I'm from Vancouver and always telling my American friends, "this is Vancouver!" when we watch movie. And now it's kinda a joke with them. But I swear so many of the movies I watch I feel like I'm back home. And I feel almost personally hurt that beautiful Vancouver (and the surrounding areas) are always giving credit to other cities, and not our own.
I've always admired Vince Gilligan for setting Breaking Bad in Albuquerque. Apparently it was written to take place in Riverside, CA, but the studio said they had to shoot it in New Mexico for tax purposes, but they could just call it Riverside. And Vince said, no, if we're going to shoot it in Albuquerque, that's where it's going to be set. And so he was able to give that show a really strong sense of place by featuring real Albuquerque landmarks and distinctive Southwestern scenery.
Wow, I didn’t know that. Thank you. It just bumps up the score for the show and gives me so much more repect for Vince Gilligan becuase he wrote Better Call Saul particularly based on Albuquerque’s location. Of whats North and South of it. Anything else I’d be giving out spoilers.
apparently new mexico has quite a unique look. i've been able to identify new mexico in geoguessr after only watching breaking bad. so thanks vince, my score would have been horrible if you had set breaking bad in riverside.
I do that too. I would like to see it sometime. I always imagined that Gotham City would look a lot like Vancouver so it fascinated me as a kid and since then it's become Gotham City, Metropolis, and several others so that's been super fun for me. It's a beautiful city and I'm honestly pretty jelly of people who live there. I know someone who used to live there and from what she tells me I think I would dig it
@@Elias-hy5ps I've lived all around the lower mainland and most years it's just a mild snow. We get one or two days of snowfall and then it's just dirty muck until it melts. The last few years have had weird weather patterns though...
Vancouver also plays itself in the HBO biopic Terry Fox which features SFU on location heavy in the first half hour of the movie. Pretty good movie btw.
FYI ..the shot of Seattle at 2:22 was actually a matte painting super imposed over downtown Vancouver. The foreground greenery is Pacific Sprint park, and Mount Ranier was added, as well as the north shore mountains, painted out. We did the shot for Breaking Dawn 2 right here in Vancouver. :)
+Michael Cliett I knew there was something weird about it. Wow. Well if you worked on it, good job. It fooled me for a long time, and I went over it a frame at a time, trying to find the exact Seattle location it was shot from.
+Every Frame a Painting thank you. It was quite some time ago, but yes I was an fx supervisor on the film. It was one of the first shots we did here in Vancouver after the LA->VAN transplant. I really enjoyed your video here as well. Really great stuff. They really should set a movie in Vancouver ...it's such a great town. :)
I walked through a set once, of a film that was supposed to take place in Seattle. I stared up at the translite that was supposed to be Seattle, I could pick out the; B of M, CIBC, Royal Bank, and TD towers. I wonder if anyone ever noticed when the film hit the big screen?
+Michael Cliett Reminds me of the posters for 50 shades showing apartments with typical views of the seattle skyline. there's no part of seattle you can see that skyline from, and bainbridge island is 5 miles west. oh yeah, and I'm pretty sure mount rainier is about forty miles too far north in this shot.
Don't feel bad, Vancouverians. As an American (who doesn't live on the West Coast) I didn't even know there was a Vancouver, Washington until the video mentioned it.
Cool video! The last X Files episode (of the original series) shot in Vancouver before they moved to LA paid tribute to Vancouver by finally letting the city play itself: The opening scene was a chess match at GM Place (as Rogers Arena was then called). Local fans of the show were invited to fill the arena as extras.
+wingsuiter101 Everything in that movie fooled me except India, the only true Indian location that was visited was the Taj hotel. For a native "Mumbaikar", all the other footage in the broadcast center and the parking lot was easily an anachronism.
+wingsuiter101 Ghost Protocol "Dubai" was ridiculous lol. Somehow Tom Cruise managed to get from Burj Khalifa to the Whatever-it-is-called-Bazaar-place just by running for a couple minutes or something, while in reality it's like half an hour or something with the car (I know it because I've been there). Well, what can I say, Tom Cruise runs fast ;)
+wingsuiter101 Yeah, I was under the impression they shot in India, but the location they used in the shot felt a bit fake like the part of a city which is meant for foreigners to see like Delhi near the embassies.
Toronto has exactly the same trouble. I lived for awhile on a street that was variously filmed as 1) Brooklyn, 2) rural Wisconsin, 3) Chicago, 4) a post-apocalyptic future, and 5) Morocco! And the street is only four blocks long. Most Torontonians were delighted by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World because it was a mainstream film actually set in Toronto.
@@Physers I can sometimes tell that a film or show was made in Vancouver rather than Hollywood because of the lighting and cinematography. California's air is dry. Vancouver's air is very moist. Different lenses and lighting are used. Of course, it's very difficult to tell between a film made in Seattle and one made in Vancouver. The cities have identical climate, similar architecture, and similar ambience. One has to look for some small, telltale details. Vancouver's advantage over Toronto in film production is that there is a huge variety of spectacular landscape within a short distance. Glaciers, mountains, forests, fjords, seascapes, etc all within minutes of the city. Toronto has only ordinary midwestern-style farmland around it. But it is easier for Toronto to substitute for major east-coast and midwestern American cities, since it resembles them and has a massive central business district with the same kind of buildings. Toronto also has a huge pool of technical support for filmmaking, as well as being a place where actors learned their craft on the stage long before people started to make films there. Hollywood loved to recruit actors from Ontario or Quebec to play the villains, because they had those deep Shakespearian voices.
Once you've lived in Toronto, you can't help but call bullshit whenever it's called New York. I'd say the biggest difference is that Hollywood is much worse at disguising Toronto than it is Vancouver. The TTC seats and busses are so immediately recognizable you'd never think they're from anywhere else.
For working in the film industry here, I am very glad you made this video. Canada makes some great films, but most of our bigger and better known "Canadian" films are from Quebec. Most people are surprised when I tell them what has been filmed here in Vancouver. It would be great to be able to feature our city as our city and to grow Canadian Film in general. I'm glad Continuum was shot and set in Vancouver! Thanks!
When Vancouver was a child, someone said to it "Vancouver, when you grow up, you're gonna be some kinda city!" Sadly, as Vancouver got a little older, it was found that it would not be SOME kind of city...but EVERY kind of city!
