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Niall Matter

PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD’s “Leggy” Terrorizes UBC Thunderbird Arena This Week – Updated

In the upcoming Vancouver-as-Vancouver series Primeval: New World, primeval creatures enter our city through temporal anomolies, aka time portals, and create havoc. This week a winged creature is terrorizing the University of British Columbia in and around the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Arena (venue for Vancouver 2010 Olympics hockey and Paralympics sledge hockey). Crew setting up a crime scene in the Thunderbird Parkade last Friday told me it’s some kind of flying dinosaur [Update: it’s our cheezy-lovin’ Leggy from the grow-op escaping from a government facility]. Of course I didn’t see the creature, which will be computer-generated in post-production, but I did spy Dan Payne and other military actors arriving on the west side of the Thunderbird Arena on Friday morning and evacuating student extras on the east side on Monday morning.

Like the original British series Primeval, the Vancouver spinoff has a team of smart minds and animal experts who battle these creatures. Ours is led by Niall Matter as rich Vancouver software genius Evan Cross, seen here arriving at the Thunderbird Arena with co-star Sara Canning as predatory animal attack behaviour expert Dylan Weir.

As tall Dan Payne evacuated student extras carrying hockey sticks from the arena, Niall Matter and Sara Canning filmed a scene of them getting out of their jeep, looking back at the scene and possibly up to the sky at a flying creature, grabbing their prop tranquilizer rifles Read More »PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD’s “Leggy” Terrorizes UBC Thunderbird Arena This Week – Updated

PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD 1×8 Dinosaur Chases Jogger in the Olympic Village – Updated

In the upcoming Vancouver-as-Vancouver series Primeval: New World, primeval creatures enter our city through temporal anomolies, aka time portals, and terrorize our neighbourhoods. One such dinosaur suddenly appeared in the Olympic Village last Thursday, chasing a jogger east from the Olympic Village pedestrian bridge to the Creekside Community Centre in take after take. It was a treat to watch the guy-in-the-grey-skin-suit-carrying-a-sphere (Chuck Campbell) who will become the computer-generated-dinosaur (an Albertosauras) following this actor-jogger until the jogger suddenly stops, looks behind him, yells “Holy Shit” and leaps over a bench to try to get away. Now that’s acting. I have a feeling he doesn’t make it since the last scene of the day was a crime scene behind the green Dragon Boat portable trailers.

Read More »PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD 1×8 Dinosaur Chases Jogger in the Olympic Village – Updated

BIG READ: Vancouver’s CONTINUUM & PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD at First Fan Expo Vancouver

Published April 17, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Imagine two Vancouver-as-Vancouver TV series filming here, with B.C. Place stadium, the central Vancouver Public Library, Woodwards’ revolving “W”, Granville Island, Stanley Park and other local landmarks as themselves. It’s so rare for us to have one Vancouver-set series filming here, far less two. So come to our city’s first Fan Expo this Saturday, where you’ll get sneak peeks of both, as well as the chance to meet the showrunners and cast.

Continuum is about some kind of future officer named Kiera Cameron who travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver in the year 2012, chasing a group of terrorists who plan to change the future from the past. You may have seen some of the spectacular-future-downtown-skyline teasers on Showcase, where the 10-episode series debuts in late May. Or the 2077/2012 split skylines on the Continuum show poster.

Continuum stars Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, who joins the local Vancouver police force with Victor Webster as her 2012 detetective partner. You can see Nichols as her character filming in Vancouver with the Woodwards “W” in the background in a promo photo from the show. I’ve photographed Continuum filming at Victory Square, outside and inside the central Vancouver Public Library, The Centre and CBC Vancouver so far with prop Vancouver Police cars and VPD extras alongside real ones. Below is my photo of Nichols exiting an unmarked police car with the Vancouver Public Library reflected in the windshield. And below that is my photo of  Nichols and her co-star Victor Webster filming in a snowstorm at Victory Square. It will be a veritable Vancouver-palooza in each episode.

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver’s CONTINUUM & PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD at First Fan Expo Vancouver

BIG READ: EUREKA’s Colin Ferguson Does Stunts in Chilliwack

Published July 28, 2011 on Vancouver is Awesome

Syfy’s summer hit series Eureka goes largely unnoticed filming here, even when it transforms Wellington Street in Chilliwack into the Main Street of Eureka, a remote Oregon town populated by geniuses and scientists whose inventions have a habit of going array and threatening everything nearby. So it was surprising to me how big this small town is at Comic-Con (the annual San Diego geek fest), where thousands of fans sang Happy Birthday to Eureka star Colin Ferguson last Friday afternoon as he filmed it on his flipcam.

Ferguson, who plays the relatively ordinary Sheriff Jack Carter who tries to contain whatever disasters Eureka’s brilliant scientists unleash each week, flew down to San Diego with other main cast last Thursday after spending all day Wednesday filming an episode in Chilliwack. Crew had brought their own grass, a fountain/statue of Euripedes, large Eureka Sheriff’s Office and Cafe Diem facades, an O2 bar, smart cars, Main Street and Euripedes street signs, Weather Predictor screens, Young Hover Drivers and 1-Hour Hologram Processing billboards and Eureka Hobby Expo and Craft Fair posters to transform two blocks of Wellington Street into the centre of a very eccentric fictional town. Ferguson even did his own stunts in scenes where he and young Trevor Jackson lept around trying to catch something we couldn’t see, possibly the leg of a floating woman enacted by a green-suited stunt performer.

Crew even mimicked the movement of a floating woman with a mannequin leg. Later the stunt coordinator demonstrated what would be a full-frontal collision between Ferguson and the green-suited stunt performer. After watching, Ferguson declared: “That’s funny. I want a cup.” No one had one but he shoved something makeshift down his pants anyway, joking with the stunt performer “We’re friends. We like each other, right?” The stunt went off without incident Read More »BIG READ: EUREKA’s Colin Ferguson Does Stunts in Chilliwack