Skip to content

Sara Canning

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

PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD’s “Leggy” Terrorizes UBC Thunderbird Arena This Week – Updated

In the upcoming Vancouver-as-Vancouver series Primeval: New World, primeval creatures enter our city through temporal anomolies, aka time portals, and create havoc. This week a winged creature is terrorizing the University of British Columbia in and around the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Arena (venue for Vancouver 2010 Olympics hockey and Paralympics sledge hockey). Crew setting up a crime scene in the Thunderbird Parkade last Friday told me it’s some kind of flying dinosaur [Update: it’s our cheezy-lovin’ Leggy from the grow-op escaping from a government facility]. Of course I didn’t see the creature, which will be computer-generated in post-production, but I did spy Dan Payne and other military actors arriving on the west side of the Thunderbird Arena on Friday morning and evacuating student extras on the east side on Monday morning.

Like the original British series Primeval, the Vancouver spinoff has a team of smart minds and animal experts who battle these creatures. Ours is led by Niall Matter as rich Vancouver software genius Evan Cross, seen here arriving at the Thunderbird Arena with co-star Sara Canning as predatory animal attack behaviour expert Dylan Weir.

As tall Dan Payne evacuated student extras carrying hockey sticks from the arena, Niall Matter and Sara Canning filmed a scene of them getting out of their jeep, looking back at the scene and possibly up to the sky at a flying creature, grabbing their prop tranquilizer rifles Read More »PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD’s “Leggy” Terrorizes UBC Thunderbird Arena This Week – Updated

PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD 1×8 Dinosaur Chases Jogger in the Olympic Village – Updated

In the upcoming Vancouver-as-Vancouver series Primeval: New World, primeval creatures enter our city through temporal anomolies, aka time portals, and terrorize our neighbourhoods. One such dinosaur suddenly appeared in the Olympic Village last Thursday, chasing a jogger east from the Olympic Village pedestrian bridge to the Creekside Community Centre in take after take. It was a treat to watch the guy-in-the-grey-skin-suit-carrying-a-sphere (Chuck Campbell) who will become the computer-generated-dinosaur (an Albertosauras) following this actor-jogger until the jogger suddenly stops, looks behind him, yells “Holy Shit” and leaps over a bench to try to get away. Now that’s acting. I have a feeling he doesn’t make it since the last scene of the day was a crime scene behind the green Dragon Boat portable trailers.

Read More »PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD 1×8 Dinosaur Chases Jogger in the Olympic Village – Updated

BIG READ: Vancouver’s CONTINUUM & PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD at First Fan Expo Vancouver

Published April 17, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Imagine two Vancouver-as-Vancouver TV series filming here, with B.C. Place stadium, the central Vancouver Public Library, Woodwards’ revolving “W”, Granville Island, Stanley Park and other local landmarks as themselves. It’s so rare for us to have one Vancouver-set series filming here, far less two. So come to our city’s first Fan Expo this Saturday, where you’ll get sneak peeks of both, as well as the chance to meet the showrunners and cast.

Continuum is about some kind of future officer named Kiera Cameron who travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver in the year 2012, chasing a group of terrorists who plan to change the future from the past. You may have seen some of the spectacular-future-downtown-skyline teasers on Showcase, where the 10-episode series debuts in late May. Or the 2077/2012 split skylines on the Continuum show poster.

Continuum stars Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, who joins the local Vancouver police force with Victor Webster as her 2012 detetective partner. You can see Nichols as her character filming in Vancouver with the Woodwards “W” in the background in a promo photo from the show. I’ve photographed Continuum filming at Victory Square, outside and inside the central Vancouver Public Library, The Centre and CBC Vancouver so far with prop Vancouver Police cars and VPD extras alongside real ones. Below is my photo of Nichols exiting an unmarked police car with the Vancouver Public Library reflected in the windshield. And below that is my photo of  Nichols and her co-star Victor Webster filming in a snowstorm at Victory Square. It will be a veritable Vancouver-palooza in each episode.

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver’s CONTINUUM & PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD at First Fan Expo Vancouver