The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn

Category Archives: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn

Upcoming Vancouver-Shot Movies BREAKING DAWN 2, ELYSIUM, MAN OF STEEL at Comic-Con 2012

June 30, 2012 Comic Con, Elysium, Man of Steel, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn

In recent years, San Diego Comic-Con has become less about blockbuster movies and more about cult television series, many of which have been upgraded from the upstairs Ballroom 20 to Hall H, the annual geek fest’s marquee location. That’s where panels for Vancouver-filmed TV shows Supernatural and Fringe will be on Sunday, July 15th.

Of course panels for three Vancouver-shot features will be in Hall H as well. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 2 gets Hall H’s first official slot at Thursday lunchtime, July 12th. That’s by design so that Twihards don’t ruin Comic-Con like they’ve done in the past. Last year Twilight fans started lining up outside the San Diego Convention Center three days early (on Monday) to be among the six thousand lucky enough to get into Hall H to see the main trio: Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattison and Taylor Lautner.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 2 panel & screening: 12:45 to 1:45 p.m. on Thursday, July 12th in Hall H.

On Friday afternoon, July 13th, Vancouver director Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium will be part of the Sony Pictures panel in Hall H with stars Matt Damon (link to first official photo) and Jody Foster and Blomkamp on hand to give a first look at this mysterious project. It’s been revealed recently that Elysium is the name of the vast, luxurious space station constructed by a company called Armadyne where the very rich live in the year 2159 (want-ads for Armadyne popped up at last year’s Comic-Con, the start of a viral campaign for the movie). The rest of us –- the 99% if you will — live on the over-populated, ruined planet Earth below. A bald, buff Damon is Max, who takes on the mission to bring equality to these polarized classes. He’s going up against Foster as Minister Delacourt [corrected], a hard-line govenment official, who will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the grandious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium in space.

Sony Pictures panels & screenings: 4:35 to 6:35 p.m. on Friday, July 13th in Hall H.

And on Saturday afternoon, July 14th, Zach Snyder’s Man of Steel will be part of the Warner Bros and Legendary Entertainment panel in Hall H. The Superman reboot stars a well-cast Henry Cavill as the iconic superhero – seen shirtless below doing a green screen rescue scene in North Vancouver last year — and Amy Adams as Lois Lane. As soon as details about this panel are available I’ll update this post.

Warner Bros Pictures & Legendary Pictures panels & screenings: 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 14th in Hall H.

So Vancouver productions will be well-represented in movies as well as TV series at Comic-Con 2012.

Christopher Heyerdahl Isn’t Scary But His Characters Are Like His Upcoming #TrueBlood Vampire

June 10, 2012 R. L. Stine's The Haunting Hour, Sanctuary, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn

B.C.’s own 6′ 4″ actor Christopher Heyerdahl isn’t scary but his characters sure are: from a wraith on Stargate: Atlantis to a triple role as a bigfoot and abnormal/serial killer on Sanctuary to a vampire on The Twilight Saga to the Swede on Hell on Wheels to a Vampire Authority Chancellor on season five of True Blood. I knew Heyerdal was one busy actor but hadn’t heard about his latest role until I read Glen Schaefer’s blog at The Province.

Vampire Authority Chancellor Dieter (link to HBO photo) could be Heyerdahl’s scariest character yet. It’s his distinctive, deep voice in the True Blood promo saying: “We were created in God’s image, not humans. And their flesh shall nourish yours, their blood shall flow within you. For as the beetle nourishes the lark, so shall human nourish vampire.” In other words, the Vampire Authority are fundamentalists who believe that humans are nothing but a food source for vampires. Forget mainstreaming. Forget synthetic vampire food like “True Blood”.

We’ll have to wait to meet Chris Meloni’s Leader of the Vampire Authority Chancellors Roman and Christopher Heyerdahl’s Vampire Authority Chancellor Dieter until episode two of season five which premieres tonight on HBO.

Below are my photos of Christopher Heyerdahl at the Leo Awards in 2012, 2011 and 2010. He won this year for his performance on R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour and in 2010 for his roles on Sanctuary as Biggie and bald abnormal John Druitt. And when he quietly winked at me while I was taking his photo this year and last, I immediately understood how he seduced and murdered all those women in Druitt’s secret identity on Sanctuary as the notorious Jack the Ripper. There’s something hypnotic about him.

