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SET: Downtown Eastside as ARROW’s Post-Earthquake The Glades

Team Arrow thwarted part of Malcolm Merlyn (The Dark Archer)’s plan to level The Glades with an earthquake device in the season one finale last May.  But not all of it. A good section was flattened causing the death of hundreds. The Glades is Starling City’s Downtown Eastside-equivalent: impoverished and riddled with hookers, pimps and drug dealers but also a community of people who aspire to something better. So it’s fitting that Raymur Street plays the post-Earthquake The Glades in the Arrow season 2 premiere.

 

Read More »SET: Downtown Eastside as ARROW’s Post-Earthquake The Glades

SHOOT: GODZILLA’s Japanese Nuclear Power Plant & its Quarantine Zone (in New Westminster)

Does the 3D Godzilla movie reboot reflect the real world event of Japan’s 2011 earthquake/tsunami and the resulting  nuclear crisis at some of the country’s older nuclear power plants? Is that the “contemporary issue” screenwriter Frank Darabont spoke of? It would seem so. “6.3 Earthquake Rocks Eastern Japan” said the news crawl on set screens at the Vancouver Convention Centre dressed as the Honolulu airport at the start of filming here in mid-March.

Janjira appears to be the fictional nuclear power plant in this modern-day re-imagining of the radioactive Japanese sea monster as a “terrifying force of nature”.

Godzilla used an abandoned Coquitlam paper recycling plant on the Fraser River to film a couple of weeks of scenes of the Janjira nuclear power station at risk of meltdown with radioactive leaks. Is this what wakes Godzilla (plural) from their slumber?

Related: Coquitlam paper recycling plant as Japanese nuclear power plant

Since Coquitlam, the Janjira plant has been played by an industrial building on Annacis Island and its offices by Nokia in Burnaby’s Glenlyon Business Park.  Godzilla also used  Steveston’s Japanese Cultural Centre to double as the Janjira International School Read More »SHOOT: GODZILLA’s Japanese Nuclear Power Plant & its Quarantine Zone (in New Westminster)

SET: GODZILLA Turns Oceanic Plaza Downtown into San Francisco BART Station

Godzilla crew has turned Oceanic Plaza in downtown Vancouver into a San Francisco BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station, adding a San Francisco kiosk with ads for the Golden Gate Zoo, San Francisco mental health, San Francisco Pique Ballet Company and Go Whales Tours at Fisherman’s Wharf (the whale watching company and boats used by soldier extras on the Steveston docks to shoot at the Japanese sea monster), decorating West Hastings Street with Presidio New Folk Festival banners (the same ones used on Sixth Street in New Westminster), changing the Guiness Tower signage to Portman Center, another sign to the Kerney-Grand Hotel and parking yellow-and-green San Francisco cabs, black-and-white San Francisco police cars and military vehicles along the street for filming later on today.

Read More »SET: GODZILLA Turns Oceanic Plaza Downtown into San Francisco BART Station

SET: GODZILLA Turns Watchmen’s Main Street Set in Burnaby into San Francisco’s Chinatown

Update: Godzilla filmed four or five massive SPFX explosions on this set overnight Saturday (June 22-23). See photo of one blast.

Godzilla blast

Godzilla lit up the south Burnaby night sky at Marine Way and Byrne Road on Tuesday to shoot scenes on the Main Street set (built for the 2009 movie Watchmen) dressed as San Francisco’s Chinatown — a ravaged Chinatown in the wake of a Japanese sea monster. Not much can be seen from outside the private back lot except for glimpses of Chinatown’s iconic hanging red-and-gold  lanterns, 1920s-era Dragon street lamps and a destroyed pagoda-topped building, so you’ll have to imagine it dark and filled with smoke for scenes of the movie’s hero Lieutenant Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and soldiers running through it.

