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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: FOX Pilot ALMOST HUMAN Films Under Cambie Bridge with Joel Wyman on Set

Crew for the FOX pilot Almost Human (formerly Human) built a futuristic coffee kiosk on a sidewalk under the Cambie Bridge to shoot a scene on Easter Monday of masked kidnappers abducting a plainclothes Los Angeles police officer and driving away. I got there too late to see the abduction so I don’t know which actor was taken, but this is probably the officer whom John Kennex (Karl Urban of Star Trek) and his android cop partner Dorian (Michael Ealy) try to rescue from Gastown’s Winters Hotel.

Related: Karl Urban and Michael Ealy Film Almost Human at Gastown’s Winters Hotel

J.J. Abrams and Fringe showrunner Joel Wyman’s futuristic buddy cop show is about LAPD officers partnered with androids and focuses on one particular pairing between John Kemnex and android Dorian, where the android displays more emotions than the human because the human is shut down after getting seriously hurt on a mission. Other characters include a cop-with-strong-morals Valerie Stahl (Minka Kelly), another police officer (Michael Irby) and the police captain (Lili Taylor).

Related: Karl Urban and Minka Kelly film Almost Human in Vancouver’s Business District

Brad Anderson (The Machinist) directed the pilot not Joel Wyman but Wyman was in Vancouver overseeing production. I spotted him without his mohawk on set last week conferring with Anderson between takes under the Cambie Bridge.

Read More »SHOOT: FOX Pilot ALMOST HUMAN Films Under Cambie Bridge with Joel Wyman on Set

BIG READ: VIFF Favourite BECOMING REDWOOD Opens at International Village Today

Published April12, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome

Jesse James Miller’s feature film Becoming Redwood is rooted in some of his own experiences: his love of golf which led him to turn pro at the age of 19 and hero-worship Jack Nicklaus’s six green-jacket wins at The Masters golf tournament; his hippie father’s flight to Canada as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War; and the shuttle back and forth between his parents after their divorce. But Miller never dreamed as a young boy that his parents would reunite if he beat Jack Nicklaus at The Masters, as 10-year-old Redwood Forest Hanson (Ryan Grantham) does in the Vancouver writer-director’s endearing film.

Becoming Redwood opens in Vancouver today at the Cineplex International Village, one day after the 77th Masters got underway in Augusta, Georgia, with the legendary Jack Nicklaus. who’s won the tournament more than any other golfer, as an honourary starter.

The Story: In 1969, two-year-old Redwood watches helpless from the backseat of a Volkswagen van as his mother Jade (Miller’s wife Jennifer Copping) leaves his draft-dodging father Ethan (Chad Willett) at the Canadian border. Eight years later, his  father is arrested for dope dealing in B.C. and golf-obsessed long-haired Redwood (Ryan Grantham) must return to the U.S. to  live with his mother, her two teen sons (Tyler Johnson and Todd Potter), her red-neck husband Arnold (Derek Hamilton) and Arnold’s basement-dwelling elderly father Earl (Scott Hylands) in northern California. How to deal with all this trauma? Redwood imagines beating the “Golden Bear”, aka  Jack Nicklaus, at the Masters will solve all his problems. Or as the movie’s poster puts it: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Turn Pro.

Becoming Redwood production still – Courtesy of Jesse James Miller

Becoming Redwood production still – courtesy of Jesse James Miller

Read More »BIG READ: VIFF Favourite BECOMING REDWOOD Opens at International Village Today

SHOOT: Robert Carlyle & Lana Parrilla Film ONCE UPON A TIME 2×19 in Steveston – Updated

Update: “You’re Henry’s grandfather.” – Regina to Rumple

Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold (Robert Carlyle) and the Evil Queen/Regina (Lana Parrilla) seem to be on friendlier terms in 2×19 Lacey despite Cora and Regina’s efforts to kill him in The Miller’s Daughter. Of course the actors are real friends with no hard feelings about who tried to kill whom. Once Upon a Time filmed a scene in late February of the two evilish characters walking and talking in the background of Rumple’s son Baelfire/Neal (Michael Raymond-James)’s play swordfight with his son Henry (Jared Gilmore) in Fisherman’s Park.

