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Terminal City Ironworks

WEEK: March 18-24, 2013

The-Hunger-Games-Meets-The-Bachelor TV pilot THE SELECTION

If TV pilot The Selection is The Hunger Games meets The Bachelor, as described by TV Guide, does that mean that The Selection bachelorettes will fight each other to the death? Aimee Teegarden (Friday Night Lights) stars as a poor girl chosen by lottery to enter a fierce competition to marry the Prince and become the next Queen of a war-torn nation far in the future. I didn’t see Amy Teegarden as America Singer, William Mosely as servant Aspen or Ethan Peck as Prince Maxim on set, but did visit all of their shooting locations. And eventually managed to photograh Pieta Sergeant below as rebel leader Gaia.

On the first day of filming, The Selection set up a village market inside the Terminal City Ironworks complex in east Vancouver with Aimee Teegarden on set as young America Singer. I dropped by too early to see the market scene, catching a glimpse through an open gate of prop wagons and stalls still covered in plastic.

Scenes of America saying goodbye to her village were shot over three days at the Britannia Heritage Shipyards in Steveston, captured beautifully by commercial photographer Clayton Perry in his The Selection photoset on Flickr. In  Perry’s photos you can see villager extras holding up hand-lettered signs on cardboard reading: Queen America, We Love You America, Make us Proud, America Our Next Queen. William Mosley’s Aspen was also on set but when I dropped by the filming was behind one of the xxx.

To depict the war-torn country, The Selection went north on the Sea to Sky highway to the Squamish Municipal Airport for scenes of fighting with Royal forces on an airport runway. I zoomed in but couldn’t pick out Peta Sergeant on set as the rebel leader fighting the Head of the Military.

Scenes from the royal palace must have been filmed at Hycroft, the University Women’s Club in Shaughnessy,Read More »The-Hunger-Games-Meets-The-Bachelor TV pilot THE SELECTION

BIG READ: Darker Season 2 of FALLING SKIES Filmed in Vancouver

Published April 5, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

The second season of sci-fi summer hit Falling Skies takes place three months after Noah Wyle‘s father of three boys boarded an alien spacecraft in a bid to protect his middle son. It’s said to be an even darker look at the trials and tribulations of a small band of insurgents fighting against an occupying alien force which has killed most of the world’s adults and captured their children. So it’s appropriate they filmed it in Vancouver over the fall and winter durng our Rainocalypse, instead of in the Toronto area over the summer and fall in the mainly sunny weather of season one.

Noah Wyle (from ER) is former History professor Tom Mason, the civilian second-in-command of a Boston insurgent group named after the 2nd Massachusetts of the American Revolution and made up of about 300 fighters and civilians. Mason, whose wife was killed in the initial attack, has three sons —  Hal, played by Drew Roy, and Ben and Matt, played by  Connor Jessup and Maxim Knight.  Middle son Ben has been captured by the insectoid multi-legged aliens known as Skitters and harnessed. These harnesses are attached to the children’s spines and act as some kind of biomechancial device that allows the aliens to control their minds. Much of the first season is spent trying to get Ben back and to figure out how to remove his harness without killing him. But even when they do get the harness off Ben, it’s clear he’s not free from alien mind control. And that’s why his father boards the alien spaceship in the season one finale to find a way to protect Ben and stop the harnessing of kids.

This is the family show in a post-apocalyptic setting that legendary director Steven Spielberg had envisioned. Other key civilians are Moon Bloodgood as pediatrician Anne Glass and Seychelle Gabrielle as Lourdes, who’ve formed a makeshift medical clinic for the group. Will Patton is Captain Dan Weaver, the military leader of the 2nd Mass and Mpho Koaho as Thomas (a former Boston cop) and Peter Shinkoda as Dai are two of its best fighters. Jesse Schram is Karen Nadler, who starts off as Ben’s girlfriend and fellow scout until she is captured and harnessed. Sarah Carter‘s Maggie takes her place on the frontlines of 2nd Mass and maybe as Ben’s girlfriend too in the upcoming season.

