yvrshoots » Vancouver

TRAILERS: Henry Cavill Becomes the MAN OF STEEL in Vancouver, Nanaimo & Ucluelet in B.C. and Plano & Chicago in Illinois

yvrshoots — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:41:41 +0000

Superman Begins. Clark Kent becomes Superman in the new official Man of Steel trailer released today. Scenes of grownup Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) as a fisherman were shot in Ucluelet on Vancouver Island. Other scenes of Clark Kent as a logger were filmed partly in Nanaimo at the Cassidy Hotel. And those of a shirtless Clark Kent leading a rescue on an oil rig in stormy seas were shot partly on a vast green screen stage at the Vancouver Drydocks in North Vancouver.

Man of Steel is the origin story of a modern super hero and it looks spectacular.

Supernman’s father Jor-el (Russell Crowe) narrates the new trailer.

Directed by Zach Snyder and starring Henry Cavill, Russell Crowe, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner and Amy Adams.

Man of Steel will be in theatres on June 13, 2013.

YVRShoots Series – Sarah McLachlan’s Holiday Music Video Shoot

yvrshoots — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:14:57 +0000

Published November 29th, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

Sarah McLachlan’s new holiday classic “Find Your Voice” filmed its music video on a block of West 13th Avenue near Vancouver City Hall last Sunday. It features students from her Sarah McLachlan School of Music: exuberant students who spent all afternoon doing take after take fuled by hot chocolate, craft services and joy.

All of the proceeds from the music video will go to their school which helps at-risk youth to learn music. Click on Sarah McLachlan.com for a free download and on the Sarah McLachlan School of Music to make a donation. I spoke with the lovely and impossibly serene Sarah McLachlan briefly after filming wrapped when it was too dark and too cold to say antyhing intellible, so I’ll use her prepared words instead: “Christimas is a difficult time for many both economically and emotionally and I hope this Gift of Music can help in some small way. My holiday with is that we can all find the good in everyone and in every situation and be kind to each other. I wish you all a very Happy, peaceful holiday filled with love, laughter and light!”"

The video shoot itself took place between Manitoba and Ontario streets on West 13th Avenue. The camera truck filmed a long, continuous shot of Sarah McLachlan walking up the hill singing, joined by students from her music school on either side. Sounds simple except for the two wardrobe changes. At the start, Sarah McLachlan is wrapped in a black cloak which looks like something out of Wuthering Heights. Students dressed in black join her from opposite sides of the street. They leave as McLachlan’s wardrobe people remove the black cloak revealing the grey floor-length coat and then return dressed in red plaid coats. In the final wardrobe change, McLachlan’s grey coat is removed to reveal the sparkly Marilyn Monroe-esque strapless gown and the students return dressed for a party. Add smoke machines, lights and glitter falling from the sky and it looks like New Year’s Eve.. While this all appears seamless in the video it was controlled chaos on the sidewalks, especiailly near the lights. Imagine doing this over and over again from around 11:30 in the morning until almost 5:00 p.m. in the evening, when the moon rose and there was virtually no light left.

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Kristin Lehman and Louis Ferreira Film CTV’s MOTIVE in Downtown Vancouver for 1×07 – Updated

yvrshoots — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:36:07 +0000

Updated March 21st, 2013, the night 1×07 Out of the Past aired.

I only saw Louis Ferreira’s Col. Young once on location for Stargate Universe (SGU), so I didn’t recognize Ferreira on a wet Friday night more than a week ago as Vancouver detective Oscar Vega for midseason CTV series Motive. I should have known from Kristin Lehman’s laughter who her detective partner is. Ferreira is known for serious, dramatic and sometimes psychotic roles but is a crazy, wild, hilarious cutup of a guy out of character.

Motive filmed its crime scene in the rain at the corner of Howe and Nelson in the Ash Market with prop Metro Police cars flashing (not with actual Vancouver Police decals like Continuum uses). The show’s twist is to reveal the killer at the start of each episode and then let us follow along the detectives’ efforts to solve the murder and uncover the reasons behind it.

Kristin Lehman from The Killing is the lead as “feisty female Vancouver detective” Angie Flynn, a divorced, single Mom solving murders on a series populated with other Canadian actors. In fact, Peter Kelamis just tweeted he has been cast as a guest actor so we can look forward to an SGU Brody-Col. Young reunion on screen sometime in 2013.

Angie Flynn’s signature car - 1984 Oldsmobile Hurst

Motive’s 13-episode first season is expected to premiere in early 2013 on CTV.

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YVRShoots Series – Vancouver as Vancouver in RANDOM ACTS OF ROMANCE at VIFF

yvrshoots — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:33:29 +0000

Published October 19, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

It’s not often in this series that I get an opportunity to talk about movies where Vancouver plays itself, but once a year several locally-filmed features are screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival. This year I got to see director Katrin Bowen’s sold-out Vancouver film Random Acts of Romance on my third try last Friday night.

