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Stanley Park

BIG READ: CHAOS Survives the Vancouver Rainocalypse

Published February 3, 2011 on Vancouver is Awesome

Another spy series began filming in Vancouver in December just as almost every other production took its annual holiday hiatus. First sighted in and around the Vancouver Rowing Club — with a big American flag flying on it — at mid-month, Chaos is a comic look at a group of rogue CIA spies in the so-called Clandestine Administration and Oversight Services. Producers took advantage of a less congested downtown later that month to film in Gastown two days before Christmas Eve and in the Vancouver Club (with a Russian beater parked outside) the day before New Year’s Eve.

This CBS TV series, set to premiere on April 1st, stars Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under and Ugly Betty), as unwitting department mole Rick Martinez; Eric Close (Without a Trace) as paranoid tactician Michael Dorset; Tim Blake Nelson (who really sang on O Brother, Where Art Thou?) as “human weapon” Casey Malick; and James Murray (Primeval) as ex-British Secret Services agent Billy Collins. I photographed three of the spy foursome walking through Shaughnessy at a location shoot last week in and around Hycroft, the University Women’s Club of Vancouver dressed as the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

I even got confused for a moment by a brilliant piece of set dressing at the gate, Read More »BIG READ: CHAOS Survives the Vancouver Rainocalypse

BIG READ: FRINGE Night Shoot in Stanley Park

Published January 20, 2011 on Vancouver is Awesome

Before I started this feature I made a promise to some friends that I wouldn’t pick a location shoot of sci-fi television series Fringe each week. It’s going to be a hard promise to keep because Fringe does some of the most visually-spectacular shoots in the city. Look at how the Fringe crew transformed an ordinary meadow in Stanley Park into something other-worldly on Monday night with big lighting cranes, rolling fog from smoke machines across Park Drive and temporary white tulips.

Fringe — which stars Anna Torv as FBI agent Olivia Dunham, Vancouver’s own Joshua Jackson as Peter Bishop and John Noble as the delightfully-addled Dr. Walter Bishop – filmed its first season (2008-09) in New York and its second season (2009-10) in Vancouver. I started photographing Fringe in its third season (2010-11) and from what I’ve seen so far, it films on location more than any other series here. This DVR and streaming hit (up to 7 million U.S. viewers when delayed viewing included) has been known to shoot in three different Vancouver area locations on the same day and that shows on the screen.

On Monday, though, Fringe’s second unit seemed content to stick with just the one location near Second Beach in Stanley Park: filming scenes of Walter Bishop’s station wagon driving up and down Park Drive during the day, while others planted white tulips in the grass field towards Lost Lagoon for the night shoot.

After dark, the film lights went on and the crew started setting up a tracking shot of what appeared to be a young Olivia Dunham and young Peter Bishop talking in the tulips. Read More »BIG READ: FRINGE Night Shoot in Stanley Park