Watching the new season of The X-Files several years ago highlighted for me just how big a role Vancouver and surrounding areas contributed to the tone of the original series. Watching Mulder, Scully, and company in golden SoCal light was unsatisfying, even jarring.
My mother worked in a factory that sewed drapes for film sets before she retired. My brother-in-law used to be an operations manager for a warehouse that rented equipment to film sets.
There is just a very long tail of services and a robust supply chain that is required for most industries to be successful.
Or in the case of Superbad, a film based on Seth Rogen's experiences as a Vancouver teenager in the late 90s, Vancouver is a stand-in for Los Angeles, which is a stand-in for Vancouver.
Psych (the TV show) was set in Santa Barbara but filmed in Vancouver. They then did an episode where the plot was that characters all took a trip to British Columbia, which I recall being amusingly meta.
The most recognizable building would be the one their office was set in, which is actually the White Rock Museum & Archives building (a former train station) in White Rock, near the pier.
Beach, pier and flyby shots might be done with a combination of stock footage, or a single day shoot for filler. Theres a term for it, not sure what it is.
I noticed more than one scene where it was actually raining, but they digitally edited it out (as best they could on a TV budget). I always thought it was weird for a place with such perfect weather that they could not delay shooting by a day.
Same thing happens in Ice Cube's "Are We There Yet" where the characters are driving from Portland to Vancouver but the whole movie is filmed in Vancouver and surrounding area.
It was very fun to attend UBC then immediately start recognizing bits of the campus in many TV shows - Man in High Castle, Stargate, Battlestar, and many others.
They have long since fixed it but there used to be an absolutely awful/hilarious set of street view captures for UBC that were taken by accident during filming for Man in the High Castle…the entire main mall had Nazi flags up. https://ubyssey.ca/humour/ubc-nazi-territory-street-view/
You can also tell if something was shot in Canada by all the Canadian actors all over the place. I recognize so many people from X-Files, and so many other shows.
Also Battlestar Galactica -multiple shots of homes in Vancouver- I remember watching the series and wondering what city was being used for Baltar's house and surroundings because it was so beautiful, futuristic and clean..then I went vistied Vancouver.. its truly a gorgeous city and area
Shooting on location halfway across the galaxy definitely seems like it would strain the union's rate schedule. If you can take a Stargate so that you could be back home on the same day so you only have to pay local rates would be amazing.
Nah, you can tell because they don’t have annoying people paint street numbers on the curbs.
That said it’d be difficult to film the film Bullitt in Vancouver unless they cut out a lot of the street scenes, the marina, San Bruno mountain, the old freeways…
There is just a very long tail of services and a robust supply chain that is required for most industries to be successful.
They have long since fixed it but there used to be an absolutely awful/hilarious set of street view captures for UBC that were taken by accident during filming for Man in the High Castle…the entire main mall had Nazi flags up. https://ubyssey.ca/humour/ubc-nazi-territory-street-view/
http://www.battlestarlocations.com/locations-guide/the-minis...
That said it’d be difficult to film the film Bullitt in Vancouver unless they cut out a lot of the street scenes, the marina, San Bruno mountain, the old freeways…