Skip to content

Jeff Renfroe

WEEK: April 22-28, 2013

  • Sunday, April 28th – Vancouver cop-from-the -future series Continuum 2×02 airs on Showcase. Some of it filmed in Squamish with Rachel Nichols in a big helicopter scene. New York Times’s Neil Genzlinger wrote about his Squamish set visit in TV article praising the series.
  • Sunday, April 28th – Red Widow 1×07 The Coke airs on ABC. Marta (Radha Mitchell) learns new information about her husband’s killer. Photos of one of the deaths filmed in Downtown Eastside alley.
  • Sunday, April 28th – Once Upon a Time 2×20 The Evil Queen airs on ABC. Hook pretends to help Regina (Lana Parilla) with a plan to transport her and Henry (Jared Padalecki) back to Fairytale land. Big scene of Regina talking to Henry filmed in Steveston. And in flashbacks, the Evil Queen gets Rumplestiltskin to transform her into a peasant so she can kill Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin). Village scenes were filmed in Robert Burnaby Park in Burnaby in front of visiting #EvilRegals fans (one from Mozambique). Look for opening scene of The Dark one (Robert Carlyle) & The Tramp (Emilie de Ravin) staggering out of the “Rabbit Hole” pub in Steveston too.
  • Sunday, April 28th – Latest  buzz from Deadline’s Primetime Pilot Panic says Wonderland (Once Upon a Time spinoff) “penciled in” and Big Thunder a “major contender” at ABC; I Am a Victor with John Stamos has a shot at NBC;  Human with Karl Urban”still solid” at FOX; Intelligence with Josh Holloway and Backstrom with Rainn Wilson in the mix at CBS; The 100 still under consideration at The CW but no mention of Blink.
  • Sunday, April 28th – Upcoming TNT series King & Maxwell preps Incendio in Gastown for before and after explosion shoots next week.
  • Saturday, April 28th – Arrow‘s Colton Haynes attends the White House Correspondents Dinner. WHCD’s hilarious & apt hashtag is #nerdprom.
  • Saturday, April 27th – King & Maxwell films downtown at two locations, the last at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
  • Saturday, April 27th – ABC Christmas movie Christmas Bounty wraps three nights (April 25-27th) of overnight filming in holiday-decorated Coquitlam Centre mall.
  • Friday, April 26th – Vancouver director Jeff Renfroe’s new Ice Age thriller The Colony opens nationwide in Canada. YVRShoots series interview with Renfroe.
  • Friday, April 26th – Vancouver director Jesse James Miller’s endearing 1970s-set film Becoming Redwood premieres in Toronto at Cineplex Yonge & Dundas. YVRShoots series interview with Miller.
  • Friday, April 26th – Robert Redford’s Weather Underground film The Company You Keep starring Shia LaBeouf and Redford opens in theatres. Filmed at Vancouver Art Gallery, Georgia Hotel and other locations around Vancouver
  • Friday, April 26th – Continuum films inside CBC Vancouver.
  • Friday, April 26th – Arrow actors Byron Mann and Celina Jade featured in Vancouver Sun article about actors making it big in China.
  • Friday, April 26th – Entertainment Weekly scoop about season 3 of Falling Skies
  • Friday, April 26th – Entertainment Weekly’s excusive season 3 trailer for The Killing features Peter Sarsgaard as death-row inmate.
  • Thursday, April 25th – Joel Kinnaman & Mireille Enos film a walk-and-talk for  The Killing near Cobalt Hotel on Main Street. Then moved into parking lot behind for scene in car.
  • Thursday, April 25th – Continuum films inside CBC Vancouver and on Cambie Street.
  • Thursday, April 25th – Vancouver whydunit Motive 1×10 airs. Dustin Milligan guest-stars Read More »WEEK: April 22-28, 2013

BIG READ: Vancouver Director Jeff Renfroe’s Ice Age Thriller THE COLONY

Published April 25, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome

How do you survive in a frozen world? The next ice age forces humans underground in Canadian sci-fi thriller The Colony, which opens nationwide tomorrow. Directed by Vancouver’s own Jeff Renfroe, The Colony explores what happens when hunger and desperation below an icy surface lead to the kind of savage, animalistic behaviour we’ve seen shades of in real-word disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

Reluctant hero Sam (Kevin Segers) accompanies Colony 7’s leader Briggs (Laurence Fishburne) on an expedition to the only other known outpost Colony 5 after receiving a distress call. Briggs leaves his below-ground colony at the mercy of hardass Mason (Bill Paxton) who’s itching to impose his own harsh regime where the sick are executed at the first sign of illness. “You’re a dick,” yelled a woman beside me at an advance screening. Deservedly so. But what the expedition find at Colony 5 is so much worse than Mason: wild, feral survivors who’ve lost their humanity completely.

