Arrow, based on DC Comics The Green Arrow, is one hot TV pilot. And by all accounts, Stephen Amell is one hot Arrow in this more Jason Bourne-like and less Smallville-ish production. Like The Dark Knight’s re-imagined Batman, Arrow’s vigilante superhero fights crime with martial arts and technology plus the special skill of archery. “Working theory: The most expedient way to shoot a show where I’m an expert at archery is to become an expert an archery,” Amell tweeted in late February. And he must have hit the gym too. “You should see what’s under that hood……you’ve never seen ripped until you’ve seen this guy,” tweeted Arrow fight coordinator James Bamford.
None of my photographs do justice to how much Stephen Amell resembles a Jason Bourne-type action star. This is the closest I came with Amell in character as his secret identity Oliver Queen, crouched in Gastown before filming a take with Katie Cassidy as his former love Dinah “Laurel” Lance.
Pre-production set up on the same lot near a Burnaby Skytrain station that served as a Smallville permanent set for years. Filming on the Arrow pilot started on March 10th inside the Terminal City Ironworks complex in east Vancouver. The next morning, I missed an exterior scene of Oliver Queen jumping over the gate at the TCI entrance on Victoria Drive, but did spot the Oliver green arrow production sign on a walkby.
The next day, March 12th, Arrow set up at the foot of Gore Avenue in the Downtown Eastside during a wild west coast windstorm. Background performers dressed as homeless street peoople huddled around a fake fire and tried to keep their costumes intact in the wind. Stephen Amell and Colin Donnell, as his best friend and trustafarian Tommy Merlyn, were more sheltered, filming scenes inside Merlyn’s ride, a Mercedes 2012 SLS AMG ,with two wings and cockpit, as the ad says. Tents almost went airborne and Amell and Donnell looked like they were finally feeling the cold while waiting for their ride back to circus.
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