“Sex, Abduction, Stalking and You Thought Romance Was Dead” is the tagline. The film opens in east Vancouver’s Waldorf Hotel with our two married couples out for the evening: Amanda Tapping’s Dianne married to Zak Santiago’s younger man Matt and Laura Bertram’s young wife Holly married to Robert Moloney’s David. Elsewhere in the restaurant is Ted Whittall’s single sleezeball Richard, breaking up with his latest conquest. Add Sonja Bennett’s single, completely wacko stalker Lynne and Katharine Isabelle’s lesbian Bud to this mix of interconnected Vancouverites and you get random acts of violent romance.

At last Friday’s screening, the very tall Katrin Bowen (below) spoke about the importance of setting her movie in Vancouver in all its “rain, sex and awkwardness.” She wanted the city to ”take on a personna”. It helps that 95% of the movie soundtrack is music from Vancouver indie bands, many discovered at the Biltmore and Cobalt Hotels. And that there are so many scenes set in recognizable locations like the denouement of an abduction under the south end of the Burrard Bridge.

But the big question for the director last Friday was: how did you get Vancouver’s Sci-fii Queen Amanda Tapping to star in your movie? It turns out Katrin Bowen and Tapping became fast-friends years ago when Bowen worked as Tapping’s photo double/standin on the first Stargate TV series, Stargate SG-1. And Bowen offered Tapping a heck-of-a-part: both heart-breakingly real and hilarious, especially Dianne’s one-night stand depicted below in a photo handout from VIFF.

With a $1 million budget, plus generous loans of equipment from companies like William F. White, Bowen had 17 days to film her movie, co-written from Scotland by Kevin McComiskie and Jillian Mannion. One notable shooting day had to be the 10 pages of uncomfortable, zero-chemistry sex scenes between Laura Bertram and Robert Moloney (on the far right of the photo above). Or as Moloney put it: a whole day of showing “my skinny white ass” on camera.

So funny. It’s a pity Vancouver will have to wait to see this film in theatres again, but that’s the way of homegrown indies. Finished just over a month ago in time for its world premiere at VIFF, Random Acts of Romance will be submitted to other key film festivals from Sundance to South by Southwest. Hopefully that will lead to theatrical release but if not, Bowen can always rent a Vancouver theatre for a couple of nights and split the proceeds with the owner like she has done before. Whatever happens, eventually we will get to see this crazy, obssessive, uproarious Vancouver film on DVD, Amazon and Netflix.

CULT’s Robert Knepper & Alona Tal Film the Show-Within-A-Show at the Vancouver Art Gallery for 1×07

yvrshoots — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 23:06:19 +0000

Updated April 10, 2013 – This was the last episode of Cult aired by The CW before it cancelled the show.

Cult filmed scenes of Cult – its show-within-a-show – today at the Vancouver Art Gallery, with Robert Knepper (Prison Break)’s cult leader speaking about a proposed youth centre while Alona Tal’s police officer opens the trunk of the red car featured in the show-within-a-show. Confused yet?

You should be. “When the line between the imagined and reality is broken” is the meta tagline of The CW’s midseason series Cult. Matt Davis (The Vampire Diaries) stars as Jeff, an investigative journalist searching for his brother whose disappearance may be linked to the fans of a TV series called Cult (which stars Robert Knepper and Alona Tal’s characters) recreating what they’ve seen on the show. Jeff enlists the help of Jessica Lucas’s production assistant Skye from the show-within-a-show. Hopefully, all this meta-ness will be easier to follow when we see it on screen early next year.

Fringe Fights the Future at the Olympic Village Redux in Vancouver for Ep. 5×07

yvrshoots — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 16:44:39 +0000

The last time Fringe decorated the False Creek waterfront at the Olympic Village with Observer posters to signify a future set in 2036, it was for season four’s Letters of Transit, the gateway episode into the show’s fifth and final season. Fans lucky enough to see filming that day got a sneak peek at Observer overlords, Loyalist troops, a silver-haired Nina Sharp (Blair Brown) in a wheel chair and a blonde Olivia lookalike, who turned out to be POlivia’s grownup daughter Etta (Georgina Haig).

Last Friday, Fringe returned to the Village on False Creek, but this time it was amber-preserved Olivia (Anna Torv) kneeling down to talk to wheelchair bound Nina Sharp, not her lookalike daughter. Walter Bishop (John Noble), looking less befuddled than in Letters of Transit, and his faithful companion Astrid (Jasika Nicole), joined the pair for a long walk (roll)-and-talk along the seawall.

At dusk, Fringe lit up the area for a scene of Walter and Nina talking on the seawall. In a fortuitous coincidence, a meetup group had scheduled a photo walk in the area so there were half-a-dozen long-lense cameras on tripods to capture the beauty (my non-tripod photos below).

Here are a few more photos of what will be episode 5×07. Fringe is halfway through the filming of its final season in Vancouver.