How do you film a frozen world? Jeff Renfroe shot his $16 million feature in twenty-eight days in North Bay and Toronto, Ontario. On the first day of filming outside in North Bay, crew battled -30 temperatures which froze the camera lenses. Watching them fight the cold and pull it off, Bill Paxton dubbed the Colony crew “film animals”. Laurence Fishburne called another North Bay shoot the toughest location he’d ever seen. Weren’t you in Apocalypse Now?, Renfroe reminded the actor. Yes, Fishburne replied, but North Bay still ranked as his toughest. The frozen surface is almost all VFX. Colony crew shovelled snow into an airplane hangar, surrounded the set with green screens and shot through an open doorway.

Kevin Zegers and Laurence Fishburne in The Colony. Courtesy of EOne Films.
Laurence Fishburne, Director Jeff Renfroe and Kevin Zegers. Courtesy of EOne Films.

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver Director Jeff Renfroe’s Ice Age Thriller THE COLONY

WEEK: April 8-14, 2013

  • Sunday, April 14th – Once Upon a Time recap The Price of Magic airs, narrated by Alan Dale with help from showrunners Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz.
  • Sunday, Arpil 14th – Bravo pilot  Rita  with Anna Gunn (Breaking Brad) and Josh Hamilton films at West Vancouver Community Centre.
  • Saturday, Arpil 13th – First Weekend Club event at 7:50 p.m. showing of Vancouver feature Becoming Redwood at International Village.  Q&A with some cast and producers after film, followed by drinks at Gastown’s Portside Pub.
  • Saturday, April 13th – Simon Pegg’s Hector & the Search for Happiness films at Burrard Ironworks
  • Saturday, April 13th – Deadline: Hollywood’s Primetime Pilot Panic Early Buzz 2 with nods to ABC pilot Big Thunder, ABC short presentation Once Wonderland, The CW’s The 100, NBC’s I Am Victor and Bravo’s Rita but FOX pilot Human still listed by earlier title InHuman.
  • Saturday, April 13th – Canada becoming sci-fi leader led by Vancouver’s own cop-from-the-future series Continuum. Globe and Mail Arts article.
  • Friday, April 12th – Vancouver feature Becoming Redwood opens at Internatiional Village. Interview with Vancouver writer-director Jesse James Miller in  YVRShoots Series for Vancouver is Awesome.
  • Friday, April 12th – ABC short presentation Once  Wonderland (potential Once Upon a Time spinoff) with Sophie Lowe as Alice wraps filming in Vancouver.
  • Friday, April 12th – CBS pilot Backstrom with Rainn Wilson as House-like detective wraps filming in Vancouver.
  • Friday, April 12th – Man of Steel’s Henry Cavill on cover of Entertainment Weekly’s Summer Movies issue.
  • Friday, April 12th – 3rd season set, prop & costume sale for hit sitcom Mr. Young at Burnaby studio (5828 Byrne Rd).  April 12 (10am-4pm)
  • Friday, April 12th – Globe and Mail reports amalgamation of B.C. Film Commission and B.C. Film + Media into Creative BC in a bid to help Save BC Film.
  • Friday, April 12th – TVLine gets official confirmation that Curtis Armstrong is Metatron, the scribe of God,  in Supernatural. Saw Armstrong filming with Misha Collins in Deep Cove.
  • Thursday, April 11th –  Arrow films season finale overnight at Terminal City Ironworks complex in east Vancouver. Stephen Amell on set.
  • Thursday, April 11th – The Killing  films on trails past Lafarge Lake in Coquitlam.
  • Thursday, April 11th – Set, prop & costume sale for sitcom Mr. Young at Burnaby studio (5828 Byrne Rd). April 11 (12-4 pm) ending after three seasons.
  • Thursday, April 11th – Words and Pictures seeks bike rider extras for filming on Monday April 15.
  • Wednesday, April 10th – Amanda Tapping-directed Arctic Air 2×12 airs, with Dragons’ Den dragon David Chilton (The Wealthy Barber) guest-starring as himself in Burnaby as Calgary.
  • Wednesday, April 10th – Psych wedding on 7×07 directed by James Roday as Lassie (Timothy Omundson) marries his gal Marlowe (Kristy Swanson). But first the bachelor party.
  • Wednesday, April 10th – Rogue 1×03 Cathy’s Song with Grace (Thandie Newton) discovering link between one of Jimmy (Marton Csokas)’s associates and her son’s death on
    Read More »WEEK: April 8-14, 2013