I'm watching this video from Vancouver, Washington, USA. I live in the 2nd most famous Vancouver in the 2nd most famous Washington (1st is Washington DC). sigh...
I just about had to give a round of applause for the edit at 4:02. It's such an amazing find: Two different movies shot 10 years apart, yet shot at the same location, at the same camera angle, with even the same lens length. Out of all the doubtless hundreds of movies you went through to make this video to be able to find a match cut like that is astounding. How on Earth did you do that?
+LittleJimmy835 a bit of research and luck. On moviemaps.org/cities/2 there was a quick note that both had been shot on Front Street. I went and checked it out and did a quick test dissolve. It worked, so I kept it.
My least favorite things about Vancouver: Everybody is gay The air and water (salt) (vehicles rust faster) No free parking anywhere No drive through You have to pay to park and walk
Vancouver is 3) overpriced rent 2)overpriced gas 1) people seemed to become unfriendly in the last 20 years. It’s ok though with the ice melting Vancouver will be underwater soon , poor ocean.
Bryan Dott well with the amount of bullshit going on over here like unreasonably high rent the Chinese gangs doing there money laundering over here and the pipelines we seem to have to protest every couple months and the forest fires making it so we can’t breathe for the summer yeah we get kinda pissed off and yeah I would love to go under water at least the housing price would go down
Wow, I absolutely loved this one! Admittedly, I was ignorant to the fact that Vancouver is used so widely in films and disguised as other cities. This really opened my eyes and raised a lot of valuable questions. Right now, I'm based in the Emirates and our deserts are being offered as great locations to film in for a 30% rebate, and I see all these ads to film 'exotic' locations. What is disappointing though is the fact that our locations don't mean more than some sci-fi landscape of a barren planet or something with a purely orientalist view. For example: 'Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol' showed a wildly distorted view of Dubai. It showed our massive Burj Khalifa set in a desert market. Things wrong with this idea: 1) The Burj is actually set in one of the most technological advanced architectural cities in the world, 2) We don't have markets set in the desert, 3) We don't have traditional style, run-down buildings you can squat in to avoid sandstorms (these are valued, maintained heritage sites). It super irked me to see how Dubai was used to be so unrecognizable to people who actually live here, and it really showed how devalued others view our city. Your comment about how Vancouver is used as a setting and not a location really resonated with me. As usual, thank you for this video; I will definitely keep these concepts in mind while writing new films.
+deenapie You have to not take it personally. A movie is make-believe, so it is just a tool/set for the story. They're not saying that about the city itself.
huyked Trust me, as a female from a minority race and religion in mainstream western media, I learned extremely quickly to not take anything about filmmaking/make-believe personally haha :) As Tony says, that's why we gotta make our own stuff!
Wow. I never saw Ghost Protocol (and reading made me even less interested), but the filmmakers sound really cynical. Almost like they're afraid Western audiences won't recognize a location in the Arab world unless they make it up to look antiquated and poor. And screw what the actual denizens of the UAE think. That's pretty gross, I can totally understand your outrage.
+Adam Leuer I think that is the really disappointing part - Dubai was playing itself in the film, but it was completely misrepresented. What's worse is that I have no idea what it did to add to the story, other than perpetuate lazy stereotypes about the Middle East. Thanks for understanding.
+Adam Leuer Yeah, deenapie is right. My cousin lives in Dubai, and I've been there as well. We watched Ghost Protocol together. We were like "Whaaat? Lol bullshit!". That makes me think, is there a Hollywood movie set in my city, Athens, Greece or set and actually shot in Athens? I haven't seen any...
Haha this is great! I was a UBC student and I've seen so many movies being filmed on the way to class. Funny how SFU is portrayed as a military base and never a university 😂
Aziz Woodward doesn't deadpool take place is Boston or something? but they intentional didn't hide the fact that it takes place in Vancouver I think. like that bridge scene is sooooo obviously in Vancouver.
Aziz Woodward they did. I even met the actors here. And for the second one as well. And the funny thing is, that I'm going to the same highschool Ryan Reynolds went to.
I was in Vancouver for about 3 days a few years ago and even I can work out where half these shots are (Stanley Park, Gastown etc). Having been there its amazing that everyone just sort of glosses over the fact that the City does have quite a distinct visual identity.
I always liked how Psych would slyly acknowledge that it was filmed in Vancouver, not Santa Barbara. The most obvious example was the episode where they 'went to England', but at the end of the episode one of the characters comments that they never saw much outside of a government building and a pub. The pub in question has an over abundance of Union Jack flyers, and the character then says something like, "Were it not for all these Union Jacks, we could have been in British Columbia the whole time."
+Frustrated Jacob Best example of that was the 2nd Austin Powers movie. "Isn't it interesting that the hills of Great Britain look in no way like those found in Southern California?"
This gets more appropriate as the days go on. Most, if not all of the CW television shows seem to be shot in Vancouver. It's come to the point I'm starting to notice the sets lol
I passed a restaurant they were using for a Supernatural set on my way to school last month. My old high school was once used to park a bunch of movie trailers, I think it was for thenewest Godzilla film.
James I know right I watch most of the shows they have on the CW and know I will see something and say “Hmm i have seen that in arrow” but the good thing is a lot of things like the Olicity bench in Stanley park or when a plane flew over Vancouver with a “bring sanvers back” sign, but I guess that’s the beauty of living in Vancouver, you get to see things like that or you favourite shows sets
Supergirl actually filmed in my school’s baseball field. At least i heard it was Supergirl but there was definitely some professional studio shooting in my school’s field during the school day. Though so many places film in Steveston as well that my parents have joked about using clips from those movies/shows as advertising (they work in Steveston)
+Every Frame a Painting another great video, Tony. Just one thing: I would have liked to know, why exactly so many movies are shot in Vancouver. Is there a special reason or is it just because?
+Every Frame a Painting Just to let you know, you got a big shout out on Mark Kermode's (BBC film critic) vlog recently. Check out the video called: My Film Education.
