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Martin Wood

Vancouver’s own PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD Debuts October 29th on SPACE Channel

Dinosaurs are running amok in Vancouver. And they’re hungry. New series Primeval: New World debuts Monday, October 29th, on the SPACE channel.

Five months ago, InnerSPACE hosts Teddy Wilson, Ajay Fry and Cynthia Loyst introduced this North American spinoff of the popular Brit series Primeval to an enthusiastic genre audience at Vancouver Fan Expo. Back then, co-showrunner Martin Wood described the Vancouver series as a cop drama, but with dinosaurs as the crooks of the week. Very very large crooks. These anomalies suddenly appear and create havoc in our neighbourhoods like downtown Vancouver, Stanley Park, the Olympic Village, Thunderbird Arena at  the University of British Columbia and even a local Canadian Tire store.

And our dinosaurs are even more kickass than the British ones thanks to visual effects whiz Mark Savela. See the new trailer.

So the Hunt is On, with Sara Canning as animal predator expert Dylan Weir and Niall Matter as team leader Evan Cross.

Primeval: New World showrunners Martin Wood and Gillian Horvath at Vancouver Fan Expo.

Niall Matter at the Vancouver Expo panel.

Niall Matter and Teddy Wilson show off their  matching blue shirts.

Read More »Vancouver’s own PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD Debuts October 29th on SPACE Channel

PRIMEVAL’s Andrew-Lee Potts Has a Laugh Filming This Fall’s PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD

Upcoming sci-fi series Primeval: New World has a little more than three weeks of filming left before wrapping its first season here, so it seems like a good time to revisit the Coal Harbour location shoots that will feature in its series premiere.

Andrew-Lee Potts, aka Conner Temple from the original British series Primeval, flew in this past March to guest star on the first episode of the Vancouver spinoff. From what I saw of a scene at Harbour Green Park in Coal Harbour, Potts’s Temple walks from the  sea wall towards the crime scene and shows something to Niall Matter’s rich Vancouver software genius Evan Cross near the yellow crime scene tape. It’s all very serious, as it should be, considering the prosthetic body of a parachutist victim of some kind of flying dinosaur attack lying on a gurney by the washrooms. Matter’s Evan Cross confers with Sara Canning’s Predator Control Officer Dylan Weir and Danny Rahim’s Mac Rendell. Canning’s Weir then walks back to the fake corpse and that was it, as far as I could see.

Read More »PRIMEVAL’s Andrew-Lee Potts Has a Laugh Filming This Fall’s PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD

A Fond Farewell to Homegrown SANCTUARY – Updated

Syfy’s official cancellation today of our own little sci-fi success story Sanctuary marks the end of an era in Vancouver. For the first time in a decade, American cable network Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi) doesn’t have a single TV series filming here. They began with the sixth season of Stargate SG-1, then Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, mini-series Tin Man and Alice, Caprica, Stargate Universe, pilot Blood and Chrome, Eureka and Sanctuary, which both wrapped filming here last summer.

Until today there was a sliver of hope for a Sanctuary renewal even though the series, co-created by Stargate star Amanda Tapping, Stargate director Martin Wood and Stargate writer Damian Kindler, had to give up its Burnaby studio and even sell sets while it waited for a decision. Finally it came this afternoon: Sanctuary would not be returning for a fifth season, making last year’s fourth season its final one.

Read More »A Fond Farewell to Homegrown SANCTUARY – Updated

BIG READ: LEO AWARDS Gala at Hotel Vancouver

Published June 14, 2011 on Vancouver is Awesome

Wild is the word I’d use to describe Saturday’s red carpet at the Leo Awards celebrating the best of BC-produced film and television: from one nominee going in and out of his character to another striking poses with his elastic face to another threatening to drop his pants to the entire cast of all-Canadian series Sanctuary making funny faces for the cameras. And immortal Sanctuary star Amanda Tapping owned all 100 metres of that carpet in her floor-length black dress and five-inch heels.

Since television built the town of Hollywood North it should be no surprise that Amanda Tapping is its Queen after more than a decade on the Stargate series and then co-creating Sanctuary with writer Damian Kindler and director Martin Wood, two other Stargate almuni who I photographed below watching Tapping walk towards them. Sanctuary came into the Leos with a whopping 17 nominations and the privilege of sauntering the red carpet in prime time (the last half-hour of the two-hour West Georgia Street spectacle).

The almost-block-long red carpet started at the corner of Burrard and West Georgia with Leo red carpet host and actress Gretal Montogmery, who happens to be the significant other of presenter Chad Willett. Having one of their own interview them on camera inspired Sanctuary’s Robin Dunne to unbuckle his belt and threaten to drop his pants (captured and later tweeted in a Twitpic by his co-star Robert Lawrenson). Autograph hounds and fans managed to nab the local celebs Read More »BIG READ: LEO AWARDS Gala at Hotel Vancouver

BIG READ: SANCTUARY Takes Amanda Tapping and its Green Screens Outside

Published May 20, 2011 on Vancouver is Awesome

I did not expect to be able to feature all-Canadian sci-fi success story Sanctuary in this series because it almost never goes on location, filming everything on greenscreen at its Burnaby soundstage, with virtually no physical sets whatsoever. And then a friend of a friend’s husband watched Sanctuary bring its greenscreens outside a week ago to film a bloodied and beat-up Amanda Tapping at a nearby office complex, masquerading as an airport on the Indian Ocean islands of Comoros.

When I arrived, I joked with Sanctuary crew about the number of green travelling mattes (used for special effects) they’d brought to a real location, including a stack of smaller sizes on a cart at the back of their studio, an immense street-width screen by the Departs door and one regular-sized screen at the Arrive door. This is where I photographed guest star Sandrine Holt and Sanctuary star Amanda Tapping already in character and about to turn around to the camera to meet guest stars Carlo Rota ( 24 and Little Mosque on the Prairie) and Martin Cummins (V and Shattered) on the steps above. Sanctuary had filmed explosions the day before at Mammoth studios and Tapping did not go unscathed: wardrobe had dressed her in an artfully ripped sweater and bandaged arm and makeup painted blood on her knees.

Who is Amanda Tapping? She is our Queen of Sci-fi after ten seasons in combat boots on Stargate SG-1 as scientist-soldier Samantha Carter, followed by more seasons as Carter on Stargate spinoffs and then coming-up-on-four seasons in stilettos on Sanctuary as immortal 160-something Dr. Helen Magnus from Victorian England, who rescues genetic mutants called Abnormals and harbours them in her stately gothic mansion overlooking the fictional Old City in the modern world.

What makes Sanctuary so unique is that this castle-like facility doesn’t exist, except as an empty set with some minimal props Read More »BIG READ: SANCTUARY Takes Amanda Tapping and its Green Screens Outside