one another. Is this after Mr. Gold beats and rips the tongue out of the Sheriff of Nottingham (Red Widow’s Wil Traval) cursed self Keith to Lacey’s delight? The same tongue which had just been shoved down her throat.

Mr. Gold and Lacey are definitely not RumBelle. More like The Dark One and the Tramp. But fun characters for Robert Carlyle and Emilie de Ravin to play.

Read More »SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Robert Carlyle & Emilie de Ravin at The Rabbit Hole In Steveston for 2×20 – Updated

WEEK: April 15-21, 2013

BIG READ: CONTINUUM & Cosplay at Fan Expo Vancouver

Published April 21, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome

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 Sandler (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.

Read More »BIG READ: CONTINUUM & Cosplay at Fan Expo Vancouver