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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: PSYCH S8 Films in Steveston’s Britannia Heritage Shipyard Park – Updated

Psych started filming [ten] episodes for season eight of the USA Network show in Vancouver late last week. On Sunday, crew prepped the old Britannia Shipyard building in Steveston for filming yesterday, turning it into the Barclay Bay Fish Company. In the morning, they shot scenes to the east at Gilbert Beach Park on Dyke Road and then some exterior scenes of Psych’s crime-fighting quartet arriving at the Barclay Bay Fish Company crime scene: Shawn “psychic” Spencer (James Roday) and Burton “Gus” Guster (Dule Hill) in the Blueberry and Santa Barbara police detectives Carlton “Lassie” Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) and Juliet O’Hara (Maggie Lawson) in the police squad car.

By the time I got there mid-afternoon, the crew was on LUNCH, either sprawled on the grass, playing with a small remoted-controlled car or setting up to shoot the crime scene inside. When I returned several hours later, I found the cast set chairs tucked away behind one of the restored former shipyard/cannery residences, which date back to 1885. Moments later, Lassie (Timothy Omundson) and Jules (Maggie Lawson) walked past me in costume, returning to set. And around  the corner, sitting in the sun on the boardwalk with his back to the wall of the former Chinese bunkhouse was Shawn’s Dad, Henry Spencer (Corbin Bernsen), reading and probably preparing for the final scene of Henry fishing on the docks.

Lassie (Timothy Omundson) & Jules (Maggie Lawson)

Read More »SHOOT: PSYCH S8 Films in Steveston’s Britannia Heritage Shipyard Park – Updated

SHOOT: CONTINUUM’s Erik Knudsen, Drugs & Bikers on CBC Vancouver Plaza for 2×03

Continuum regularly films inside CBC Vancouver but only occasionally outside on the plaza. In tonight’s episode, outside scenes involvied drugs and bikers. The first, in early March,of young Alec Sandler (Erik Knudsen)’s friends dropping a new street drug Flash (actually Retrievatol from the future) in their eyes. And the second, five weeks later, of Liber8 leader Sonya (Lexa Doig) meeting with a biker gang.

Read More »SHOOT: CONTINUUM’s Erik Knudsen, Drugs & Bikers on CBC Vancouver Plaza for 2×03

SHOOT: Goran Visnjic & Erin Moriarty Film RED WIDOW Finale at Guiness Tower

Update May 10, 2013 – ABC cancelled this limited series so last Sunday’s season finale is the series ender.

So it wasn’t Nicholae Schiller (Goran Visnjic) who made Marta Walraven (Radha Mitchell) a Red Widow by killing her husband. It was her cold, cruel, ruthless father who couldn’t stand the idea of losing his grandkids. But the grandkids don’t know that yet. And so young Natalie (Erin Moriarity) pulls a gun on Schiller as he’s leaving his office, filmed at the Guiness Tower in Vancouver’s Business District, in what turns out to be the final scene of the season finale.

What happens next? That depends on whether this limited series is renewed or not.

Read More »SHOOT: Goran Visnjic & Erin Moriarty Film RED WIDOW Finale at Guiness Tower