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SUPERNATURAL’s Cartoon Suicide on Lumbermen’s Building Roof for Ep. 8×08

Supernatural filmed one of its cartoon deaths from this week’s Hunter Heroici on top of the Lumbermen’s Building in downtown Vancouver two months ago. The guest actor below committed cartoon suicide by stepping off the ledge but not falling right away. He stands for a few moments in mid-air above Richards Street, long enough to exclaim, “It’s a miracle. God wants me to live”, and then suddenly drops in a cartoon whoosh.

I waited until the episode aired to post these photographs because I couldn’t figure out what I saw in this scene. And I still don’t know how they filmed it. I assume there was a green screen on the roof as our cartoon suicide acted as if he was in mid-air and then fell to the street below.

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ARROW’s Katie Cassidy & Colin Donnell Filming Downtown at Oceanic Plaza

Uh-oh Tommy. Looks like Laurel’s mad at you. Katie Cassidy’s Laurel paced up and down as the Arrow cameras rolled in downtown Vancouver’s Oceanic Plaza yesterday, before stepping right into Colin Donnell’s face in take after take. She talked and talked until he walked away. It should have been a romantic setting with that big balloon light floating above them to simulate moonlight, but apparently not. Guy Bee (@GuyNormanBee) is directing this episode, which had an earlier outside scene of Colin Donnell’s Tommy walking and talking to Laurel on his cell phone along West Hastings. [Update: So Laurel was mad at her Dad who used her as bait in a bid to capture The Hood; and Tommy walks away because Laurel hadn’t told him she’d been meeting with The Hood].

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SHOOT: SUPERNATURAL’s 1950s Time Travellers in Gastown for 8×12 – Updated

Tonight a light high on a hoist above Cambie Street in Gastown lit up the alley that runs diagonally to West Cordova where two 1950s era vehicles were parked. Add smoke machines and a strobe light to simulate lightning and it looks like we have the setting for a Cary Grant-style cult member named Henry to travel from 1958 to 2013 when episode 8×12 — As Time Goes By — will air. Supernatural crew added the Arlene’s Golden Comb beauty salon neon sign to the alley for the night shoot.

Debonair and charming, Henry is said to be a rookie member of an anti-demonic cult who hurtles through the time portal, followed by a Katherine Hepburn-style dame named Josie Sands. I didn’t see who was cast in either of  these roles tonight.  [SPOILER UPDATE: HuffPost TV reports that Gil McKinney is Henry who happens to be Sam and Dean’s grandfather on their father John’s side. And Alaina Huffman was spotted in Vancouver for her role as the demon Abbadon in the body of Josie Sands.]

But the Impala was parked in the same alley this morning for the day shoot, implying Jared Padalecki’s Sam and Jensen Ackles’s Dean Winchester were two of the three actors talking while standing by the same large door our time traveller entered in the night shoot. Unfortunately this scene was hidden behind scrims.

In between the morning and night shoots in the alley, Supernatural filmed inside The Cambie Pub on the corner.

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EMILY OWENS M.D. Filming at University of British Columbia’s Life Sciences Centre – Updated

Tonight on hospital dramedy Emily Owens M.D., Emily (Mamie Gummer) vies with her high-school nemesis Cassandra (Naomi King’) to be Dr. Bandari’s research assistant and to stop Cassandra from getting more time with Emily’s crush Will (Justin Hartley) in episode four. But will it work? Cassandra will do anything in her pursuit of Will and seems to be succeeding, as we see from a scene for upcoming episode eleven filmed last week at the University of British Columbia’s Life Sciences Centre dressed as Denver Memorial Hospital.

Emily Owens M.D. crew filmed a tracking shot last Thursday of Emily and her friend Tyra (Kelly McCreary), the lesbian daughter of the chief of surgery, standing in line at the prop Get Your Fix coffee cart as background performers carried floral arrangements from the prop Kiss and a Rose flower company van into the Life Sciences Centre, where other crew was setting up a gala set in the atrium. Emily and Tyra are joined in line by Cassandara and Will, also carrying garment bags. So of the main cast, I got a chance to see everyone on location but surgical resident Dr. Mica Barnes (Michael Rady) and rock star surgeon Dr. Gina Bandari (Necar Zadegan). If I’d stayed for the night shoot inside the atrium of the Life Sciences Centre, I might have seen the cast all dressed up to film the hospital gala scenes but hopefully will get the chance to see it on screen.