Love that all the music you used is from Vancouverite bands! Nice subtle touch. And this video itself is incredibly important, not just because of what it says about Vancouver, but for what it says about carving out a film community where you live regardless of how your town is depicted in the media otherwise. Having lived most of my life in Tampa, one of the least photogenic cities in Florida, if not the whole US, I was always hardpressed to find a real film community there. But sometimes, it just takes getting out there and doing it.
Well, I'm glad you used _1_ clip from Continuum. That show ran 3 seasons, based in Vancouver, itself. I did 2 seasons on the show and it made it SO much easier because we could SEE the lisence plates, flags, post boxes, and the damn mountains!
Mr. Dinosuar yeah!! Like Kitsilano and Robson and stanly park and where I live! Also many more. Honestly though _downtown_ Eastside is where you should be careful
A similar thing kind of happened over in Glasgow. In the last few years it stood in for San Francisco, London, Philadelphia and a few other places as well.
the strangest example of this was that Jet Li film Unleashed/Danny the Dog. Shot on almost entirely on location in Glasgow and actually set there, yet it was referred to only once in a throwaway line by Morgan Freeman and there isn't a single Scottish cast member. It's a very odd experience.
jcardboard Yeah for some reason some productions that are actually set in Scotland some how forget to cast any Scottish actors. Most of the Braveheart cast is Irish and half the cast of Outlander is Danish for some reason.
As a Vancouverite myself, this was extremely interesting! I love this city. Pointing out the streets and alleys in film of Vancouver is one of my favourite things to do. I have tattoos from the parlour shown in 2:31 lol
+Gabe Newell So it seems that local filmmakers have a lot of job to give back to the city what it deserves. A way of maintain diversity VS Hellywood unitone.
Mattias Westby It's expensive because it's a highly contested market due to high foreign immigration and our dollar is horrible. I love Vancouver but man, good luck finding a place with reasonable rent.
Really appreciate the message in this! I'm a film composer and sound designer living in Vancouver, and am LOVING all the local filmmaking output these days. We still need much more but there are many talented filmmakers living and working here. Love it.
Usually LA plays itself. It is the number one in reference to his Vancouver being the 3rd biggest, BUT sometimes Vancouver plays Los Angeles and the crew actually flies FROM Los Angeles to shoot in Vancouver and then brings the footage back to post production offices in Los Angeles..... you need to make a video on THAT!
+revolverswitch and in the director commentary, the producers were even trying to get Edgar to film it in NY cause it was getting too expensive to stay in Toronto. Also a subtle gag, scene where Lucas Lee punches Scott through a painted backdrop of the Empire State Building, creating a hole revealing the actual CN tower behind it.
IMHO the funniest thing with Toronto was Due South, where they filmed Toronto for Chicago, but for the one episode that took place in Toronto, they went across the lake and shot it in Chicago.
I grew up skateboarding Downtown Vancouver and had friends working on the catering trucks. So much love for these productions and the endless chocolate milk and awesome buffets that would fill us up and keep us going. These productions are a part of our everyday life and as much as it is a shame that Vancouver never plays itself, they are a welcome mobile landmark of our city.
It might be just as well that Vancouver is usually anonymous, considering the number of Uwe Boll films that are shot here. ( Not to mention 50 Shades of Grey -- and 50 Shades II coming soon!) One thing you didn't mention is the way the population is disguised for foreign consumption. I was at UBC when a U.S. show was shooting a crowd of "students" eating lunch on a large flight of steps, and the real students were watching on the other side. The TV students were taller, prettier, thinner, impeccably groomed, fashionably dressed down, and older-looking than the schlumpy, fresh-faced real students. The racial differences were startling. Half of the real students were white, about 1/4 to 1/3 were East Asian, and the rest were South Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), with a few Native and Middle Eastern kids, which is pretty representative of the city. The TV students were about two-thirds white, one-third black, with exactly one each East Asian and Hispanic kids.
+Flora Posteschild I tried to do this point in early cuts of the video but I couldn't convey it properly with the footage I had. So unfortunately I had to cut it out. But you are totally right. Vancouver is 43% ethnically Asian (meaning South, Southeast, East, I don't think that percentage includes Middle Eastern), which makes it the most Asian city outside of Asia. I have never seen a film shot in Van that is even close to the actual racial makeup of the city. Never.
Every Frame a Painting Thanks for the reply, and all the great videos you do. I can appreciate the difficulty. Maybe an alleged U.S. crowd walking down the street compared to a Vancouver crowd walking down the street? But off hand, I can't think of a film to help you. Real people vs. reel people might be a topic for the future, though. It always bothers me when someone in a film is called or treated as "fat" or "ugly", but if you met them in real life, you'd think they were attractive -- they're just not Hollywood bland.
Toronto gets a similar deal too doesn't it? I remember Edgar Wright talking about how Scott Pilgrim was one of the rare films filmed in Toronto and actually set there. Also, really bugs me on The Flash and Arrow how they keep using the same buildings and streets for different cities in the show. I think there was even one week where one location was used on both shows in the same week for different purposes.
I think the main difference between the cities in the shows is that it's always nighttime in Arrow and Daytime in the Flash. It's amazing how much they get away with because of that.
+Mellow Gaming Well the other movie recently that featured Toronto as the city it was set in was Enemy. And that made the city this awful creepy spider-infested hell.
Hey man I just found your channel. I'm a Vancouverite and I started doing film work; I've "been" in Colorado, New York, Gotham, Texas and more, all within a 30 minute drive. I love this city
@Fifty Roll Bit unfair. It is a nice city and people do take pride. The flaws are the Homeless, drug problems, bad Music and Bars, and impossible to meet fun, chatty people. But yes, location is great, a beautiful and relaxed small city.
I love this one! I watched all of LA Plays Itself in one sitting (something I'll probably never do again) and this was just as fascinating, if not more. Tony, I love your channel - I am hard of hearing and it can be very hard for me to enjoy TH-cam Channels like this because they aren't captioned. Thank you SO much for captioning ALL of your videos. I watched half already, and I look forward to watching more. It means so much of you to make your videos accessible to deaf people like me.
+MatthewHs Well thanks. I originally made English subtitles because so many folks wanted translations into other languages. And since I had the script, I figured it wouldn't take me much more time to make an .srt file (note: it actually takes a few hours). I genuinely had no idea so many hard-of-hearing folks would be using them, but I'm glad I made the call way back when.
