Have you ever visited movie/tv locations?

[Christopher]

Isn't that one Caprica City building from BSG in Vancouver? It was also in an episode of SG-1.

Are you talking about the big kinda spirally-circular building? That's the Vancouver Public Library, and it gets around. Caprica seems to be using it as their City Hall or something, and it's also the alternate universe Fringe Division Headquarters in Fringe this season. (That show's first season was shot in New York City, but the past two have been in Vancouver.)

 

[Owain Taggart]

Right, exactly, Christopher, and I bet scotpens doesn't even realize it's a Vancouver landmark

 

[Greg Cox]

Err, well, I'd probably be careful in saying that. Just because there isn't anything inherently obvious, I'm sure there are tons of landmarks. Filmmakers are probably just smart enough to film around any of them that would scream out saying, "Hello America, I'm Vancouver!", because doing so would break the illusion of it being something in an American city. That and the filmmakers have become rather elaborate with the greenscreening process as to make practically any location be what they want it to be.

There are limits, however. I remember one dopey tv-movie that tried to pass Vancouver as New Orleans! I'm sorry. A couple of wrought-iron balconies does not turn downtown Vancouver into the French Quarter!

 

[SPCTRE]

When I was living in Munich, on two occasions I took the tour of the studios over at Bavaria Film.

You can actually get inside the original submarine stage they used for Das Boot, which is pretty cool.

There's also some stuff on display from The NeverEnding Story - the original Falkor model in front of a blue-screen (so kids can reenact the scenes from the movie, riding on his back), matte paintings and the like.

I've also been to several real-world locations, but those were from a TV series that's not known outside of Germany. At least I don't think Der Landarzt was ever exported to foreign stations. It's pretty lame, anyway

 

[RoJoHen]

Isn't that one Caprica City building from BSG in Vancouver? It was also in an episode of SG-1.

Are you talking about the big kinda spirally-circular building? That's the Vancouver Public Library, and it gets around. Caprica seems to be using it as their City Hall or something, and it's also the alternate universe Fringe Division Headquarters in Fringe this season. (That show's first season was shot in New York City, but the past two have been in Vancouver.)

Actually, I was thinking of this building: http://www.frak-that.com/213/images/213_cap020.jpg

 

[SPCTRE]

Isn't that one Caprica City building from BSG in Vancouver? It was also in an episode of SG-1.

Are you talking about the big kinda spirally-circular building? That's the Vancouver Public Library, and it gets around. Caprica seems to be using it as their City Hall or something, and it's also the alternate universe Fringe Division Headquarters in Fringe this season. (That show's first season was shot in New York City, but the past two have been in Vancouver.)

Actually, I was thinking of this building: http://www.frak-that.com/213/images/213_cap020.jpg

^ Yeah, I always wondered were that was shot.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Incidentally, there's also a plaque at the diner table where Meg Ryan faked an orgasm in WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.

At Katz's? That's not a plaque. It's a sign hanging from the ceiling. Like I said, I've been there.

Hmm. I've been there too. I could've sworn I remember a plaque on the actual table, but maybe my memory is fooling me. It's been a few years.

Nope, there's definitely not a plaque (or any kind of identifying marks) on the table itself.

For that matter, the table that's there now may not actually BE the same table; could have been moved around in the intervening years.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Err, well, I'd probably be careful in saying that. Just because there isn't anything inherently obvious, I'm sure there are tons of landmarks. Filmmakers are probably just smart enough to film around any of them that would scream out saying, "Hello America, I'm Vancouver!", because doing so would break the illusion of it being something in an American city. That and the filmmakers have become rather elaborate with the greenscreening process as to make practically any location be what they want it to be.

There are limits, however. I remember one dopey tv-movie that tried to pass Vancouver as New Orleans! I'm sorry. A couple of wrought-iron balconies does not turn downtown Vancouver into the French Quarter!

Haha, yeah, that does seem rather silly! I guess it didn't feel very authentic unlike something like Treme which shot locally in New Orleans itself. Yep, there are definitely limits. There's only so much you can do with an environment if it doesn't suit itself to the project. In that case, you know, you shoot on location.

My point however is that, I bet there are landmark locations that are shot that people don't even realize are landmark locations. We tend to see NY and LA landmarks on TV so often that we tend to take them for granted, but if a Vancouver landmark is shot, there are a lot of people who wouldn't recognize it as such because there's less familiarity to them.

 

[scotpens]

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, practically in the shadow of Sepulveda Dam.

It's been seen in Escape from New York, Buckaroo Banzai, and dozens of TV-movies and commercials.

 

[Christopher]

There are limits, however. I remember one dopey tv-movie that tried to pass Vancouver as New Orleans! I'm sorry. A couple of wrought-iron balconies does not turn downtown Vancouver into the French Quarter!

I'm reminded of how bad a job FlashForward did of passing the studio backlot off as Hong Kong. When I saw Push, which was shot guerrilla-style on the streets of Hong Kong, I was really struck by the distinctive feel of the city, the dense crowds and energy and motion of the place, and the backlot in the FlashForward episode seemed totally empty and lifeless by comparison. Sometimes it's not architecture that gives a place its identity.

 

[Owain Taggart]

There are limits, however. I remember one dopey tv-movie that tried to pass Vancouver as New Orleans! I'm sorry. A couple of wrought-iron balconies does not turn downtown Vancouver into the French Quarter!

