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.
Bates Motel usually films on its permanent set in Aldergrove, the one that looks exactly like the creepy motel of Alfred Hitchcock’s horror classic Psycho,… Read More »BATES MOTEL’s Sinister Sheriff Nestor Carbonell Filming on Steveston Fishing Boat – Corrected
Fringe closed the 200 block of Columbia Street in Gastown today to create a checkpoint for our Fringe team — Peter, Olivia, Walter and the child Observer — to avoid in episode eleven of the final season. The day’s filming started early in the alley east of Columbia St. (decorated with resistance posters) where not much could be seen. I left for a time because of the rain and when I returned I learned I’d missed the one scene of cast exiting the alley on foot. Instead I got to see the comedy stylings of Fringe on the first take of Joshua Jackson’s Peter driving the panelled blue mini-van down the street and not being able to turn into the alley as he was supposed to because of a throng of background performers clogging the sidewalk. Everyone cracked up as Jackson tooted the horn (not very stealthy if you want to avoid a checkpoint) and then backed up the mini-van to the starting point. Many smoother takes later Fringe wrapped filming mid-afternoon.
Read More »SHOOT: FRINGE Team Avoids Checkpoint in Gastown in 5×11
Tonight on hospital dramedy Emily Owens M.D., Emily (Mamie Gummer) vies with her high-school nemesis Cassandra (Naomi King’) to be Dr. Bandari’s research assistant and to stop Cassandra from getting more time with Emily’s crush Will (Justin Hartley) in episode four. But will it work? Cassandra will do anything in her pursuit of Will and seems to be succeeding, as we see from a scene for upcoming episode eleven filmed last week at the University of British Columbia’s Life Sciences Centre dressed as Denver Memorial Hospital.
Emily Owens M.D. crew filmed a tracking shot last Thursday of Emily and her friend Tyra (Kelly McCreary), the lesbian daughter of the chief of surgery, standing in line at the prop Get Your Fix coffee cart as background performers carried floral arrangements from the prop Kiss and a Rose flower company van into the Life Sciences Centre, where other crew was setting up a gala set in the atrium. Emily and Tyra are joined in line by Cassandara and Will, also carrying garment bags. So of the main cast, I got a chance to see everyone on location but surgical resident Dr. Mica Barnes (Michael Rady) and rock star surgeon Dr. Gina Bandari (Necar Zadegan). If I’d stayed for the night shoot inside the atrium of the Life Sciences Centre, I might have seen the cast all dressed up to film the hospital gala scenes but hopefully will get the chance to see it on screen.
Read More »EMILY OWENS M.D. Filming at University of British Columbia’s Life Sciences Centre – Updated
Fringe has closed a block of Gastown today to set up an Observer checkpoint to film scenes for the eleventh episode of the final season… Read More »SHOOT: FRINGE Checkpoint in Gastown for 5×11
With Emily Owens M.D. sadly heading for cancellation, I took advantage of a big shoot at the University of British Columbia’s Life Sciences Centre last week to take some photos of Emily’s med school crush — Justin Hartley’s surgical intern Will Collins. No stranger to Vancouver, Smallville’s Oliver Queen/Green Arrow is definitely worthy of Emily’s romantic obsession.
Mamie Gummer’s Emily awkwardly confessed her love for Will in the season premiere and got shot down kindly, only to discover at episode’s end that her high school nemesis, Aja Naomi King’s Cassandra Kopelson, is pursuing a receptive Will. Backtracking from embarrassment, Emily tries to pretend she is Okay with Will’s rejection until he clarifies that he does care for her but doesn’t want to wreck their friendship.
Last week, Emily fruitlessly looked for flaws in Will as he stripped off his shirt in front of her. Later he brought her a banana and a condom as a visual aid for her high school talk on safe sex and then helped her work off her anger at a STD boy recklessly infecting high school girls by teaching her how to bat balls off the roof of the Life Sciences Centre. So it doesn’t look like Emily will get over Will any time soon, even as Cassandra proves willing to do anything to get him, as we can see below in this scene from the [eleventh] episode.
But with Emily Owens M.D possibly wrapping filming in two more episodes, I anticipate a happy ending for Emily and her crush [Update: I’m not so sure about that now that the show is definitely wrapping at thirteen. Emily was “Done with Will” by the end of this episode after he showed himself to be blind to Cassandra’s rudeness at the gala. Her patience has run out. Maybe a different happy ending is in store for her.]
Read More »EMILY OWENS M.D.’s Justin Hartley: A Worthy Crush – Updated
Best LARP Ever? And I missed it. Supernatural filmed for several days on its LARP (live action role playing) set in Coquitlam’s Mundy Park this past week and last. Locals walking their dogs told me they spotted both Jared Padalecki’s Sam and Jensen Ackles’s Dean in among all the background performers dressed in medieval garb for what the sign says is Michigan’s largest LARPing game: MoonDoor, The Battle of Kingdoms. As disappointed as I am to have missed people dressed up like knights for the eleventh episode of season eight, what I’m really kicking myself for is not going out in the pouring rain to try to catch a glimpse of geek goddess Felicia Day (Eureka, Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog)’s return as adorkable hacker Charlie.
LARP and the Real Girl (a clever pun on the Ryan Gosling flick Lars and the Real Girl) also features a new character Gerard, a LARPer who goes too far playing this medieval game. Season Eight showrunner Jeremy Carver told TV sites that Supernatural will approach the LARPing universe differently than it has in the past. I look forward to seeing what they do on screen.
Read More »SHOOT: SUPERNATURAL 8×11 LARP and the Real Girl Set in Coquitlam’s Mundy Park
Last night’s Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There introduced Rowan Longworth’s mysterious child Observer whom Walter had kept hidden for twenty years in a pocket reality inside an old apartment building played by the West End’s Sherburn building. But when the Fringe team finally makes their way to apartment 413 in this Alice-in-Wonderland-like world, the mysterious child Observer is gone.
Will they find him? Of course they will. And so my photos of the child Observer filming episode ten this week are no longer such a big spoiler. The bald boy character we first met in season one (played by a different young actor) was on set for Monday’s epic downtown shoot with Anna Torv’s Olivia, Joshua Jackson’s Peter, John Noble’s Walter and Blair Brown’s Nina Sharp in her wheelchair at one of the five different locations. And also on set a few days later when Fringe filmed in an alley west of the Terminal City Ironworks compound in east Vancouver with the same cast. And then on Thursday for episode eleven at the Waterfront station stop for the West Coast Express made to look like a train station stop in 2036 with Loyalist soldiers patrolling the platform.
Published November 9, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome
Update: While taped in Burnaby, Package Deal is set in Toronto.
Read More »YVRShoots Series – Sitcom PACKAGE DEAL Live in Burnaby