As a Seattlite, It's frustrating how misrepresented our City is. My favorite example is near the end of Chronicle, where there is a statue that is holding a javelin that plays a central part of the final few scenes. That statue does not exist in Seattle, and it made me incredibly frustrated. Very often they also include train stations and subways (looking at you, Deadlight), which don't exist in Seattle, all we have is the monorail.
what is it like living there? i always wanted to move there because i wanna get some production work out there. what's the city life like? the girls? everything
+Dickens Dumont the city is so clean and beautiful, so are the people! everyone is very nice, but I have to warn you housing prices are SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE!!! seriously.
One of my favourites of recent memory was the TV show Once Upon a Time, which takes place in "Storybrooke, Maine" but has Parks Canada signs clearly visible in the background.
I have done a lot of extras work in Vancouver. Shows like Lucifer Motive The Flash Wayward Pines and like 100 indy or hallmark cheesy films It's neat to see how they transform one location into a generic set piece. My favourite is Coquitlam's old riverview mental hospital as it is heavily used in horror-type genres
hell yeah. riverview is creepy. my brother went there for a field trip once. despite living in coquitlam, i've never been there - but i think a lot of my favourite shows have been filmed in the places under arenas, in more modern parts of cities, by sports complexes, etc. i mainly recognize the sports complexes.
Great video as usual. Good Canadian music choices, particularly Destroyer in the opening and then coming full circle with the New Pornogrophers. Sometimes the subtleties can go unnoticed, but I'd thought I'd let you know someone appreciates them. Keep up the good work!
Kinda funny that I am in the middle of reporting all these productions filming here, and somehow never heard about this video organically. Had to learn about it from a geography discord group. Great job.
+T0mR0b1n (MajorTom) that actually happened. I can't recall the details, but it was about marijuana & BC Bud. This happened during the peak of the battling tax credits between Toronto & Vancouver a few years back.
"Okay, we're going to shoot the movie in Vancouver." "Ah, alright. So the movie is set in San Francisco or something?" "... no it's set in Vancouver." "... what?"
+John Smith I think you can achieve that with lighting better than with actual weather (but I'm not an expert), also it played a really nice city in Battlestar Galactica.
Shawn Zhang They actually put fake palm trees at the station haha, my girl said it "looks so nice now".... Until they took them down and it looked like shit again LOL
It’s a foodie’s paradise. There’s so many good places mainly because the food industry has a very good food and safety policy and the market is so diverse with people of different backgrounds making their way, kids grow up with an international taste in food and culture. Our economy is mainly from the US, people here are mainly quiet and law abiding, there’s a lot of places to walk but people here mainly drive to places as things are really spread out. One key thing to know is, Vancouver is really an immigrant’s heaven because it’s slow and yes it’s hard to adjust at first, but once settled down, you’ll find it’s not hard to access to a lot of places, but at the same time, it’s hard to get in a group of people or an inner circle of friends. Places of note to visit at least once in Vancouver: gay pride, Richmond Night Market, a mall, a park (it doesn’t have to be Van Dusen or QE), or a community centre, Bard on the Beach, Celebration of Light, Stanley Park, or first beach, second beach, and then after that, living in 30 years, it’s not really a big deal. People will complain about the weather, climate change, the food, the traffic, but really Vancouver is boring compared to other places. Peaceful, quiet, law abiding Vancouver.
👊 A great little show called Continuum let Vancouver play Vancouver a few years back. But I agreed, it would be nice to see us be us a little more often!
Don't forget Highlander. I am speaking of the TV show featuring Adrian Paul, not the movie it was adapted from. They would film half the season in Vancouver, pack up, and film the rest in Paris, the episodes shot in Paris were set in Paris and the ones shot in Vancouver were set in Vancouver.
I'm glad Portland is avoiding this issue but at the same time, it's not helping my rent. Granted, Seattle and Vancouver aren't any better. Please stop moving here.
“Wait, they make movies in Toronto?” - Scott Pilgrim Toronto has a similar burden of being every other city. I had a "THEY LIED TO ME" moment as a child with Short Circuit 2, where Johnny 5 is getting sworn in as an American citizen in front of Queen's Park, mid-Toronto. My favourite "hey I recognize that spot" moment, apart from a stock photo of City Hall being one of the alien destinations in an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, was watching the movie, Kick Ass. Supposedly set in New York, the characters walk out of the Scotiabank Theater, which is exactly where I was watching that film. Toronto's been getting a little more play as a city that movies can actually be set in, and thus play itself, but it's taken a while for it to be and feel genuine. I remember the 90's show 'Forever Knight' featuring a vampire as a homicide cop in Toronto. Never mind that I couldn't take serious a vampire investigating a death on Queen St. out front of where Bakka Books used to be located, but the city only has maybe 50-60 homicides per year... tops. How the hell were vampires supposed to keep a low profile among that?
6:40 Do local crews try to sneak Vancouver in? Yes it happens. Teal'c in Stargate SG1 once said "I believe the Canucks of Vancouver are superior warriors." Its filmed in Vancouver but Stargate Command where they embark from takes place in Colorado Springs, it's also where the characters live so they should have been rooting for the Colorado Avalanche.
The external of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex is in the parking lot of the Diablo Dam power plant in the Washington Cascades near the town of Newhalem. It was built for the movie Wargames.
My dad was a DoP. One time when he was shooting, he noticed that all the taxis passing by still had their Vancouver identification on it. He pointed it out to the set department…only to be told that the film *actually took place in Vancouver*
xander trejo Robocop was filmed in Houston because the city didn't look urban enough. Now we've got people like yourself who think they have some idea of what the place looks like, when they have no clue.