YVRSHOOTS Series – Working the Comic Con Craziness in 2011 – Updated

March 17, 2012 Alcatraz, Comic Con, Eureka, Fairly Legal, Fringe, Once Upon a Time, Psych, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Sanctuary, Supernatural, The Secret Circle, The Seventh Son, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Underworld Awakening, YVRSHOOTS Series

Published July 21, 2011 on Vancouver is Awesome

How’s this for Comic-Con craziness? Twihards starting lining up outside the San Diego Convention Center three days early (on Monday) to be among the six thousand lucky enough to get into The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 1 panel in Hall H, which took place just before lunchtime today. Breaking Dawn 1 was the first panel in Hall H so that Twihards couldn’t ruin Comic-Con like they usually do. What’s even more crazy? That the vampires and werewolves of the mainly Vancouver-shot Breaking Dawn 1 aren’t the most popular panel of the hundreds at Comic-Con 2011. Not even close. That honour belongs to the zombies of AMC TV series The Walking Dead.

Breaking Dawn 1 isn’t even among the most popular of Vancouver-filmed movies and TV series at Comic-Con, which has become less about big movies and more about cult television series in recent years. Locally-shot TV series Pscyh cracked the Top 25 most popular panels and Fringe, Eureka, Supernatural and Alcatraz are all in the Top 50. Breaking Dawn 1 and Underworld Awakening (the fourth in the movie franchise but only the third to star Kate Beckinsale and her vampire cat suit) barely made the Top 50 cut.

Psych presented today to standing-room-only, people-turned-away capacity, with Psych-os either dressed as pineapples or carrying them. Apparently series star James Roday (seen above directing a vampire-themed episode) improvised with a pineapple in the show’s premiere and there’s been one hidden in every episode since. Nominally a detective series, Psych knows how to play to a Comic-Con crowd, with several episodes in its sixth season (now filming in Vancouver) crossing over into genre stuff like vampires, super heroes and Star Trek. In a real casting coup, the original Captain Kirk — William Shatner — plays the father of one of the main cast in an episode filmed

#YVRShoots Series – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 2′s Vampire Running in Stanley Park

March 17, 2012 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 2

Published April 28, 2011 on Vancouver is Awesome

Popular romantic-vampire movie franchise The Twilight Saga is famous for a certain kind of hysterical fandom known as Twi-hards. During the ten weeks that Breaking Dawn, Parts 1 and 2, have been filming in the Vancouver area, I did encounter some unbalanced Twi-hards on Twitter but never heard of them disrupting production here. It would be too difficult.

Director Bill Conroy, producers and crew know how to foil fans and paparazzi from photographing and spoiling any scenes of the long-awaited union of teenage vampire Edward Cullen and his human beloved Bella Swan, played by real-life couple Robert Pattison and Kristen Stewart (Robsten). Earlier this month, huge white tarpaulins covered the backyard of the Cullen house set near Squamish, where the wedding scenes were filmed for consistent lighting but also to prevent aerial spoilers And roadblocks and armed police (including RCMP) surrounded the set to prevent spoilers from the ground. Some joked that security for this fictional wedding rivalled that of the Royal Wedding in London tomorrow.

I steered clear of Breaking Dawn location shoots until a week ago Monday when the second unit set up in Stanley Park on the interior road between the Vancouver Aquarium and Brockton Oval to film Kristen Stewart as newly-made vampire Bella doing fast vampire-running stunts on a greenscreen treadmill towed by a camera truck for Breaking Dawn 2. When I arrived near the aquarium, set containment crew had already erected a huge black screen at that end of the closed road but I did manage to take a few photos from Brockton Oval of the treadmill before set containment crew started putting up several 12×12 black screens at that end. As I was walking away across a football field, a containment worker with a big black umbrella came out to discourage me from taking any more photos, even of set containment units.

So you can imagine how security tightened close to Kristen Stewart’s afternoon call time. A dozen containment workers started patrolling the woods on either side of the closed road to prevent papparazzi and fans from photographing Stewart as Bella. One speedy pap — Justin King — did manage to evade them long enough to photograph Stewart from behind running on the treadmill (plus Bella’s never-seen-before wedding ring) before being chased out. And back at Brockton Oval, crew allowed some fans, including Christine Kilpatrick (@OLTV who offers On Location tours of Twilight sights) to watch Stewart running in her blue vampire dress on the treadmill shielded by a containment unit worker with an umbrella, as long as they kept their cameras in their pockets. I cannot stress how unprecedented this was to get to see cast at work.

Before any of the cast arrived in Vancouver in late February (Robert Pattison and Kristen Stewart flew in by private jet and would have gone unpapped if they hadn’t had to go through customs where several photographers waited), it seemed there would be opportunities to see some filming in public places in downtown Vancouver.