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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 Captain Hook With a Spyglass in Steveston for 2×11 – Updated

Watch your back Rumplestiltskin. Colin O’Donoghue’s charming and dangerously seductive Captain Hook is looking for a portal to take him to Storybrooke so that he can exact his revenge on the Dark One, who cut off his hand and crushed the heart of his beloved. And Hook will align himself with anyone who can get him there. Emma leaving Hook shackled in the Giant’s treasure house last Sunday night will prove but a temporary setback for Fairytale Land’s most eligible bachelor.

So the question is when — not if —  Hook will show up in Storybrooke. Still, it was an unexpected treat to see O’Donoghue filming scenes on a rooftop in Steveston yesterday and to have crew allow a handful of spectators who’d braved the rain to photograph him when the cameras weren’t rolling. Such an unusual location for Once Upon a Time. Is this rooftop in Storybrooke or Fairytale Land? If Storybrooke, Hook might consider a change of wardrobe because he’s not going to blend in dressed in black leather.

Read More »SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Captain Hook With a Spyglass in Steveston for 2×11 – Updated

SHOOT: FRINGE’s Epic Downtown Shoot with Five Exterior Locations in One Day for 5×10 – Updated

What a day. Fringe filmed sequences with Anna Torv’s Olivia Dunham, Joshua Jackson’s Peter Bishop , John Noble’s Walter Bishop, Blair Brown’s Nina Sharp and a mysterious boy yesterday in five different downtown Vancouver locations for the tenth episode of the final season. Crew dressed each location as the future Observer-occupied world of 2036 using a prop Ministry of Science van, a prop check point and traffic jam, a prop food cart, Resistance posters and dozens of background performers dressed as Observers, Loyalist soliders and citizens in 1940s clothing.

Read More »SHOOT: FRINGE’s Epic Downtown Shoot with Five Exterior Locations in One Day for 5×10 – Updated

PHOTO RECAP: Vancouver as Vancouver in ONCE UPON A TIME 2×06

A few thoughts on Tallahassee, my favourite Once Upon a Time episode of season two so far. I predicted a long con of Jennifer Morrison’s young Emma Swan by Michael Raymond-James’s fellow thief Neal Cassady but did not anticipate he would do it out of love for her after Eion Bailey’s August showed him Emma’s destiny to break the curse in Storybrooke.

I’d seen the thieving pair on set in the Downtown Eastside near the Main Street overpass filming the scene of them being pulled over by the Portland police after Emma learns she “stole a stolen car.”

Once Upon a Time filmed later scenes of the new “Bonnie & Clyde” examining their stolen loot from a corner store  in a motel room at the City Centre Motor Hotel on Main Street and then planning to make a real home together in Tallahassee.

Read More »PHOTO RECAP: Vancouver as Vancouver in ONCE UPON A TIME 2×06

WEEK: October 29 – November 4, 2012

SHOOT: Happy Halloween PSYCH-Os. James Roday & Dule Hill Film in the North Vancouver Rain

Here’s the Blueberry and James Roday’s Shawn Spencer and Dule Hill’s Burton “Gus” Guster filming inside it in North Vancouver rain this Halloween day. Psych wraps filming of its seventh season tomorrow. So I was lucky to see the Blueberry scenes and then Shawn and Gus grabbing a whole mess of hot dogs from Santa Barbara’s Footlong and Fancy Free truck as another character drove by flashing a cardboard sign at them which read “Suck It”. No idea why but it looks like it will be fun.

Read More »SHOOT: Happy Halloween PSYCH-Os. James Roday & Dule Hill Film in the North Vancouver Rain

SHOOT: FRINGE Films in NYC Taxi in Downtown Vancouver for Ep. 5×09

As streets began flooding in the real Manhattan yesterday morning and the east coast braced for Hurricane Sandy’s full impact, Fringe filmed scenes in a NYC taxicab in cloudy, wet Vancouver dressed as Manhattan under Observer Occupation in 2036. It sure put our rain in perspective.

I didn’t find the set until close to lunchtime and not long after Fringe wrapped and returned to studio for the rest of the day, so I don’t know if there were scenes other than John Noble’s Walter in the cab along with an unexpected guest star from seasons earlier. I won’t spoil the identity of that guest star until the producers choose to, because one of the joys of the final season is the way Fringe brings back or echoes former cases and characters. After the guest star wrapped, a Flex star car picked up her and Jasika Nicole’s Astrid, who must have been in that very crowded cab as well. I can’t imagine the risk they took talking in a cab with all those background Observers and Loyalist soldiers walking past. And on one of the background cabs driving by — a Reward Wire rooftop ad. Remember the creepy-good Captain Windmark-voiced Fringe teaser, Wanted: Peter Bishop, ahead of the season premiere?

Read More »SHOOT: FRINGE Films in NYC Taxi in Downtown Vancouver for Ep. 5×09