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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.

CTV’s Vancouver Crime Drama Hit MOTIVE Wraps Filming of Its First Season


Motive Cast — Brendan Penny, Lauren Holly, Louis Ferreira, Kristin Lehman and Roger Cross — CTV promo image

The murder is just the beginning. There’s always a motive and Vancouver homicide detective Angie Flynn (Kristin Lehman) will find it. Filming wrapped last Friday on Motive’s thirteen-episode first season.

Motive debuted in a prime but delayed post-Super Bowl slot on CTV to 1.23 million Canadians, the culmination of an unprecedented publicity campaign by CTV for a Canadian show. Normally, only CTV’s American simulcast shows get this scale of rollout. And in a sweet twist, American network ABC has picked up the Vancouver crime drama for broadcast this summer.

Ratings held steady after Motive’s move to its regular 9 p.m. on Sundays slot, dipping for the second episode but rising back over one million for the third episode, to give Canada’s #1 new drama a series-to-date average of 1.06 million viewers.

Instead of a regular whodunit that focuses on who did the crime, Motive is a whydunit that focuses on why the crime was committed in the first place. The Killer and The Victim are revealed to the audience at the top of the show and we follow detectives Angie Flynn (Kristin Lehman) and Oscar Vega (Louis Ferreria) as they uncover the reasons behind the murder.

Read More »CTV’s Vancouver Crime Drama Hit MOTIVE Wraps Filming of Its First Season

PROMOS: ONCE UPON A TIME – A Series as Epic as the Movies

A Series as Epic as The Movies Every Single Week

Once Upon a Time makes TV looks like the movies every week. Revolutionary Z.E.U.S. visual effects technology allows the modern fairy tale series to be as epic as a movie on a TV budget. If you looked through a camera lense or a monitor in studio in Vancouver you would see scenes rendered in real time while the cast performs on mostly empty green screen stages. And beautiful British Columbia has a hand in creating stunning backdrops too with on-location filming in our forests, deserts and oceans for Fairy Tale Land and in the village of Steveston for present-day Storybrooke.

But Once Upon a Time would be just pretty pictures if  the creators and cast didn’t bring emotion to the stories they tell. Here are some promo photos of the actors who make us care about fairy tale characters week after week.

Charming (Josh Dallas) and his daughter Emma (Jennifer Morrison) on location in Steveston south of Vancouver.

ABC/AUTUMN DE WILDE

Read More »PROMOS: ONCE UPON A TIME – A Series as Epic as the Movies

PROMOS: ONCE UPON A TIME’s 2×15 The Queen is Dead Images – Updated

Does any show spoil itself as much as Once Upon a Time does? This is not a judgement. More is more is a valid promotional strategy.

No one is safe on this Sunday’s The Queen is Dead with two deaths. One in present-day. And one in the Fairy Tale Land past. As you can see from the promo, sneak peek clips and promo images, the Rumple family — grandfather Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold (Robert Carlyle), father Baelfire/Neal (Michael Raymond-James), mother Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and son Henry (Jared Gilmore) –bond a little in Manhattan. At least father and son do. And then Captain Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) shows up to exact his revenge on a Rumple with no magic.  But he attacks him with his hook not The Dark One’s dagger, so there’s hope.

Related: Rumple family strolling in Gastown as Manhattan

And new alliances may help Rumple too. Snow/Mary Margaret (Ginnifer Goodwin), Charming/David (Josh Dallas) and the Blue Fairy/Mother Superior (Keegan Conner Tracy) team up to find The Dark One’s dagger before Cora (Barbara Hershey) and Regina (Lana Parilla) do in order to protect Henry’s other Grandfather.

That’s the Dark One’s dagger in Snow’s hand. But whose heart is Regina/Evil Queen holding?

PROMOS: SUPERNATURAL 8×16 Remember the Titans Promo Images

All Hell Breaks Zeus this Wednesday night. An amnesiac man (John Reardon of Arctic Air/Continuum) turns out to be Greek God Prometheus not a zombie. And he’s under attack from Greek Goddess Artemis (Anna Von Hooft). Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) Winchester investigate.

