Just a quick note: did anyone catch Robert on CTV Morning Live this morning?
You weren’t seeing things! A few of your humble Buzzer bloggers will now be providing occasional morning transit updates for the region on TV.
Both Robert and Tina Robinson, another of our Buzzer contributors, will be filling in from time to time when Derek Zabel, TransLink’s regular CTV Live correspondent, needs a much-deserved break.
And if you’d like to keep up, Robert will be on TV again on Monday, December 24, 2012 and Tina will be on Dec 27, 28, and 31, 2012 :) Feel free to drop a note and tell them how great they look on television!
Joshua Jackson investigates! A scene from the Fringe episode White Tulip was shot aboard a West Coast Express train. Publicity still from Fox found via IGN.
Turns out Fringe, one of the American sci-fi shows filmed in Vancouver, hopped aboard the West Coast Express in one of its recent episodes.
Look for “White Tulip,” which is episode 18 from Fringe’s second season. Several scenes were shot on board a West Coast Express train, where a character with time-travelling powers mysteriously wipes out everyone on board. (Ooohhh!)
I’m told by West Coast Express that the Fringe crew filmed on the train over at the Main St. VIA yard – they used our car for all the interiors and regular VIA equipment for the rest. It took them the better part of a week to film it!
Smallville is well known for filming here in Vancouver… so did you ever see the episode featuring Waterfront Station?
You may not have recognized it — it’s disguised as “Metropolis International Airport” in this angst-ridden clip. Poor old Clark, dropping that white rose outside the station… I mean, airport!
Vampires at Waterfront? Well, just for a few days in 2004.
Blade Trinity, the third movie in the vampire/Marvel Comics/action series, filmed a vampire fight scene on the West Coast Express platform at Waterfront.
Watch the clip above to see Jessica Biel battle it out with the bloodsuckers! (WARNING: There’s a very clear swear word in the clip, if that bothers you!)
You’ll notice that the West Coast Express signage isn’t hidden at all in the scene—there’s a clear shot of the Waterfront station sign, and the train itself even shows up.
Kyla, the West Coast Express staffer who supervised the filming, said the whole thing was great fun. The shoot extended over several days, and the scenes were done many times.
“Of course they do things in bits and pieces,” she said, “so it wasn’t until the movie came out that we understood that the little piles of ashes burning on the platform were actually people she had incinerated.” Movie magic, I guess!
A TransLink articulated bus, all dolled up for its scene in Defying Gravity.
So it turns out TransLink buses have two scenes in the third episode of Defying Gravity, CTV/ABC/BBC’s new space drama! Thanks to Brandon for pointing this out.
Another view of our bus on set.
I can’t embed the clips here, but I can direct you to CTV’s online player.
Click here to open the player loaded with episode three, “Threshold.” It will start up with clip 1 of 5: go to the 6:14 mark to catch the first bus scene.
There, Laura Harris and Ron Livingston have a talk about their relationship on one of our new articulated buses with the fuzzy seats! Also, it seems the green screen above was just to show extremely fast scenery going by.
For the second scene, go to clip 4 of 5 and you’ll see a TransLink bus pick up Laura Harris at around 1:52. You can watch the first two minutes for the full context of the scene if you like. But it’s very important to note that you can see the Buzzer box in the bus for like half a second! Woo!
A classic clip: Rob Chew passed along the intro to season 4 of 21 Jump Street, which features a Flyer trolley bus (“14 Hastings”) and a Flyer diesel bus passing by an Army & Navy store. As well, the clip’s got Johnny Depp and a killer theme song! Thanks Rob!
(By the way, it’s been confirmed by several people that a CMBC bus can be seen in ABC’s new series Defying Gravity. Can anyone point me to a clip online? I haven’t managed to catch it yet.)
Some Monday film fun! Thanks to Bryan for pointing out this clip of a West Vancouver Blue Bus in the TV movie Atomic Train. (The bus can be seen at 3:45 in the clip.)
