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.
Holiday Hiatus from Filming: Arrow season one – returns January 2nd, 2013 Once Upon a Time season two – returns January 3rd, 2013 Motive season one –… Read More »Merry Christmas & Happy Holiday Hiatus – Updated
Psych-os have some news to celebrate. Their show is renewed for an eighth season [of ten episodes], taking some of the sting out of the looooonnng wait for the seventh season to start on USA Network. Psych premieres on Feburary 27th next year, almost four months after the show wrapped 121 days of filming in Vancouver and ten months after the season six finale ended with its big cliffhanger.
Here are some non-spoilery photos of the Psych crime-fighting quartet — James Roday’s “psychic” Shawn Spencer, Dule Hill’s BFF Burton “Gus” Guster, Timothy Omundson’s Santa Barbara police detective Carlton “Lassie” Lassiter and Maggie Lawson’s detective Juliet O’Hara — filming in the alley next to the Orpheum Theatre in early October for the big musical episode.
Read More »PSYCH-Os Get Eighth Season of Filming in Vancouver – Updated
Update April 29, 2013 – Had no idea I’d photographed Norman’s crush & one-time hookup Bradley Martin (Nicola Peltz, who’s co-starring in the next Transformers movie) in Horseshoe Bay. Now I wish I’d got there earlier to see Norma (Vera Farmiga) & Emma (Oliva Cooke) spying on Bradley in a yoga class.
In what cast calls an “incredible reimagining” of the Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho, a teenage Norman Bates and his mother Norma Lousie Bates start fresh with the Bates Motel in the picturesque town of White Pine Bay, Oregon, filmed in the Vancouver area. Until yesterday, I’d never seen Freddie Highmore as future serial killer Norman on location for this upcoming A&E series from Lost co-showrunner Carlton Cuse (see the first promotional trailer) and Friday Night Lights producer Kerry Ehrin . Highmore didn’t look that different from his iconic role as young Peter in Finding Neverland but Bates Motel will be a vastly different world than Peter Pan’s.
On the surface White Pine Bay is as beautiful as its Vancouver locations but underneath there’s something dark and creepy going on. Think Friday Night Lights crossed with Twin Peaks. Normally Horseshoe Bay — on the edge of Howe Sound in West Vancouver — would count as one of those beautiful locations but yesterday it was dark and creepy on the surface too.
Bates Motel crew had turned Bay Market into Bay Market & Hardware for a scene of Norman (Freddie Highmore) and Norman’s step brother Dylan (Max Thieriot) buying supplies at a Fall Hardware Sale, carrying them out to the back of Dylan’s 4 x 4 and chatting with [Norman’s crush Bradley (Nicola Peltz)] who’d just been dropped off by her friends in a BMW.
Falling Skies wraps filming of its third season this coming week in Vancouver. And as far as I know, few if any have seen them on location until today at the Coffee Bar in Gastown. But it sure didn’t look anything like the post-apocalyptic Falling Skies we’ve come to know. Where were the Skitters? Where were the Mechs? Where were the Overlords? Where were the even creepier aliens introduced in the season two finale? And where was 2nd Mass, the small band of insurgents named after the 2nd Massachusetts of the American Revolution, who’ve been fighting the occupying alien force for three seasons?
Noah Wyle’s Tom Mason had no beard or scruffy clothing. And Will Patton’s Captain Dan Weaver looked more like a homeless lunatic than the military leader of 2nd Mass. And what’s with all the well-dressed people carrying bags of Christmas shopping, coming and going in a cafe decorated with wreaths? It turns out today was a reshoot of a dream sequence. So it provides few clues about what drama will unfold in the third season set to air next summer on TNT in the U.S.
Read More »Noah Wyle and Will Patton Film FALLING SKIES S3 Dream Sequence in Gastown
I withheld photos of Jenni Blong as Dr. Carla Warren filming with John Noble’s Dr. Walter Bishop inside a prop New York taxicab opposite the Guiness Tower downtown in late October. Partly because her reappearance was a spoiler but also because I couldn’t figure out how she could possibly be alive in 2036. I should have known that Fringe’s final season wouldn’t be complete without Walter on an acid trip.
“I represent everything that you’re trying to keep buried,” she told him last night in an ongoing hallucination. After all, Dr. Warren is the one in the original timeline who tried and failed to convince Walter not to cross over to the alternate universe to save the other young Peter Bishop who was dying like his own son had. And her death in a lab explosion led to Walter being incarerated for manslaughter in the St. Claire’s mental institution where we met him in the series premiere. On a lighter note, Gene the cow also featured in Walter`s hallucinations during the show’s animated homage to Monty Python. Walter`s wild acid trips are one of the many things I will miss about Fringe.
[sz-youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uS2z8Aeck-M” /]
Published December 14th, 2012 on Vancouver is Aweome After five seasons — four of them filmed in Vancouver — American TV series Fringe wrapped filming… Read More »BIG READ: FRINGE Wraps in Vancouver
Now that we’ve seen Colin O’Donoghue’s nefarious and dangerously seductive Hook heading into Storybrooke on his pirate ship in the last scene of Once Upon a Time’s mid-season finale, it’s no longer a big spoiler where I photographed him in early November or who he was with.
Once Upon a Time crew put a fake chimney on top of Dave’s Fish & Chips in Steveston south of Vancouver to film scenes of Hook and Christopher Gauthier’s Smee spying from the roof. It’s probably not a coincidence that Dave’s Fish & Chips is next door to Mr. Gold’s on Moncton Street. After all, Hook has come to Storybrooke to exact his revenge on Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold. Or that his henchman Smee, who already abducted Rumplestiltskin’s beloved Belle once at the behest of her florist father, plays a role in Hook’s plans.
Watch your backs RumBelle. As Colin O’Donoghue told TVLine earlier this month: “Belle is such a huge part of Rumple’s life…She might figure into the equation.”
[Spoiler Update: After what I saw Once Upon a Time filming this morning, I’m no longer sure that Belle is Hook’s target. The cloak Hook is holding belongs to Bae.]
Once Upon a Time has constructed a pirate ship set on the dock at the heritage Britannia Shipyard building in Steveston south of Vancouver. It’s… Read More »SET: ONCE UPON A TIME’s Pirate Ship Set in Steveston