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EMILY OWENS M.D.’s Justin Hartley: A Worthy Crush – Updated

With Emily Owens M.D. sadly heading for cancellation, I took advantage of a big shoot at the University of British Columbia’s Life Sciences Centre last week to take some photos of Emily’s med school crush — Justin Hartley’s surgical intern Will Collins. No stranger to Vancouver, Smallville’s Oliver Queen/Green Arrow is definitely worthy of Emily’s romantic obsession.

Mamie Gummer’s Emily awkwardly confessed her love for Will in the season premiere and got shot down kindly, only to discover at episode’s end that her high school nemesis, Aja Naomi King’s Cassandra Kopelson, is pursuing a receptive Will.  Backtracking from embarrassment, Emily tries to pretend she is Okay with Will’s rejection until he clarifies that he does care for her but doesn’t want to wreck their friendship.

Last week, Emily fruitlessly looked for flaws in Will as he stripped off his shirt in front of her. Later he brought her a banana and a condom as a visual aid for her high school talk on safe sex and then helped her work off her anger at a STD boy recklessly infecting high school girls by teaching her how to bat balls off the roof of the Life Sciences Centre. So it doesn’t look like Emily will get over Will any time soon, even as Cassandra proves willing to do anything to get him, as we can see below in this scene from the [eleventh] episode.

But with Emily Owens M.D possibly wrapping filming in two more episodes, I anticipate a happy ending for Emily and her crush [Update: I’m not so sure about that now that the show is definitely wrapping at thirteen. Emily was “Done with Will” by the end of this episode after he showed himself to be blind to Cassandra’s rudeness at the gala. Her patience has run out. Maybe a different happy ending is in store for her.]

Read More »EMILY OWENS M.D.’s Justin Hartley: A Worthy Crush – Updated

SHOOT: SUPERNATURAL 8×11 LARP and the Real Girl Set in Coquitlam’s Mundy Park

Best LARP Ever? And I missed it. Supernatural filmed for several days on its LARP (live action role playing) set in Coquitlam’s Mundy Park  this past week and last. Locals walking their dogs told me they spotted both Jared Padalecki’s Sam and Jensen Ackles’s Dean in among all the background performers dressed in medieval garb for what the sign says is Michigan’s largest LARPing game: MoonDoor, The Battle of Kingdoms. As disappointed as I am to have missed people dressed up like knights for the eleventh episode of season eight, what I’m really kicking myself for is not going out in the pouring rain to try to catch a glimpse of geek goddess Felicia Day (Eureka, Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog)’s return as adorkable hacker Charlie.

LARP and the Real Girl (a clever pun on the Ryan Gosling flick Lars and the Real Girl) also features a new character Gerard, a LARPer who goes too far playing this medieval game. Season Eight showrunner Jeremy Carver told TV sites that Supernatural will approach the LARPing universe differently than it has in the past. I look forward to seeing what they do on screen.

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BIG READ: Hooded-Vigilante Series ARROW’s Record-Breaking Premiere

Published October 11, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Being Bad Never Looked So Good. Last night’s series premiere of Vancouver (and Victoria)-shot Arrow broke records with four million viewers and bragging rights as the biggest show on the American network The CW in three years.

Loosely-based on DC Comics The Green Arrow, the TV series Arrow is less Smallville-ish and more like The Dark Knight trilogy’s re-imagined Batman. The story: missing and thought dead for five years after a shipwreck, Stephen Amell’s billionaire playboy Oliver Queen returns home a changed man. He secretly creates the persona of vigilante Arrow to fight crime and corruption in Starling City with martial arts and technology plus the special skill of archery.

By day, Oliver Queen continues to play the part of the billionaire cad he used to be, while trying to make amends with those he wronged, like his former girlfriend Dinah “Laurel” Lance, who works for a legal aid group called CNRI (Canary!). But she’s having none of it. “I didn’t grieve. I was too angry,” Katie Cassidy’s Lance tells Amell’s Queen Read More »BIG READ: Hooded-Vigilante Series ARROW’s Record-Breaking Premiere