Atomic Train is from 1999 so I don’t have any info on the film shoot, as I don’t know who was handling the film requests at that time. But just look at how young Mena Suvari is! And Charlotte from Sex & the City plays her mom!
Bryan also mentioned that Look Who’s Talking filmed some clips on Vancouver transit way back when too. Has anyone seen transit-related clips from that film? I’d love to see Travolta or Kirstie Alley or that wacky baby riding a trolley :)
PS: Just a reminder that I’m collecting fun summer trips via transit and more for the July print Buzzer! Submit your vacation hotspot and I’ll try to get as many of them as I can into the Buzzer!
Here’s a commercial for a Spanish compact car Seat Ibiza, shot partly on a Mark I SkyTrain at Waterfront Station in 2006.
First, I don’t speak Spanish so I’m wondering how the polar bear concept relates to the car in question. Could anyone enlighten us on what they’re saying in the ad?
Second: why yes, that is a polar bear in Waterfront Station! Bill Knight, whose many duties include managing film requests and supervising film shoots on our property, has a story to tell about that.
Well, this might be the best transit-on-film clip yet —- reader ;-) posted this clip from the Trial of the Incredible Hulk TV movie, shot on a Mark I SkyTrain & inside Granville Burrard Station in the late 80s.
There is one word for this: awesome. Thank you to ;-) for digging this up!
(Also, I have no detail on how this sequence was done, because I don’t know who was in charge of film shoots in the late 80s! If more info gets dredged up I’ll share — and feel free to share any details you might know too.)
All right, for Monday, here’s a fun item to start your week off.
Paycheck wasn’t exactly Ben Affleck’s finest two hours on film (that was Gigli, right?). But what it does have to offer is extended sequences involving elements of Vancouver transit :)
Hit 1:46 on this trailer and you’ll see Ben running between two of our articulated old MCI Classic buses. Close to the end of the trailer, you’ll also see Ben make a narrow escape from an oncoming SkyTrain.
The buses were shot downtown, and some of the SkyTrain filming was done in Burrard Station. Note that I say “some” and not “all” — the SkyTrain action sequence was actually done in a studio. Here’s the full story from Bill Knight, who, among other things, manages our film requests and supervised the Paycheck shoot on our property.
Ben was actually not present for the scene in the station, it was his double – who really does look like him. The scene of him being chased by a train was shot on a local sound stage, not at SkyTrain. This was a question of time available, safety and logistics. The shots would take too much time within the station – needing multiple nights of filming. We couldn’t have filmed anyways as you would have live power for a moving train. A moving train would have presented too much risk to the actor as well. Logistically it wouldn’t work because there are communications cables in the track area you could trip over plus the LIM reaction rail in the center of the track (which isn’t in their studio version of SkyTrain).
The train is authentic; well at least the first two feet or so! The production company was able to acquire a Mark II end cap for their mockup. In effect, Ben is being menaced by a two-foot long piece of fibreglas with car headlights added! The end of the train used to sit outside in the Vancouver Film Studios yard, visible by trains using the Millennium Line.
Bill also pointed out that this trailer doesn’t contain one crucial scene of Ben sitting at the back of a bus, in which to his immediate left sits a small black and white box marked “The Buzzer”! :)
A few days ago, I posted a clip of Granville Station in the TV show Caprica. So I thought I’d continue with another TV spot showing the SkyTrain: a Vodafone ad from Europe that was shot in Vancouver last year.
The SkyTrain was shot near Stadium Station, and I actually had the fine privilege of supervising this shoot in the wee hours of the morning :)
Hey, check out this clip from Caprica, shot in Granville Station last year! (Caprica is an upcoming sci-fi TV show spun off from Battlestar Galactica: its two-hour pilot was just put out on DVD.)
Fun facts: the train is totally computer-generated. The scene at the end involving getting on and off the train were done using a custom-built set in a studio. You can check out this on-set report from an extra in the Granville Station scene for more!
(Also, a TransLink bus was spotted in the Battlestar Galactica finale: check it out here, screencapped by magsec4!)