I lived in Vancouver for 6 years, and went to college there (not at either of the two big colleges shown in this video, but at Emily Carr, which is the city's art college). I ran into this phenomenon all the time-- not just while watching movies, but while actually being out in the city. I remember very distinctly one afternoon when I was driving to Granville Island to get to class (because at the time, Emily Carr's campus was on the island), and I found myself driving past a long line of yellow taxis. Imagine my confusion when I noticed they all had 'New York Cab Co.' decals on the side! It wasn't until a bit later that I realized I had inadvertently driven through a film set in the course of my daily routine. Over the years, I can also recall seeing several notices from time to time, posted in the mailroom of my apartment building, notifying everyone that film crews would be in the area for shooting, and roads in the neighborhood would be blocked off. And of course, having lived there, I also love being able to watch movies shot in Vancouver and keep my eyes open for locations that are familiar to me-- my favorite one is the Schwarzenegger movie The 6th Day. Not a great movie, but it's always hilarious for me to see the Vancouver Public Library used as the headquarters of an evil cloning corporation. And Harbour Centre being clearly visible in the background during Falkor's flight over the city in The NeverEnding Story is pretty fun for me, too. To this day, I think the only movie I've ever seen where Vancouver EXPLICITLY plays itself is the Canadian indie film "Everything's Gone Green" (clips of which are shown in this video). And, as mentioned, the big running gag of the movie is about how movies always use it to play other locations.
I love that Vancouver can play so many parts of the world, to me it shows how so many people from around the world made Canada its home. Its also pretty cool to see the city you grew up in pop up in movies.
Intersection with Richard Gere was one of the only mainstream movies that took place in Vancouver for the whole thing. I was really surprised when I saw it.
I love the Vancouver film industry, It employs my parents, so intern keeps a roof over my head, it employs my sister and many others. I also love that I can recognize the location of a lot of shots, especially when there are films on the Burrard bridge.
It's common to shoot scenes taking place on a battleship on the USS _Alabama_, which is permanently docked in Mobile, Alabama as a museum ship. Most of the 1992 action film _Under Siege_ was shot there, even though it's supposed to take place on the USS _Missouri_, and it was most recently used as a stand-in for the USS _Indianapolis_ in the upcoming Nicolas Cage film _USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage_ (none of these are even the same class of warship).
+Dr Shaym the shootout in the bridge in "Exit Wounds" was shot in the Canadian City of Calgary playing Detroit to further shatter any Stephen Segal reality.
Haha! No one really watches Segal movies. I was making a point that nothing he will ever do could approach a documentary any more than a vampire movie could.
My favorite Vancouver film moment is on a show it actually displayed itself as Vancouver, Continuum. A buddy I know that goes to sets like myself, one day caught them filming in Burnaby, pretending to be Vancouver.... then several hours later, they moved about 5 minutes away, to Vancouver, and that scene was taking place in, you guessed it, Burnaby. Like WHY?
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 89 | คู่เอก "ยอดไอคิว vs คิริลล์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z3vYkHJ_5Ig/mqdefault.jpg)
So Vancouver is like a stunt double: does all the hard work but never gets the glory.
really good way to put it
@Yu Kay Exactly,lets keep it a secret. At least if they ever discover how beautiful it is here they will think it's somewhere else!
Exactly
I think stunt doubles are getting more glory nowadays. Maybe I am wrong.
@@guangdali6460 If you are Tom Cruise, then sure :D
I want a movie to be set in Vancouver and shot in Chicago
.
+Nico Hussa I think it is one of the first two most used cities in film in North America.
In the video one of the cities vancouver imitates it chicago
+Kyle Schroyer Just superimpose the mountains directly onto Lake Michigan.
I want a movie about Chernobyl shot in Detroit
+Faake shouldn't be too much work for set designers either!
I'm from Vancouver and always telling my American friends, "this is Vancouver!" when we watch movie. And now it's kinda a joke with them. But I swear so many of the movies I watch I feel like I'm back home. And I feel almost personally hurt that beautiful Vancouver (and the surrounding areas) are always giving credit to other cities, and not our own.
you can make a film about it. it sounds like a good movie plot to me.
the funny thing is that in the shows and movies that are shot here they very often make fun of Canada like ok ):
Yeah, hate it when they do that.
me2525 same!! west van here
You guys get all the movie/tv jobs though and the L.A. movie industry is dead. That should make up for some of the "hurt" LOL...
I've always admired Vince Gilligan for setting Breaking Bad in Albuquerque. Apparently it was written to take place in Riverside, CA, but the studio said they had to shoot it in New Mexico for tax purposes, but they could just call it Riverside. And Vince said, no, if we're going to shoot it in Albuquerque, that's where it's going to be set. And so he was able to give that show a really strong sense of place by featuring real Albuquerque landmarks and distinctive Southwestern scenery.
And let me tell you, Albuquerque and Riverside are VERY different
Wow, I didn’t know that. Thank you. It just bumps up the score for the show and gives me so much more repect for Vince Gilligan becuase he wrote Better Call Saul particularly based on Albuquerque’s location. Of whats North and South of it. Anything else I’d be giving out spoilers.
apparently new mexico has quite a unique look. i've been able to identify new mexico in geoguessr after only watching breaking bad. so thanks vince, my score would have been horrible if you had set breaking bad in riverside.
I did Breaking Bad with God on location in New Mexico. Hollywood
LOL, my husband is always calling out "Hey, that's Vancouver" whenever we watch these movies.
It's pretty recognizable
I do that too. I would like to see it sometime. I always imagined that Gotham City would look a lot like Vancouver so it fascinated me as a kid and since then it's become Gotham City, Metropolis, and several others so that's been super fun for me. It's a beautiful city and I'm honestly pretty jelly of people who live there. I know someone who used to live there and from what she tells me I think I would dig it
^ Sometimes we call it Gotham City cause of the crime and homeless problem lmao
Vancouver got to play itself during the Winter Olympics.
@@Elias-hy5ps I've lived all around the lower mainland and most years it's just a mild snow. We get one or two days of snowfall and then it's just dirty muck until it melts.
The last few years have had weird weather patterns though...
Tyler Winston yeah! Like this year we had like a foot of snow for a week or something!!! (I think)
@@hiedoodles February of 2017 and 2019 were both times where we had two weeks of constant snowfall, but 2108 we had like 1 day worth of snow
Nah we still had to put phony snow up on the mountains lol
And during the ISU Grand Prix Final last year!
Dead pool was pretty much Vancouver based, they didn’t hide anything that pointed to our home city!
Steve S I mean your not wrong
They changed a couple street names, but other then that they didn't really disguise it. And we can thank Ryan Reynolds for that.
Plus it's a nice nod that Xavier's School is in Victoria :)
and also Victoria based 😃
Vancouver also plays itself in the HBO biopic Terry Fox which features SFU on location heavy in the first half hour of the movie. Pretty good movie btw.