SHOOT: Youngest in RED WIDOW’s Mob Family Does Own Stunt at Vancouver’s Victory Square – Updated

yvrshoots — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:28:27 +0000

Inspired by a popular Dutch TV show, midseason ABC series Red Widow is about a San Francisco mobster’s widow, Marta Walraven, forced to replace her husband as head of a crime syndicate after his murder. She does this to protect her three children, two of whom were on set today at Victory Square in downtown Vancouver. The youngest — Jakob Salvati as Boris Walraven — did an impressive stunt for such a young actor in take after take. A crew member drew a mark in the centre of Hamilton Street where he would walk to with his TV sister — Erin Moriarty as Natalie Walraven — and then stop as a motorcycle turns the corner in front of them. Moriarity keeps walking as Salvati stays put, looking up at the motorcycle as a red car turns the corner next. Moriarity returns and pulls Salvati to the sidewalk as a blue van turns behind them. On the first take, Moriarity pulled a little too hard and ended up dragging Salvati to the sidewalk. He wasn’t hurt and seemed to enjoy himself as they did the scene over and over again with different camera setups.

The scene started with TV brother and sister walking west along Hastings Street.

Update: Young Boris (Jakob Salvati) is having a flashback to his father’s murder. The killer rode a motorcycle.]

Red Widow is a mid-season eight-episode series for ABC, penned and produced by Twilight scribe Melissa Rosenberg. Here’s a link to a teaser and cast photo which doesn’t include the latest addition — ER’s Goran Visnjic as mafia mob boss Schiller. Visnjic has been spotted in Vancouver but not on location yet.

Jorge Garcia Back in Vancouver as ONCE UPON A TIME’s The Giant for 2×06 Tallahassee

yvrshoots — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 22:28:42 +0000

A Claire-Hurley Lost reunion may be happening sooner than expected on the set of ABC’s Once Upon a Time. Jorge Garcia, who’s been cast as the Giant, unexpectedly strolled through the set of ABC’s Red Widow this afternoon at the northwest corner of Victory Square in downtown Vancouver. I bet the acrid smoke from Red Widow’s smoke machines on Hamilton Street brought back fond memories of his season filming FOX’s Alcatraz here. It’s a smell you don’t forget. [Update: It looks like Jorge Garcia's Giant will be playing with Jennifer Morrison's Emma and Colin O'Donoghue's Captain Hook not Emilie de Ravin's Belle at the top of the beanstalk on Tallahassee]

Once Upon a Time season two premieres on Sunday, September 30th at 8 p.m. on ABC in the U.S. and 7 p.m. on CTV in Canada.

Fringe Family Films at Pacific Central Station As Monorail Station Circa 2036 for Ep. 5×04

yvrshoots — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 17:16:14 +0000

Fringe crew transformed Pacific Central Station in Vancouver into a New Jersey Monorail station circa 2036 on Thursday with bilingual signage in the English and Observer languages, Observers, Loyalist troops, Native citizens dressed in 1940s fashion, armoured jeeps and check points. I missed the day shoot outside and inside the main entrance to the station but caught the evening one on the north side with cast Joshua Jackson (who did his own stunt running across the hood of the Bishop mobile), John Noble and Georgina Haig in gas masks as the Bishops, who make their getaway in the faster-than-it-looks half-a-century-old family station wagon. One of the oddities of this shoot was seeing Observers and Loyalist troops with no eyes or mouths (which made it very difficult for these background performers to go to the craft table or anywhere else).

One of the couple of dozen Fringe fans on set throughout the day is trying to decipher the Observer language from the prop signage.

Bar code licence plate.

#TheyAreComing – Fringe season five premieres on Friday, September 28th at 9 p.m. on FOX in the U.S. and City-TV in Canada.

Fringe Family Films Under the Burrard Bridge in Vancouver for Ep. 5×04

yvrshoots — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:48:54 +0000

Here’s something I didn’t expect to see in 2036: the Bishop mobile. I spotted it under the south end of Burrard Bridge in Vancouver where Fringe spent the day filming Tuesday. And it even had some Bishops leaning against it.

These photos in the shade under the bridge don’t do the day justice. It was just about perfect with Joshua Jackson as Peter Bishop and Georgina Haig as his grownup daughter Etta strolling back and forth to circus at the nearby HRMcMillan Space Centre between setups. Of course, this being 2036 there were Observers on set too. I’m not sure if this one is helping or hurting our heroes.

Apparently there were scenes with simulated gunfire during the day and then in the evening some stunts, with a Peter Bishop stunt double on wires seemingly blown backwards by a grenade explosion (I only saw the one scene with the Bishop mobile from a path overlooking the set).

The Fringe family’s last stand is going to be one tough fight. These Observer overlords are just plain nasty to “native citizens” Check out their cerebral scan protocol — “Your loyalty is not expected. It is required….While native citizens currently remain under Fringe Division supervision any infraction or suspicion of infractions are subject to a full cerebral scan….Heed. Obey. Serve.” – in a new Fringe promo from @jonxproductions.

#TheyAreComing on Friday, September 28th at 9 p.m. on FOX in the U.S. and City-TV in Canada.