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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: METALLICA THROUGH THE NEVER Stages Big Riot Scene Near Burrard Station in Downtown Vancouver

Metallica Through the Never (Working Title: CHAOS 3D) is big. A huge production for a concert movie. Crew made more smoke near Burrard Station in downtown Vancouver than thousands of tokers at a 4:20 rally at the Vancouver Art Gallery. And the size of their smoke machines (see below) made TV series Supernatural’s seem puny. All the smoke, lights, artfully constructed debris and overturned vehicles formed a backdrop for a riot scene that will be part of Metallica’s concert movie. The heavy metal band already performed the concert part in Rogers Arena for three nights in a row. Now they’re doing the movie part all over downtown in overnight shoots in Arch Alley near Victory Square, a couple of Burrard intersections and now on Dunsmuir near the Burrard station. Last night’s riot had 400 extras as rioters and riot police, things on fire and riders on horses. The horses — who we’ve seen on screen galloping in Golden Ears Park for Once Upon a Time — seemed a little spooked by the smoke, the noise and all the spectators. I’d hope to see a stunt of a horse dragging a rider through the scene but imagine that was filmed much later on when no one was about. The Metallica movie is expected to wrap sometime Sunday.

Read More »SHOOT: METALLICA THROUGH THE NEVER Stages Big Riot Scene Near Burrard Station in Downtown Vancouver

BIG READ: ARCTIC AIR is our Local Star in CBC’s Fall & Winter Lineup

Published September 13, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

How much does the CBC love Arctic Air? Heaps. At the CBC Upfronts in May, host George Stroumboulopoulos introduced the cast of Arctic Air first in the Prime Time segment, ahead of the Dragon’s Den Dragons. And for good reason. The Vancouver-and-Yellowknife-shot adventure series, starring Adam Beach and Pascale Hutton, averaged just under a million viewers in its first season, making it the most-watched debut season for a CBC drama series in fifteen years.

Arctic Air, which returns for a second season in early 2013, is just one of CBC’s Canadian dramas to look forward to this fall and winter. Long-running 1890s Toronto detective series Murdoch Mysteries, starring Yannick Bisson, relocates to the CBC next Monday, September 17th, airing a repeat of its fifth season before unveiling a new sixth season on the public broadcaster (Bisson joked at the upfront that leaving City-TV for CBC was like the girlfriend who got dumped but married a surgeon). And the rollicking father-and-son private detective series Republic of Doyle, set in picturesque St. John’s, Newfoundland, returns for a fourth season in the new year. It not only stars Newfoundland native Allan Hawco, it is produced and often written by this impressive multi-tasker. Also coming this winter on CBC is a new, present-day Toronto detective series Cracked, starring David Sutcliffe (Rory Gilmore’s Dad) as the police detective and Stefanie von Pfetten as the psychiatrist, who work together in a Psych Crimes Unit.

Read More »BIG READ: ARCTIC AIR is our Local Star in CBC’s Fall & Winter Lineup

SHOOT: CULT’s Matt Davis & Jessica Lucas Film Near Hastings Overpass for 1×04

Upcoming midseason CW series Cult has been filming inside the old Terminal City Ironworks complex for a couple of days, but unexpectedly emerged yesterday afternoon for a big scene with Matt Davis and Jessica Lucas near the Hastings Overpass and BC Sugar in east Vancouver. All I could tell from a distance is that it involved people running, simulated gunfire, a culprit being nabbed and some yelling.

Matt Davis (The Vampire Diaries) stars as Jeff an investigative journalist searching for his brother whose disappearance may be linked to the fans of a horror TV series called Cult recreating what they’ve seen on the show. Jeff enlists the help of Jessica Lucas’s production assistant from the show-within-a-show. “When the line between the imagined and reality is broken” is the meta tagline.

Read More »SHOOT: CULT’s Matt Davis & Jessica Lucas Film Near Hastings Overpass for 1×04

ARROW Turns Downtown Heritage Bank Building Into Starling Trust Bank for Robbery Scenes in Ep. 1×06

Upcoming CW series Arrow started its day today filming scenes of robbers entering the rear of a downtown heritage building and former bank at 330 West Pender Street turned into Starling Trust Bank. Then shortly after morning rush hour, Vancouver Police closed both east-bound lanes in the 300 block at the front of the building so that Arrow could film scenes of prop police cruisers arriving at the robbery and Roger Cross (Continuum’s cold-blooded Liber8 killer Travis) as a police officer with a megaphone telling those inside the bank to come out with their hands up. The bank hostages emerge wearing white playing card masks. Are the robbers among the hostages? Police then storm the building. Arrow wrapped the arrival of police scene around 2 p.m., the lanes re-opened and production moved inside the building to film the robbery.

What do these bank robbery scenes remind you of? The Dark Knight? Or maybe Inside Man with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen? Arrow has big aspirations for a new TV series but from what I’ve seen of filming, it will meet them.