Where are all my Vancouverites at??
Nathan Le Fuck yeah my nigga
Yup
I LOVE VANCOUVER!!! ( even though I'm from New Westminster .... whatever, LET'S GO VANCOUVER!!!)
I am from Coquitlam just saying
I'm trying to move there from the Island
FYI ..the shot of Seattle at 2:22 was actually a matte painting super imposed over downtown Vancouver. The foreground greenery is Pacific Sprint park, and Mount Ranier was added, as well as the north shore mountains, painted out. We did the shot for Breaking Dawn 2 right here in Vancouver. :)
+Michael Cliett I knew there was something weird about it. Wow. Well if you worked on it, good job. It fooled me for a long time, and I went over it a frame at a time, trying to find the exact Seattle location it was shot from.
+Every Frame a Painting thank you. It was quite some time ago, but yes I was an fx supervisor on the film. It was one of the first shots we did here in Vancouver after the LA->VAN transplant. I really enjoyed your video here as well. Really great stuff. They really should set a movie in Vancouver ...it's such a great town. :)
I walked through a set once, of a film that was supposed to take place in Seattle. I stared up at the translite that was supposed to be Seattle, I could pick out the; B of M, CIBC, Royal Bank, and TD towers. I wonder if anyone ever noticed when the film hit the big screen?
+Michael Cliett Reminds me of the posters for 50 shades showing apartments with typical views of the seattle skyline. there's no part of seattle you can see that skyline from, and bainbridge island is 5 miles west. oh yeah, and I'm pretty sure mount rainier is about forty miles too far north in this shot.
+Michael Cliett sweet you work in film! talk to somebody about making Capcom DC and Marvel make a movie together! it's my wet dream
Don't feel bad, Vancouverians. As an American (who doesn't live on the West Coast) I didn't even know there was a Vancouver, Washington until the video mentioned it.
Vancouverite
Vancouverer
Vancouvertarian.
Canuck
This is the single best comment an american could have made. Thank you. *sheds tear*
The editing on this channel is dope.
he's a professional film editor i think
Cool video! The last X Files episode (of the original series) shot in Vancouver before they moved to LA paid tribute to Vancouver by finally letting the city play itself: The opening scene was a chess match at GM Place (as Rogers Arena was then called). Local fans of the show were invited to fill the arena as extras.
Imagine the amount of work it took to do this..goddamn..also the Ghost Protocol one completely fooled me
+wingsuiter101 Everything in that movie fooled me except India, the only true Indian location that was visited was the Taj hotel. For a native "Mumbaikar", all the other footage in the broadcast center and the parking lot was easily an anachronism.
+wingsuiter101 yeah, not so much with india. I'd know the globe at the vancouver convention center anywhere.
+wingsuiter101 Ghost Protocol "Dubai" was ridiculous lol. Somehow Tom Cruise managed to get from Burj Khalifa to the Whatever-it-is-called-Bazaar-place just by running for a couple minutes or something, while in reality it's like half an hour or something with the car (I know it because I've been there). Well, what can I say, Tom Cruise runs fast ;)
+wingsuiter101 Yeah, I was under the impression they shot in India, but the location they used in the shot felt a bit fake like the part of a city which is meant for foreigners to see like Delhi near the embassies.
+wingsuiter101 The giveaway for me was a poster for the band Novilero
Toronto has exactly the same trouble. I lived for awhile on a street that was variously filmed as 1) Brooklyn, 2) rural Wisconsin, 3) Chicago, 4) a post-apocalyptic future, and 5) Morocco! And the street is only four blocks long. Most Torontonians were delighted by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World because it was a mainstream film actually set in Toronto.
I always knew lots of movies where filmed in Vancouver but never new it was this many
@@Physers I can sometimes tell that a film or show was made in Vancouver rather than Hollywood because of the lighting and cinematography. California's air is dry. Vancouver's air is very moist. Different lenses and lighting are used. Of course, it's very difficult to tell between a film made in Seattle and one made in Vancouver. The cities have identical climate, similar architecture, and similar ambience. One has to look for some small, telltale details. Vancouver's advantage over Toronto in film production is that there is a huge variety of spectacular landscape within a short distance. Glaciers, mountains, forests, fjords, seascapes, etc all within minutes of the city. Toronto has only ordinary midwestern-style farmland around it. But it is easier for Toronto to substitute for major east-coast and midwestern American cities, since it resembles them and has a massive central business district with the same kind of buildings. Toronto also has a huge pool of technical support for filmmaking, as well as being a place where actors learned their craft on the stage long before people started to make films there. Hollywood loved to recruit actors from Ontario or Quebec to play the villains, because they had those deep Shakespearian voices.
Once you've lived in Toronto, you can't help but call bullshit whenever it's called New York.
I'd say the biggest difference is that Hollywood is much worse at disguising Toronto than it is Vancouver. The TTC seats and busses are so immediately recognizable you'd never think they're from anywhere else.
For working in the film industry here, I am very glad you made this video. Canada makes some great films, but most of our bigger and better known "Canadian" films are from Quebec. Most people are surprised when I tell them what has been filmed here in Vancouver. It would be great to be able to feature our city as our city and to grow Canadian Film in general. I'm glad Continuum was shot and set in Vancouver! Thanks!
lol no we dont
When Vancouver was a child, someone said to it "Vancouver, when you grow up, you're gonna be some kinda city!"
Sadly, as Vancouver got a little older, it was found that it would not be SOME kind of city...but EVERY kind of city!
With no identity of its own, movie wise.
Iceland plays alien planets, post-apocalyptic wastelands, pre-historic Earth and Tibet a lot but very seldom does it play itself.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty put Iceland on the radar, and now Chinese tourist are flooding the poor little island..
OMG tourists, run. they not refugee or imigrants.
Sense8, a netflix series, was shot and set in Iceland!
dont forget Iwo Jima
Makes sense as it’s not cosmopolitan just nature. Although I’m sure it has an interesting little culture.
I'm watching this video from Vancouver, Washington, USA. I live in the 2nd most famous Vancouver in the 2nd most famous Washington (1st is Washington DC). sigh...
Great comment. Made me smile.
