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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: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Neverland at Steveston’s Garry Point Park for Season Finale 2×22 – Updated

Once Upon a Time is filming in Steveston for [four] full days for its season two finale — And Straight on ‘Til Morning. Thursday, March 28th, was Day Three and began inside the Gulf of Georgia cannery with cast and stunt doubles on set for a big fight in present-day Storybrooke. Then in late afternoon, production moved to a beach in the 75-acre waterfront Garry Point Park, west of the historic fishing village. There they filmed a way-too-spoilery to-share scene on the beach with some Fairy Tale World characters and grownup Baelfire (Michael Raymond-James, who tweeted that Thursday was his final day of shooting season two). And then Once Upon a Time filmed a flashback of a night in Neverland, featuring the Lost Boys and young Baelfire (Dylan Schmid) in a row boat coming to shore. Filming was delayed until high tide receded and SPFX crew flooded the beach with smoke. So much smoke that it might have been Once Upon a Time’s smoke drifting northward that my ferry to Vancouver Island had to pass through on an otherwise sunny Good Friday.

Related: Day 2 – Charming Family & Grandpa Rumple in Steveston’s Kuno Garden

Related: Day 1 – Captain Hook on his Pirate Ship Set off the Steveston Docks

Read More »SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Neverland at Steveston’s Garry Point Park for Season Finale 2×22 – Updated

SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Jennifer Morrison, Ginnifer Goodwin, Josh Dallas, Robert Carlyle & Jared Gilmore in Steveston’s Kuno Garden for Season Finale 2×22

Once Upon a Time is filming in Steveston for [four] full  days for its season two finale — And Straight on ‘Til Morning. Wednesday, March 27th, was Day Two and began with cast — including Jennifer Morrison, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Josh Dallas — on set for an early morning runthrough around 8:30 a.m. in the Kuno Garden at the 75-acre waterfront Garry Point Park, west of the historic village of Steveston. Real-life couple Goodwin and Dallas took a quiet stroll together in the sun after and then headed back to circus while crew set up for the morning scene of Emma and her parents, Charming/David and Snow/Mary Margaret, driving up to the garden in Charming/David’s truck and walking into the Japanese-style memorial garden where the emotional moments took place.

Related: Day 1 – Captain Hook on his Pirate Ship Set off the Steveston Docks

Read More »SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Jennifer Morrison, Ginnifer Goodwin, Josh Dallas, Robert Carlyle & Jared Gilmore in Steveston’s Kuno Garden for Season Finale 2×22

SHOOT: Lauren Holly as Dr. Betty Rogers in Downtown Vancouver for MOTIVE 1×07

Ahead of a new episode of hit Vancouver crime drama Motive on CTV tonight, here’s Lauren Holly (NCIS) as lead medical examiner Dr. Betty Rogers on set for last week’s Out of the Past at the Ash Market downtown. I didn’t know she was in the cast then or that I’d photographed her in an egg blue rain slicker in the October rain on my way to the Vancouver Film Festival.

Dr. Betty Rogers determines that the killer slashed shop owner Hank Cousineau’s throat when he was sitting in a chair at the back of his news shop and then watched as the victim bled to death. A particularlyunpleasant killer.

Read More »SHOOT: Lauren Holly as Dr. Betty Rogers in Downtown Vancouver for MOTIVE 1×07

SHOOT: You Won’t See This Running Stunt by ARROW Stunt Double Simon Burnett on 1×18 Tonight

Oliver Queen and The Hood stunt double Simon Burnett did stunt after stunt for tonight’s Arrow episode Salvation in Gastown in late February. He wove through traffic on a motorcycle, slid down a fire escape ladder, jumped from the roof of one building to another on a wire and jumped over a semi-trailer piled with plywood crates through a yellow Starling City cab and ran into an alley. It’s the last stunt you won’t see on screen tonight. Why? Because star Stephen Amell executed it so well that there was no need for a double. So here are Amell and Burnett prepping for the stunt and Burnett doing it.