Maggie happens to be the survivor of a gang of marauders headed up by Colin Cunningham’s charismatic and wickedly funny John Pope, an ex-con who causes mayhem wherever he goes, nicknaming Tom Mason, “Papa Smurf”; Karen, “Sexy Freedom Fighter”; Hal. “Strapping Young Man”; Anthony, “Black….Looks Like a Gangbanger”; and Dai, “Oriental of Some Kind” when they’re briefly in his custody early on. No one has better lines than Pope in this series, like his protest, “What am I? Canada”, when his 2nd Mass captors insist he go unarmed on a sortee. Here is Cunningham in character as John Pope on set in Vancouver.

At the Falling Skies panel at the Emerald City ComicCon last Friday in Seattle, new showrunner Remi Aubuchon (an SGU Stargate Universe writer/producer) and cast Colin Cunningham (SG-1’s Major Paul Davis) and Drew Roy talked about the upcoming second season and showed a three-minute teaser The Resistance Continues.

Noah Wyle’s Tom Mason has not been seen or heard from in three months. Many of 2nd Mass have died Read More »BIG READ: Darker Season 2 of FALLING SKIES Filmed in Vancouver

BIG READ: STARGATE UNIVERSE (SGU) Meets its Destiny

Published May 12, 2011 on Vancouver is Awesome

I came to the Stargate TV franchise at the tail end of its incredible 14-year run in Vancouver. The third and final series Stargate Universe (SGU), set aboard an Ancient starship called the Destiny, reminded me of Battlestar Galactica, my favourite sci-fi series ever, also filmed here. Only the long, complex mythology of the long-running sci-fi Stargate saga occasionally defeated me.

To summarize: stargates are ring-shaped technology from the Ancients which create wormholes that allow travel between worlds cosmic distances away. In the 1994 MGM feature film Stargate, one is discovered on Earth and kept secret from the public by the U.S. military. Following up on the movie’s mammoth success, TV series Stargate SG-1 began filming in Vancouver in 1997 and ran for ten seasons. Partway through. a spinoff Stargate Atlantis (SGA) — set in the legendary city of Atlantis — launched in 2004 and ran for five seasons. It seemed like Stargate, already setting records for series longevity, would go on forever here when the third series Stargate Universe (SGU) started airing in 2009, but it was not to be.

Darker-edged but more critically-acclaimed Stargate Universe took home six Leo awards at last year’s annual celebration of film and television in British Columbia, winning Best Dramatic Series and Best Supporting Actress for Julia Benson. I took photos of Destiny crew Benson (Lt. James), Patrick Gilmore (Volker), Elyse Levesque (Chloe) and fan favourite Lou Diamond Phillips (Col. Telford) on the red carpet, without knowing what characters they played.

Not long after, I caught up with Stargate Universe’s first season and wondered if it would be possible to see them filming any of the second season on location in Vancouver. That was easier said than done, since 80% of SGU was filmed on studio sound stages, i.e. the Destiny, with the production only going on location to film rare planetary visits using the ship’s stargate or Earth visits using the communication stones (don’t ask).

Four months later, I found Stargate Universe filming a planetary visit at the old Terminal City Ironworks site (often used by film & TV productions) in East Vancouver. SGU filmed there for several days with a CGIed Stargate inside one of the buildings and virtually the entire cast there, with the exception of Robert Carlyle (Rush) and David Blue (Eli) left aboard the Destiny in studio. I photographed a green-screen on the roof to CGI a scene of Louis Ferreira (Col. Young) looking down on a deserted city: “It wasn’t abandoned. These people were wiped out.” I didn’t stick around once they finished the roof scene and moved inside, so I didn`t get to witness any of the cast`s crazy antics or shenanigans often involving cutup Ferreira, but I did see a happy and relaxed Jamil Walker Smith (Master Sgt. Greer) and Alaina Huffman (TJ), with her two young children, chatting outside their trailers with crew and fans while Ming-Na (Camille Wray) strolled around the block in the sun. SGU filmed other key scenes of this deserted city at the old Watchmen set in Burnaby. And these scenes ended up in the penultimate episode of the SGU series, in fact of the entire Stargate TV franchise.

More critical acclaim fell on Stargate Universe’s first season when the series earned multiple Gemini Award nominations last fall, including one for Best Dramatic Series. The entire cast and the creators flew to Toronto for an action-packed day on November 12th, with stops at Canada AM and then an InnerSPACE: SGU Special Read More »BIG READ: STARGATE UNIVERSE (SGU) Meets its Destiny