I'm reminded of how bad a job FlashForward did of passing the studio backlot off as Hong Kong. When I saw Push, which was shot guerrilla-style on the streets of Hong Kong, I was really struck by the distinctive feel of the city, the dense crowds and energy and motion of the place, and the backlot in the FlashForward episode seemed totally empty and lifeless by comparison. Sometimes it's not architecture that gives a place its identity.

That's really quite funny considering the FlashForward novel sets everything in Geneva and the LHC which has a distinctive flavour. I agree. Identity can really make or break. Which Is why I had such strong feelings of the TV show being set in LA with nondescript locations. I'm sure that in the long run, it was cheaper, but at the same time, I think they were boxed in with limitations and were having trouble breaking out of it and telling a good story. If you have a recognizable location like Geneva and the LHC, I'm sure it would have been far easier to just go with what was happening in the novel. But they didn't, and they had to create a lot of new stuff and explanations surrounding their new location. I think it broke the concept overall since the location in the novel had so much to do with the concept itself.

 

[Miss Chicken]

This movie was filmed in my city (Hobart, Tasmania). It stars Micheal Shanks (from Stargate). It looks like it is a cheaper version of The Day After Tomorrow.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js4bMX53ijc[/yt]



Here is a summary -

In Arctic Blast, a solar eclipse sends a blast of super-chilled air towards the Earth, setting off a catastrophic chain of events that threatens a new Ice Age. As coastal Australia undergoes mass evacuation, physicist Jack Tate (Stargate SG-1’s Michael Shanks) races to find a solution while protecting his family.

I will go and see it simply because I can't think of any other disaster movie that has been set in Tasmania.

I do think it should have been called "Antarctic Blast".

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ The science behind it seems disaster enough...Super-chilled air towards Earth? From where? And it's more superchilled than space?

 

[Miss Chicken]

I don't have high hopes for the movie making any sense or being any good - I just want to see my city being destroyed.

 

[bigdaddy]

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, practically in the shadow of Sepulveda Dam.

It's been seen in Escape from New York, Buckaroo Banzai, and dozens of TV-movies and commercials.

You are so lucky! You can make your own Buckroo Banzai sequel!

About the cold air movie... everyone lives in an air tight biulding? I mean really.

I have a feeling it ends with someone freezing, maybe the mom and then coming back to like after being thawed.

 

[CmdrAJD]

I'm not going to count visits to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York City, since those places are in movies all the time.

A lot of "The Runaway Bride" (The crappy Julia Roberts/Richard Gere movie. Not the Doctor Who episode) was filmed in the town where I went to high school. At one point Gere's character has lunch in a little restaurant I've been to many times.

I went to grad school at LSU and visited the bar where Laura San Giacomo's character worked in "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," which is right off campus. Also, a lot of the plantations down there have been in films. My wife and I went to Oak Alley Plantation, which was used for Brad Pitt's house in "Interview With The Vampire" (and I think it was in "Gone With The Wind" as well), Houmas House from "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte," Greenwood Plantation from the "North and South" miniseries, and Nottoway Plantation from "Heaven's Prisoners" (Teri Hatcher walks out onto the balcony naked in the film).

We've been to Seaside, Florida where they filmed "The Truman Show," and I once stayed at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero in San Francisco, which was the hotel David Warner's Jack The Ripper stayed at in "Time After Time."

Now I live a few miles away from the house that was used as a safe house for Edward Norton's family in "Red Dragon" and near the town for a lot of "For Richer For Poorer" was shot.

 

[Greg Cox]

My girlfriend and I were watching an old horror movie, LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH, and she started thinking that the scenery looked very familiar. I looked it up on the internet and, sure enough, the movie had been filmed just a few towns away from where she grew up . . . .

 

[Reverend]

This will probably only mean anything to the Brits here, but when I was a kid I used to spend a week in the summer with my Nan in Dorset, who lived just around the corner from the pool/leisure centre they used to film the location footage for The Brittas Empire. It always amused me since on the show they plonked a big fake entrance in front of the real entrance so it'd look like it matched the interior sets with looked nothing like the real interior of the place.

Not sure this counts but I've been up at Stonehenge while they were filming some documentary for Channel Four (I was up there with an acquaintance who was with the Roman reenactors.) Totally spoils the final effect when you see there's a bloke crouched behind one of the stones waving a bit of card in-front of a smoke machine.

..Oh and the Beatles film a bit of Help! up here somewhere. Hard to tell where exactly since one bit of Salisbury Plain looks rather like another.

 

[Garak]

I live in Vancouver, so there's been something filmed pretty much everywhere I go.

You get to see tons of cool stuff though. A while back they were filming "V" right outside my office and this is what I saw:

I also work right across from Luthercorp and right beside the Baxter Building from Fantastic 4.

 

[gh4chiefs]

Some time ago I was in New Orleans and I stayed in a downtown hotel that was an old converted bank building. I had noticed that there was a lot of comotion going on in the general vincinity, rows of lights, electrical cables running every where out on the street and what not. Turn out they were filming a movie there in the lobby of the old bank, I believe it was the Queen Latifah movie Last Holiday.

The last morning of my stay I went down to breakfast and the restuarant was closed as it was completely full of extras for the move.