Read More »ARROW Turns Downtown Heritage Bank Building Into Starling Trust Bank for Robbery Scenes in Ep. 1×06

TIFF: Robert Redford’s THE COMPANY YOU KEEP is Tonight’s Gala Presentation at Toronto International Film Festival

Robert Redford’s political thriller The Company You Keep gets a Toronto International Film Festival gala presentation tonight at Roy Thomson Hall. Filmed last fall in the Vancouver area, The Company You Keep stars Redford as widowed civil rights lawyer Jim Grant, who’s really a former Weather Underground militant and fugitive wanted for over thirty years for a bank robbery and murder of a guard. Shia LaBeouf is the young reporter Ben Shepard who exposes Grant’s secret, forcing him to go on the run to find the one person who can clear his name before he’s caught by the FBI in a nation-wide manhunt.

The official TIFF trailer opens with these typed words: “In 1969 a group of radical anti-war protestors began a campaign of bombings on American soil. They were called the “Weather Underground”. Some were sent to prison. A few … vanished…until today.” Then we see fugitive Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) arrested at a gas station. Ben Shepard (LaBeouf), a reporter for a struggling local newspaper, watches this on TV — Breaking News: Sharon Solarz Arrested. Jim Grant reads about the arrest in the newspaper — Weather Underground Most Wanted Caught — at home with his young daughter (Jackie Evancho, an 11-year-old finalist on America’s Got Talent): “What’s wrong? You look weird.” Grant: “I’m fine, honey. ” With help from an old college friend now FBI agent (Anna Kendrick), Shepard begins to focus on Grant, catching up with him at a shoot filmed in Gastown. Shepard: “Mr. Grant, I’m just trying to put the pieces together.” Grant: “I don’t have time for this…”

But Grant decides to run. He tells his daughter: “We’re not going to school. We’re gonna go on a little trip.” Wearing a baseball cap, Grant (Redford) and his daughter (Evancho) check into the remodeled Hotel Georgia complex downtown made to look like a Manhattan hotel with prop NY cabs coming and going.

The trailer continues with more typed words: “One reporter. Has discovered a secret. That can connect them all. And reveal the truth.” Shepard: “I don’t think he’s running away. I think he’s trying to clear his name.”

The biggest and most public scenes in Vancouver took place at the west entrance to the Vancouver Art Gallery (the former Vancouver Court House) with Grant (Redford) scrummed by media as he gets into a car driven by Chris Cooper. Reporter Shepard (LaBeouf) is there but at a remove from the scrum.

Kokanee’s THE MOVIE OUT HERE On Location in Golden Ears Park

Kokanee and Alliance Films invited (social) media to visit them on location deep in Golden Ears Park  yesterday for the upcoming feature film The Movie Out Here. They lured us out with the promise of seeing a real Sasquatch (he has his own VIP trailer) but we saw a “fake” one instead filming a “fake” Kokanee commercial within the real movie — it has the working title Big Hairy Movie. No one seemed to mind about the fake Sasquatch though because of the Glacier Girls changing their bikini tops on camera and the Kokanee Ranger (John Novak) looking on.

The Movie Out Here is more than an extended Kokanee beer commercial, although I’m sure that would be entertaining too. But it’s no serious drama. Think Caddyshack not Schindler’s List. Or “Hot Tub Time Machine meets Old School” as one marketing manager put it. 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 in Kokanee country (the movie will film in Fernie before it wraps mid-month). Two of the buddies came out to set to chat with us even though they weren’t in the Kokanee commercial scenes.

Glacier Girls changing bikini tops on camera for fake commercial and real movie.

Electric Playground interviews stars Robin Nielsen and Viv Leocock on the set at Alouette Lake.

Robin Nielsen (grand nephew of Leslie Nielsen), who plays the straight man Adam, a Toronto lawyer, in this buddy movie.

Viv Leocock who plays Jason.

Winners of  the Live Auditions for new Kokanee Rangers.

A Kokanee beer truck on the beach for the fake Kokanee commercial.

Read More »Kokanee’s THE MOVIE OUT HERE On Location in Golden Ears Park

SHOOT: FRINGE Family Films at Pacific Central Station As Monorail Station Circa 2036 for 5×04

Fringe crew transformed Pacific Central Station in Vancouver into a New Jersey Monorail station circa 2036 on Thursday with bilingual signage in the English and Observer languages, Observers, Loyalist troops, Native citizens dressed in 1940s fashion, armoured jeeps and check points. I missed the day shoot outside and inside the main entrance to the station but caught the evening one on the north side with cast Joshua Jackson (who did his own stunt running across the hood of the Bishop mobile), John Noble and Georgina Haig in gas masks as the Bishops, who make their getaway in the faster-than-it-looks half-a-century-old family station wagon. One of the oddities of this shoot was seeing Observers and Loyalist troops with no eyes or mouths (which made it very difficult for these background performers to go to the craft table or anywhere else).

Read More »SHOOT: FRINGE Family Films at Pacific Central Station As Monorail Station Circa 2036 for 5×04