You're my favourite Danielle Asbury though
Change Vancouver, WA to Portland Outskirts, WA
We should of been called fort Vancouver
Big oof
I just about had to give a round of applause for the edit at 4:02. It's such an amazing find: Two different movies shot 10 years apart, yet shot at the same location, at the same camera angle, with even the same lens length.
Out of all the doubtless hundreds of movies you went through to make this video to be able to find a match cut like that is astounding. How on Earth did you do that?
+LittleJimmy835 a bit of research and luck. On moviemaps.org/cities/2 there was a quick note that both had been shot on Front Street. I went and checked it out and did a quick test dissolve. It worked, so I kept it.
My favorite things about Vancouver
3) Very slow paced
2) The air and water
1) Its my home
My least favorite things about Vancouver:
Everybody is gay
The air and water (salt) (vehicles rust faster)
No free parking anywhere
No drive through
You have to pay to park and walk
Vancouver is
3) overpriced rent
2)overpriced gas
1) people seemed to become unfriendly in the last 20 years.
It’s ok though with the ice melting Vancouver will be underwater soon , poor ocean.
Meme Machine why do you hate that everyone’s gay?
Bryan Dott well with the amount of bullshit going on over here like unreasonably high rent the Chinese gangs doing there money laundering over here and the pipelines we seem to have to protest every couple months and the forest fires making it so we can’t breathe for the summer yeah we get kinda pissed off and yeah I would love to go under water at least the housing price would go down
Uh, what about the Canucks? You forget them?
Wow, I absolutely loved this one! Admittedly, I was ignorant to the fact that Vancouver is used so widely in films and disguised as other cities. This really opened my eyes and raised a lot of valuable questions.
Right now, I'm based in the Emirates and our deserts are being offered as great locations to film in for a 30% rebate, and I see all these ads to film 'exotic' locations. What is disappointing though is the fact that our locations don't mean more than some sci-fi landscape of a barren planet or something with a purely orientalist view. For example: 'Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol' showed a wildly distorted view of Dubai. It showed our massive Burj Khalifa set in a desert market. Things wrong with this idea: 1) The Burj is actually set in one of the most technological advanced architectural cities in the world, 2) We don't have markets set in the desert, 3) We don't have traditional style, run-down buildings you can squat in to avoid sandstorms (these are valued, maintained heritage sites). It super irked me to see how Dubai was used to be so unrecognizable to people who actually live here, and it really showed how devalued others view our city.
Your comment about how Vancouver is used as a setting and not a location really resonated with me. As usual, thank you for this video; I will definitely keep these concepts in mind while writing new films.
+deenapie
You have to not take it personally. A movie is make-believe, so it is just a tool/set for the story. They're not saying that about the city itself.
huyked Trust me, as a female from a minority race and religion in mainstream western media, I learned extremely quickly to not take anything about filmmaking/make-believe personally haha :) As Tony says, that's why we gotta make our own stuff!
Wow. I never saw Ghost Protocol (and reading made me even less interested), but the filmmakers sound really cynical. Almost like they're afraid Western audiences won't recognize a location in the Arab world unless they make it up to look antiquated and poor. And screw what the actual denizens of the UAE think. That's pretty gross, I can totally understand your outrage.
+Adam Leuer I think that is the really disappointing part - Dubai was playing itself in the film, but it was completely misrepresented. What's worse is that I have no idea what it did to add to the story, other than perpetuate lazy stereotypes about the Middle East.
Thanks for understanding.
+Adam Leuer Yeah, deenapie is right. My cousin lives in Dubai, and I've been there as well. We watched Ghost Protocol together. We were like "Whaaat? Lol bullshit!".
That makes me think, is there a Hollywood movie set in my city, Athens, Greece or set and actually shot in Athens? I haven't seen any...
Haha this is great! I was a UBC student and I've seen so many movies being filmed on the way to class. Funny how SFU is portrayed as a military base and never a university 😂
Emily Cheung yeah there’s alota Asian’s at ubc
@@hunterbrotherhood8187 ok? That has nothing to do with her comment.
@@lordvisserys9187Yeh Ik
As an sfu student.. it does look more like a military base 😅
@@nikolaskulka9574 do you think when the construction is done in 20 years it will look more like a military base or less like a military base?
They never actually say it but they imply that Deadpool takes place in Vancouver I mean the main characters Canadian
Aziz Woodward doesn't deadpool take place is Boston or something? but they intentional didn't hide the fact that it takes place in Vancouver I think. like that bridge scene is sooooo obviously in Vancouver.
Not only is he Canadian, Ryan Reynolds is from Vancouver.
Technically, Deadpool is American. However, he's taken to the Weapon X program that is in Canada ;)
Aziz Woodward they did. I even met the actors here. And for the second one as well. And the funny thing is, that I'm going to the same highschool Ryan Reynolds went to.
Tuomo Taivainen no deadpool is from Saskatchewan canada but the movie is filmed in vancouver
I was in Vancouver for about 3 days a few years ago and even I can work out where half these shots are (Stanley Park, Gastown etc). Having been there its amazing that everyone just sort of glosses over the fact that the City does have quite a distinct visual identity.
I always liked how Psych would slyly acknowledge that it was filmed in Vancouver, not Santa Barbara. The most obvious example was the episode where they 'went to England', but at the end of the episode one of the characters comments that they never saw much outside of a government building and a pub. The pub in question has an over abundance of Union Jack flyers, and the character then says something like, "Were it not for all these Union Jacks, we could have been in British Columbia the whole time."
+Frustrated Jacob Best example of that was the 2nd Austin Powers movie.
"Isn't it interesting that the hills of Great Britain look in no way like those found in Southern California?"
Makes sense except the BC flag has a union jack on it and you almost see BC flags more in BC than the canadian national flag
for someone who lives in Vancouver, this was very interesting to me
This gets more appropriate as the days go on. Most, if not all of the CW television shows seem to be shot in Vancouver. It's come to the point I'm starting to notice the sets lol
That would explain why one of my acting teachers kept going on about the CW.
I passed a restaurant they were using for a Supernatural set on my way to school last month. My old high school was once used to park a bunch of movie trailers, I think it was for thenewest Godzilla film.