Prometheus (John Reardon)

WEEK: February 18-24, 2013

 

PROMOS: ARROW 1×16 Dead to Rights

The Holy Shitballs episode, as Arrow star Stephen Amell calls it on Twitter, filmed on location inside the Westin Bayshore Hotel with assassins Deadshot (Michael Rowe) and China White (Kelly Hu) trying to kill Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) at a benefit honouring Merlyn for his work with Starling City. This is where I saw the Dancin’ Merlyn Boys ahead of their scene.

 Related: The Dancin’ Merlyn Boys (John Barrowman & Colin Donnell) at Westin Bayshore Hotel

Last Wednesday, Moira Queen (Susanna Thompson) asked Frank Chen (Chin Han), an associate in The Undertaking, for help in ordering a hit on Malcolm Merlyn. Read More »PROMOS: ARROW 1×16 Dead to Rights

BIG READ: Kokanee’s THE MOVIE OUT HERE in Theatres Next Friday

Published Feburary 22, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome

Kokanee’s The Movie Out Here hits theatres next Friday. It’s a B.C. version of Hot Tub Time Machine meets Old School populated with your favourite characters from the beer commercials like the Sasquatch, Kokanee Ranger and Glacier Girls plus a new buddy ranger duo Glacier and Fresh. 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 as itself. I met the Kokanee Ranger and his successors Glacier and Fresh and interviewed Nielsen and Leacock on set at Alouette Lake (before the two-week Fernie shoot), while crew filmed Wallis watching Glacier Girls change bikini tops on the beach for a Kokanee commercial within the movie.

Read More »BIG READ: Kokanee’s THE MOVIE OUT HERE in Theatres Next Friday

SHOOT: Watch ARROW’s Stephen Amell Jump to Street, Slide over Cab & Then Run Right At Me for 1×18

Stephen Amell could work as a stunt performer if he didn’t have a job already as the star of Arrow. His Oliver Queen/Hood stunt double Simon Burnett did the jump and running sequence first in Gastown  — jump from the roof of the grey van in the alley over a semi-trailer piled with plywood  crates onto the street, slide over the trunk of a yellow Starling City cab and run into the other side of the alley. Camera crew let me stand behind them to watch three or four takes with Simon Burnett and then the last one with Amell himself. Amell did the exact same sequence as well as Burnett but instead of coming to a halt just past the camera, Amell blasted by me down the alley. I could have snapped one more photo but risked him running right through me. Automatic set ban? For sure. This is not to take away anything from Simon Burnett. He’s the one who jumped from the Hotel Gastown roof to the top of a parkade. And he’s the one who smashes through candy glass windows feet first as the Hood. But Amell is simply amazing. 

Read More »SHOOT: Watch ARROW’s Stephen Amell Jump to Street, Slide over Cab & Then Run Right At Me for 1×18

SATURN AWARDS Noms for FRINGE & Cast, ONCE UPON A TIME, SUPERNATURAL, ARROW, FALLING SKIES, THE KILLING And Our Own CONTINUUM

Perennial Saturn Awards (sci-fi, fantasy & horror) winner Fringe gets a final hurrah this year with a nomination as Best Network Television Series and individual nominations for Joshua Jackson as Best Actor, Anna Torv as Best Actress, John Noble as Best Supporting Actor and Blair Brown and Lance Reddick as Best Guest Stars. Fringe won Best Network Television Series in 2010 and 2011 so it  could go out with a three-peat. Anna Torv already has a three-peat with Best Actress  on TV awards in 2009, 2010, and 2011. John Noble got the win as Best Supporting Actor on TV in 2010. And Leonard Nimoy picked up Best Guest Actor on TV in 2009.

Other filmed-in-Vancouver  productions scoring nominations include Once Upon a Time, Supernatural, The Killing, Falling Skies, Arrow and Vancouver’s own Continuum.

Best Network Television Series

 Fringe, FOX

Read More »SATURN AWARDS Noms for FRINGE & Cast, ONCE UPON A TIME, SUPERNATURAL, ARROW, FALLING SKIES, THE KILLING And Our Own CONTINUUM