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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.

SHOOT: The Hood is Back on ARROW S2. Stephen Amell Below the Hastings Overpass

The Hood is back for Arrow season two. Stephen Amell showed us why he’s the star of Arrow, even with his shirt on last Friday night. Not every actor is capable of the kind of  integrated stuntwork that Arrow does routinely. Amell is almost always part of a stunt so that it looks seamless on screen. And sometimes he does all of it, especially if the scene calls for running fast. Here are Amell and stunt double Simon Burnett talking through the night’s stunts with the Arrow Stunt Department on set below the Downtown Eastside’s Hasting Overpass.

Read More »SHOOT: The Hood is Back on ARROW S2. Stephen Amell Below the Hastings Overpass

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

STUNT: ARROW S2 The Hood Stunt with Simon Burnett

The Arrow Stunt Department spent most of last Friday rehearsing  in the sunshine for an integrated stunt to be filmed later that night of star Stephen Amell and Hood stunt double Simon Burnett shooting a rope ascender arrow up in the air and then rising on the zipline several stories off the ground. I didn’t hear about the shoot until quite late because I expected Arrow to be filming on private Port Metro Vancouver land, not in the Downtown Eastside with a grandstand public view from the Hastings Overpass. It turned out to be a relatively private location though, because people don’t loiter in that part of east Hastings at night unless they’re  hookers, pimps, dealers or locals. I was mistaken for one of these by a guy in a BMW and later had a lengthy, circular conversation with one of the locals about gentrification of the neighbourhood.

From the overpass, you could look down on the crane, wires, stunt mats and dozens of people who make up the Arrow Stunt Department. Two of the men behind the best stunts on TV were present: stunt coordinator J.J.Makaro, who picked up a Leo Award for stunt coordination of the Arrow pilot last month, and fight designer James “Bam Bam” Bamford, who won his own Leo for stunt co-ordination of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. Arrow’s stunt department is doing double duty this season, designing stunts for Arrow and new series The Tomorrow People starring Robbie Amell, for what is being called Amell Wednesdays on The CW.

Read More »STUNT: ARROW S2 The Hood Stunt with Simon Burnett

SHOOT: PSYCH Films Cutting Edge Consultants Convention at the University of British Columbia

Psych’s seventh episode of season eight is packed with guest stars. Tom Arnold plays  paranormal police consultant Garth Mayers who comes to Santa Barbara with his ghost sidekick Bernie to appear on a panel at the Cutting Edge Consultants Convention at Santa Barbara University. And Oscar winner Mira Sorvino debuts as the Santa Barbara Police’s head detective Betsy Brannigan, the newest member of Psych’s crime-fighting quartet.

Related: James Roday & Dule Hill Talk Smack to Tom Arnold in East Vancouver

Related: Mira Sorvino the Newest Member of Psych Crime-Fighting Quartet

Today’s shoot was at the University of British Columbia’s CHEM building dressed as the Santa Barbara University’s Faculty of Sciences, with Shawn Spencer (James Roday) and BFF Burton “Gus” Guster (Dule Hill) talking to someone outside the convention. The next scene was the guy in the suit below being escorted out. Is he someone I should know Psych-Os? Update: It’s Vincent Ventresca, aka The Invisible Man.

Read More »SHOOT: PSYCH Films Cutting Edge Consultants Convention at the University of British Columbia

SHOOT: Mira Sorvino on PSYCH Set in East Vancouver

So that was Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino filming Psych as a Santa Barbara Police Department detective last Thursday afternoon at Terra Pita Place in east Vancouver. According to TV Line, she’s the new head detective Betsy Brannigan and a mix of sweet and badass. In other words: “a scrapbooking, cat loving, crime-fighting machine.” Sounds like a good fit for the Psych gang.

Related: James Roday and Dule Hill Talk Smack to Guest Star Tom Arnold in East Vancouver

Sorvino takes the place of Maggie Lawson in the crime-fighting quartet for some episodes as Lawson goes to work on her new sitcom Back in the Game.

Read More »SHOOT: Mira Sorvino on PSYCH Set in East Vancouver

WEEK: July 8-14, 2013