Related: Watch Stephen Amell Jump to Street, Slide Over Cab & Then Run Right at Me for 1×18 

Read More »SHOOT: You Won’t See This Running Stunt by ARROW Stunt Double Simon Burnett on 1×18 Tonight

SHOOT: Karl Urban & Michael Ealy Film TV Pilot ALMOST HUMAN at Winters Hotel in Gastown

Futuristic Los Angeles police officer John Kennex (Karl Urban) and his android cop partner Dorian (Michael Ealy) led a team of human and android police officers in a raid to rescue a kidnapped policeman this morning held inside the historic but rundown Winters Hotel in Gastown. This is the first time I’ve seen the buddy cops on set together for J.J. Abrams and Fringe showrunner Joel Wyman’s TV pilot Almost Human (formerly Human) and they had a good time of it — except Urban seemed fed up with being photographed at open shoots in Vancouver. Production moved inside the hotel to film the attempted rescue for the rest of the day and tomorrow morning. Fringe fans know the interior of the hotel as the “pocket reality” in the season five episode “Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There”. 

Related: Karl Urban & Minka Kelly film TV Pilot Almost Human in Vancouver’s Business District

Read More »SHOOT: Karl Urban & Michael Ealy Film TV Pilot ALMOST HUMAN at Winters Hotel in Gastown

SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Captain Hook on his Pirate Ship Set off Steveston Docks for Season Finale 2×22 – Updated

Updated March 31st – Once Upon a Time is filming in Steveston for four full days for its season two finale, And Straight on ‘Til Morning. Tuesday, March 26th, was Day One.

Once Upon a Time filmed a scene of Captain Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) at the helm of his pirate ship off the Steveston docks south of Vancouver today. Is he in Neverland for the season two finale? A boat towed the floating pirate ship set west while a camera boat did a pass of the set with a technocrane panning up to Hook on the painted side of the ship. Once Upon a Time did several takes of this and then the pirate ship set was towed into the docks. Unfortunately I missed earlier scenes on the pirate ship set.

Read More »SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Captain Hook on his Pirate Ship Set off Steveston Docks for Season Finale 2×22 – Updated

SHOOT: Wooden August Becomes Young Pinocchio at ONCE UPON A TIME 2×18 Shoot in Fort Langley

August (Eion Bailey) found redemption on Once Upon a Time last night, becoming a “real boy” again after years of wrongdoing by being as Brave, Truthful & UnSelfish as Pinocchio is supposed to be.  We have not seen wooden August in the second season, partly to accommodate Bailey, who was cast as the male lead in Jerry Bruckheimer’s drama pilot Trooper but the Covert Affairs/ER actor became available again in the new year when TNT chose to pick up to series the to-be-filmed-in-Vancouver Maxwell & King instead of Trooper. I hope last night doesn’t mark Bailey’s exit from the modern fairy tale series.

Related: Eion Bailey & Michael Raymond-James film Manhattan flashback scenes in Gastown

Once Upon a Time filmed the scenes of the Blue Fairy (Keegan Connor Tracy) waving her wand over the dead wooden August (Eion Bailey) on February 12th at the Fort Langley Community Centre dressed as Storybrooke Town Hall, previously messed-up in 2×03 to show the destructive path of the wraith. August tries to warn Emma (Jennifer Morrison) about Neal/Baelfire (Michael Raymond-James)’s fiancee Tamara  (Sonequa Martin Green) before dying. Charming (Josh Dallas) and Snow (Ginnifer Goodwin) rush to August’s aid, with Snow  distraught to see him die because she needs to believe in redemption. But Henry (Jared Gilmore) is the one who realizes August can be saved because of his sacrifice. And so it happens. The Blue Fairy waves her wand and wooden grownup August regresses back to the real boy Pinocchio (Jakob Davies) he once was to the delight of his father Geppetto (Tony Amendola). Pinocchio will do better this time.

Read More »SHOOT: Wooden August Becomes Young Pinocchio at ONCE UPON A TIME 2×18 Shoot in Fort Langley

WEEK: March 18-24, 2013