Related: Godzilla turns New Westminster into Streets of San Francisco – Chinatown

Read More »SET: GODZILLA Turns Watchmen’s Main Street Set in Burnaby into San Francisco’s Chinatown

SHOOT: Jon Tenney & Rebecca Romijn Film KING & MAXWELL Explosion Aftermath in Gastown

Secret service agents turned private investigators Sean King (Jon Tenney) and Michelle Maxwell (Rebecca Romijn) are the leads in the upcoming TNT series King & Maxwell, based on popular characters from best-selling author David Baldacci. In the episode filmed this week, the pair investigate an explosion at a Washington, D.C. eatery. One which impacts King nearby.

King & Maxwell crew spent five days at Incendio in Gastown this week either preparing or filming before-and-after-explosion scenes. They did everything but the SPFX explosion itself, which had been filmed two years before for the CW pilot Heavenly, which was not picked up to series. All King & Maxwell had to do is match the original set dressing on the patio.

And then distress the windows for the aftermath of this SPFX explosion and cover the pavement in debris.

In scenes filmed Monday, Sean King (Jon Tenney) drove up to the Italian restaurant just as it explodes.

Related: Jon Tenney Films King & Maxwell Explosion Scene in Gastown

And in yesterday’s scenes, an upset Michelle Maxwell (Rebecca Romijn) rushes to her partner.  “Sean,” she cries as she walks towards him standing in the debris. 

Read More »SHOOT: Jon Tenney & Rebecca Romijn Film KING & MAXWELL Explosion Aftermath in Gastown

SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME Turns Gastown into Manhattan for Robert Carlyle, Jennifer Morrison & Jared Gilmore

Some fans spotted prop New York taxi cabs and other NYC set dressing last December in Gastown and hoped it would be for one final downtown shoot of their show Fringe. Surprisingly, it turned out to be for Once Upon a Time instead. The modern fairy tale series shot scenes of famous fairy tale character Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle) out of Storybrooke and in Manhattan, where a coerced Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and Henry (Jared Gilmore) help him search for his long-lost son Bae. Is Bae found? Well, that’s a spoiler for another post.

Read More »SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME Turns Gastown into Manhattan for Robert Carlyle, Jennifer Morrison & Jared Gilmore

BATES MOTEL Sets Up Woodchuck Festival in Fort Langley for 1×02 – Updated

Updated March 25, 2013: Woodchuck Festival used for Norma (Vera Farmiga)’s clandestine date with Deputy Sheriff Shelby (Mike Vogel).

A&E’s contemporary Psycho prequel Bates Motel set up a White Pine Bay Woodchuck Festival at the Fort Langley Community Centre for an overnight shoot last Thursday night. Bates Motel focuses on a younger version of Psycho movie killer Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) in present-day Oregon and explores his relationship with his unhinged mother (Vera Farmiga) as he approaches his evil destiny.

The 10-episode series, scripted mainly by Lost’s Carlton Cuse, is described as a cross between Twin Peaks and Smallville. Certainly, the White Pine Bay Woodchuck Festival has a Twin Peaks vibe. All that’s needed is some cherry pie, a damn fine cup of coffee and a Log Lady to complete the homage.

Read More »BATES MOTEL Sets Up Woodchuck Festival in Fort Langley for 1×02 – Updated

SHOOT: Look What FRINGE Did to the West End’s Sherburn Building For 5×06 – Updated

Look what Fringe crew did to the West End’s Sherburn Building yesterday. It didn’t look like this thirteen months ago when Fringe filmed scenes for Subject 9, season four’s pivotal episode when Joshua Jackson’s Peter Bishop returned to existence. Yesterday’s scenes, like most of season five, appear to be set in 2036 when Observer overlords rule the world, there’s a lot of dirt, decrepit cars and dead vegetation and Joshua Jackson’s amber-preserved Peter Bishop is a resistance fighter dressed in fashionable black [Update: along with Anna Torv’s Olivia and Jasika Nicole’s Astrid. The trio are  following John Noble’s Walter Bishop who’s gone rogue in a search for a child Observer he hid inside this building in  a pocket universe twenty years before.]

Read More »SHOOT: Look What FRINGE Did to the West End’s Sherburn Building For 5×06 – Updated