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Susan Gittins

Longtime mainstream media (MSM) journalist and author Susan Gittins began writing about and photographing Vancouver’s many film and TV location shoots in the summer of 2010 after the Winter Olympics put the city and its beauty on the world stage. Movies and TV series often showcase the Vancouver area in similar fashion. Vancouver is Awesome commissioned her YVRShoots series in the fall of 2010 and it ran regularly for three years. She launched her own daily YVRShoots blog in the spring of 2012.

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

Fringe’s Peter Bishop & Arch-Enemy Captain Windmark in Downtown Vancouver for Ep. 5×08

Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) and the Fringe Division’s arch-enemy Captain Windmark (Michael Kopsa) filmed on the same downtown Vancouver set today near BC Place  but not in the same scene when I was watching. So it was an unexpected treat to see Kopsa and Jackson looking and laughing at something on Jackson’s iPhone during a break from shooting.

Read More »Fringe’s Peter Bishop & Arch-Enemy Captain Windmark in Downtown Vancouver for Ep. 5×08

WEEK: October 8-14, 2012

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: SUPERNATURAL’s Dean, His Purgatory Pal & the Impala Film at Steveston’s Britannia Shipyards for 8×09

After filming some interior scenes at the Britannia Heritage Shipyards Building in Steveston south of Vancouver yesterday, Supernatural crew set up for the night shoot: a big exterior scene of Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) driving the Impala to this building now re-named the Lefevre Shipyard where he meets up with his Purgatory pal (Ty Olsson) carrying a big knife and the pair go inside the building. Not that complicated a scene, but lighting it and the area took a long time and provided a lot of stop-and-stare beauty for locals walking their dogs.

Being Bad Never Looked So Good: ARROW Series Premiere Tonight

Being Bad Never Looked So Good. Check out the abs on Stephen Amell’s billionaire playboy Oliver Queen tonight in the series premiere of Arrow on the CW and CTV Two. Missing and thought dead for five years after a shipwreck, 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, 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 in a scene filmed for the premiere in Gastown next to Chill Winston last March.

Read More »Being Bad Never Looked So Good: ARROW Series Premiere Tonight

SHOOT: PSYCH’s Hit-and-Run Stunt Outside the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Vancouver

Uh-oh. Barry Bostwick of Rocky Horror Picture Show fame might not survive TV series Psych’s 2-hour musical episode. He’s cast as the owner of a ritzy Santa Barbara theatre, probably played by the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Vancouver, where Psych is filming today and tomorrow. This afternoon Psych filmed Bostwick’s stunt double stumbling from the alley by the theatre onto Smithe Street where he is struck by a Cadillac in an apparent hit-and-run. It was a spectacular stunt, especially on the second take.

Read More »SHOOT: PSYCH’s Hit-and-Run Stunt Outside the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Vancouver

PHOTO RECAP: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Storybrooke Scenes in 2×02 We Are Both

We Are Both opens with the Seven Dwarfs testing the Storybrooke town limits and discovering that if one of them crosses the border their cursed self becomes their only self, as Sneezy forgets he was ever a Dwarf.

Next we see the damage the Wraith caused in Storybrooke in an overhead pan of downed telephone poles, blownout windows, overturned cars and uprooted pavement, filmed on Moncton Street in Steveston south of Vancouver.

And we see a populace in relief mode, handing out blankets, bottles of water and toilet paper at the Storybrooke Town Hall, filmed in Fort Langley.

Charming/David (Josh Dallas) takes charge at the Storybrooke Town Hall, promising his grandson Henry (Jared Gilmore) and everyone else that he will come up with a plan to fix everything, but he’s really more concerned with finding a way to get back his wife and daughter — Snow White and Emma Swan — who fell through a portal opened by a magic hat in the season premiere.

Read More »PHOTO RECAP: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Storybrooke Scenes in 2×02 We Are Both

SHOOT: FRINGE’s Joshua Jackson Dodges Manhattan Traffic Downtown for 5×07

Fringe took over a block of West Hastings Street in downtown Vancouver last Monday dressed as New York City to film a scene of Joshua Jackson’s Peter Bishop dodging about two dozen cars while crossing the street for episode seven of the final season. Observers, Loyalist troops and citizens dressed in 1940s garb walking in the background told us this scene is set in 2036. It was a deceptively simple one of Peter crossing the street, coming to a dead stop in the middle of it until a New York cabbie yells at him to “get out of the way” and then continuing on to the curb on the other side. But all those moving vehicles required a stunt coordinator on set.

Read More »SHOOT: FRINGE’s Joshua Jackson Dodges Manhattan Traffic Downtown for 5×07