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Fringe

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

SHOOT: FRINGE’s Big 2036 Scene at UBC’s Clock Tower for 5×02

On Monday, Fringe transformed the area around the Clock Tower at the University of British Columbia into a checkpoint in 2036 — a time when Observer overlords rule the world — for the first day of filming of its second episode in season five. Ahead of the big Clock Tower scene, Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson wrapped a different scene which I’m not uploading photos from and not saying when it takes place. But here’s Torv delighting a Fringe fan (in town for The Fringe Event last weekend) by signing her Fringe fedora from Comic-Con in San Diego. And here’s Jackson making one of his zillion facial expressions. He’s one of the most animated people I’ve ever seen and I’m not alone in saying this.

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SHOOT: From Utopian to Dystopian. FRINGE Family Fights the Future for S5 Premiere – Updated

On the same day that Fringe filmed that utopian Fringe family picnic in 2015 with Peter, Olivia and young Etta (Henrietta) for the season five premiere, they filmed a dystopian scene of the Fringe family as members of the resistance fighting the Observer overlords in 2036 with Walter, Peter and grownup Etta but no Olivia.

The big family reunion in 2036 apparently happens early in the season premiere, according to Fringe showrunner Joel Wyman, but Olivia’s meetup with her grownup daughter won’t be quite what we expect. Meantime, here are three of the four members of the family destined to fight the future: John Noble’s Walter Bishop, Joshua Jackson’s Peter Bishop, and Georgina Haig’s Etta Bishop.

It’s Fringe Division’s final stand. This now insurgent group, which includes Jasika Nicole’s Astrid, filmed take after take of them exiting a dirty old van and then collectively gazing up in the direction of huge green screens on an empty lot next to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Village. (The grey-haired fellow is a background performer not the real thing,)

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BIG READ: Vancouver Productions Working the Comic-Con Craziness

Published July 9th, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

How’s this for Comic-Con craziness? Comic-Con tweeted Twilight fans today asking them not to start lining up outside the San Diego Convention Center three days before the convention starts on Thursday like they did last year. The anual geekfest doesn’t want them to erect another Camp Twilight tent city either. Any Twihard or TwiMom who tries to line up earlier than tomorrow or brings more than a chair and a sleeping bag with them, risks not being among the six thousand-plus lucky enough to get into the final vampires & werewolves panel at lunchtime on Thursday. If asked to leave, they’ll miss seeing exclusive footage from the mainly Vancouver-shot The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 2 and celebrity trio Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattison and Taylor Lautner in person. Organizers have scheduled the final Twilight movie as the first official panel in marquee Hall H so that Twilight teens and their Moms can’t ruin Comic-Con like they have in the past.

[Update: A Twilight fan who’d been camping outside the San Diego Convention Center since Sunday was struck and killed by an SUV on Tuesday morning while rushing to cross the street to get back to the lineup which Comic-Con organizers were moving. Fellow fans are trying to organize a moment of silence in her honour during the Breaking Dawn 2 panel.]

Once the Twihards have gone home, Comic-Con is free to fly its geek flag until Sunday night, epitomized by what could be 2012’s hottest panel — the 10th Anniversary reunion of the cast (and creator) of space western Firefly, featuring Canada’s own browncoat Nathan “Captain Tightpants” Fillion. Is cult TV once again dominating big budget movies at Comic-Con with Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and The Big Bang Theory panels all in high demand too?

Maybe, maybe not. Iron Man 3 is a hot ticket, as are the Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures and Sony Pictures panels in Hall H. Who doesn’t want to see footage from The Hobbit, which just wrapped filming in New Zealand? Or get a first look at two other mainly Vancouver-shot movies: the upcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel starring Henry Cavill (seen below filming a shirtless green screen rescue scene in North Vancouver) as part of the Warner Bros. panel on Saturday afternoon and mysterious space station movie Elysium starring Matt Damon (link to first official photo) and Jody Foster as part of the Sony panel on Friday afternoon. Vancouver director Neill Blomkamp will be on hand with his stars to answer questions about the followup to his Oscar-nominated first feature District 9. It turns out Elysium is the name of a vast space station constructed by a company called Armadyne where the very rich live in the year 2159  (want-ads for Armadyne  popped up at last year’s Comic-Con, the start of a viral campaign for the movie). The rest of us –- the 99% if you will — live on the over-populated, ruined planet Earth below. A bald, buff  Damon is Max, who goes up against Foster as hard-line government official Minister Delacourt [corrected], who will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the grandious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium in space (the mansion set below on Kent Hangar field could be on the space station).

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver Productions Working the Comic-Con Craziness