Related: Father-and-Son (Michael Raymond-James & Jared Gilmore)’s Play Swordfight in Steveston

Read More »SHOOT: Robert Carlyle & Lana Parrilla Film ONCE UPON A TIME 2×19 in Steveston – Updated

SHOOT: Tahmoh Penikett & Victor Webster Film CONTINUUM S2 at Vancouver Art Gallery on Easter Monday

Corrupt Vancouver politician Jim Martin (Tahmoh Penikett) returns to Continuum in the second season. We met him in the seventh episode, The Politics of Time, when Liber8 killed the investigative reporter Alicia Fuentes (Pascale Hutton) looking into the financing of Martin’s campaign to be head of the local dock workers union. Detective Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster) investigates Alicia’s murder without telling his Vancouver-police-partner-from-the-future Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols) that the murder victim is the woman he slept with the night before, making him the prime suspect and testing Kiera’s loyalty. It proved to be a tangled web of old friendships gone wrong so it’s no wonder that Carlos isn’t friendly with Jim Martin when they meet on the north steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery this season.

Continuum filmed for three days outside and inside the Vancouver Art Gallery last week, mainly in an old courtroom at the south end. Could this be the trial of young Liber8 apprentice Julian Randol (Richard Harmann)?

Good friends Tahmoh Penikett and Victor Webster between takes.

Spectators watch the action.

Read More »SHOOT: Tahmoh Penikett & Victor Webster Film CONTINUUM S2 at Vancouver Art Gallery on Easter Monday

WEEK: April 1-7, 2013

SHOOT: Jon Tenney & Rebecca Romijn Film KING & MAXWELL 1×02 at The Centre

Updated: King & Maxwell 1×02 Second Chances aired June 17, 2013 on TNT.

New TNT series King & Maxwell began filming yesterday in Vancouver. I caught up with them setting up in an alley behind the Ovaltine Cafe in the downtown eastside for a scene of the former secret service agents turned private investigators Sean King (Jon Tenney from The Closer) and Michelle Maxwell (Rebecca Romijn from The X-Men franchise) driving up, getting out of the car and walking in the cafe’s rear entrance.

King & Maxwell — characters from the David Baldacci books set in Washington, D.C. —  returned downtown this morning to film scenes outside The Centre of a man being led out in handcuffs and put in the back of an unmarked squad car that drives away. Then people run in terror as a young woman holding a gun appears on the sidewalk. Some yellow Washington D.C. cabs are parked on Robson Street for later scenes.

Read More »SHOOT: Jon Tenney & Rebecca Romijn Film KING & MAXWELL 1×02 at The Centre

SHOOT: Misha Collins & Curtis Armstrong Film SUPERNATURAL 8×22 in Deep Cove, North Vancouver – Updated

Update: The Clip Show, airing May 8th. Metatron asks Castiel’s advice about the problems in Heaven.

Supernatural spent the day filming in beautiful Deep Cove in North Vancouver on Wednesday. The day started with a patio scene at the Arms Reach Bistro of a conversation between two actors. I didn’t get there in time to see who was on set but the afternoon scene of two actors walking down Panaroma Drive was of Castiel (Misha Collins), carrying groceries and beer, with [Curtis Armstrong (Booger from Revenge of the Nerds) as the reclusive angel Metatron, the scribe of God.] There was also an interior scene in the Panorama Market, maybe of Cas buying what looked like toilet paper. Later that night, Supernatural returned to the patio of the Arms Reach Bistro for a scene of two actors watching the waitress close down the restaurant while “an actor with a knife” stood on the cul de sac opposite (according to the film notice). I wish I could have stayed for that. Fans have some ideas about who the actor with a knife might be but we’ll have to wait and see.

Read More »SHOOT: Misha Collins & Curtis Armstrong Film SUPERNATURAL 8×22 in Deep Cove, North Vancouver – Updated