James I know right I watch most of the shows they have on the CW and know I will see something and say
“Hmm i have seen that in arrow” but the good thing is a lot of things like the Olicity bench in Stanley park or when a plane flew over Vancouver with a “bring sanvers back” sign, but I guess that’s the beauty of living in Vancouver, you get to see things like that or you favourite shows sets
Supergirl actually filmed in my school’s baseball field. At least i heard it was Supergirl but there was definitely some professional studio shooting in my school’s field during the school day.
Though so many places film in Steveston as well that my parents have joked about using clips from those movies/shows as advertising (they work in Steveston)
they were filming some shows right outside my mom's workplace lol. it's awesome.
Video is nearly 9 years old but the trend of filming in Vancouver has just been growing, everything is filmed here now
As always, press CC to see the movie titles and (this time) locations! If you spot a location that I got incorrect, leave a comment and let me know!
Tony I love you and your channel.
+Every Frame a Painting another great video, Tony. Just one thing: I would have liked to know, why exactly so many movies are shot in Vancouver. Is there a special reason or is it just because?
+Every Frame a Painting Just to let you know, you got a big shout out on Mark Kermode's (BBC film critic) vlog recently.
Check out the video called: My Film Education.
+Every Frame a Painting What is the 1st/2nd filming city in NA? and in Europe?
Thank you so much for another phenomenal video essay. I would love to hear your thoughts on the Coen brothers in a future video.
Love that all the music you used is from Vancouverite bands! Nice subtle touch. And this video itself is incredibly important, not just because of what it says about Vancouver, but for what it says about carving out a film community where you live regardless of how your town is depicted in the media otherwise. Having lived most of my life in Tampa, one of the least photogenic cities in Florida, if not the whole US, I was always hardpressed to find a real film community there. But sometimes, it just takes getting out there and doing it.
I could see Vancouver using this as promotional video for tourism. Great work.
Well, I'm glad you used _1_ clip from Continuum. That show ran 3 seasons, based in Vancouver, itself. I did 2 seasons on the show and it made it SO much easier because we could SEE the lisence plates, flags, post boxes, and the damn mountains!
And they go to Montreal for dystopian hellscapes because you don't need to add too much FX. :P
LMAO
But at least Montreal has The Score (2001) !
The americans do love the Habitat 67 and those fucking ciment bridges
Kind of sad considering Vancouver is nicer than all the places it “plays”.
very true
Buddy Vancouver only has two parts: crackhead east side, and the rest is Asians.
@@tylerwinston4761 wellllllll I mean yes but no. There's some nice parts to it
I’m guessing you don’t live in Vancouver
Mr. Dinosuar yeah!! Like Kitsilano and Robson and stanly park and where I live! Also many more. Honestly though _downtown_ Eastside is where you should be careful
A similar thing kind of happened over in Glasgow. In the last few years it stood in for San Francisco, London, Philadelphia and a few other places as well.
the strangest example of this was that Jet Li film Unleashed/Danny the Dog. Shot on almost entirely on location in Glasgow and actually set there, yet it was referred to only once in a throwaway line by Morgan Freeman and there isn't a single Scottish cast member. It's a very odd experience.
jcardboard Yeah for some reason some productions that are actually set in Scotland some how forget to cast any Scottish actors. Most of the Braveheart cast is Irish and half the cast of Outlander is Danish for some reason.
+jcardboard I was about to write the same exact thing
+jcardboard That just completely blew my mind. Also, are all the English characters evil, and the Americans in it good?
Weren't all the harry potter movies shot in Scotland?
As a Vancouverite myself, this was extremely interesting! I love this city. Pointing out the streets and alleys in film of Vancouver is one of my favourite things to do.
I have tattoos from the parlour shown in 2:31 lol
As a guy from Vancouver too, this video made me proud and sad at the same time. Never knew all these movies were filmed in Vancouver.
+Gabe Newell GabeN, please bless my next case opening.
+Gabe Newell So it seems that local filmmakers have a lot of job to give back to the city what it deserves. A way of maintain diversity VS Hellywood unitone.
+Gabe Newell Half Life 3 plz
+Gabe Newell oh lord Gaben
+Gabe Newell Silly Gabe, did you forget you're from Seattle, Washington again?
I think I just fell in love with Vancouver....this city is...BEAUTIFUL
RandomDude this video doesn't even come close to doing it justice.
RandomDude It really is a beautiful city, but the cost of living is so damn high.
Dom Pérignon The insane cost here is mostly because it's so beautiful. Like, everyone wants to live here.
Mattias Westby It's expensive because it's a highly contested market due to high foreign immigration and our dollar is horrible. I love Vancouver but man, good luck finding a place with reasonable rent.
look up toronto
As a 25yr Vancouver film vet, I give this video a 5⭐️ rating.
Well done Tony and crew.
*looks at the film industry*
"its all Vancouver?"
every frame a painting
"always has been."
Nowadays it's atlanta
Really appreciate the message in this! I'm a film composer and sound designer living in Vancouver, and am LOVING all the local filmmaking output these days. We still need much more but there are many talented filmmakers living and working here. Love it.
Vancouver is a beautiful place :)
From a fan in New Zealand.
NZ (Aotearoa) is a beautiful place :)From a fan in Vancouver.
Ain't so pretty when you step inside LOL
This video essay is way better than Los Angeles Plays Itself.
I respectfully disagree.
Ah fuck it, I'll take the compliment. Wheeeeee.
Usually LA plays itself. It is the number one in reference to his Vancouver being the 3rd biggest, BUT sometimes Vancouver plays Los Angeles and the crew actually flies FROM Los Angeles to shoot in Vancouver and then brings the footage back to post production offices in Los Angeles.....
you need to make a video on THAT!
That's counter intuitive
It's sooo hard to say goodbye.....to this channel. I love it and hate that it's gone.
As someone from Vancouver, it's really funny when you can recognize your city in a movie but it's disguised as another one lolol
I love it when some of the details are goofed. I recently saw a tv show where they were supposed to be in Boston. The goof? A Canada Post mailbox.
I was waiting for you to mention Scott Pilgrim but then I realised. Toronto. There's more than one city in Canada. Shit.
+Will Crerar I made the same mistake waiting for some images from Enemy.
+revolverswitch yes it was
+revolverswitch and in the director commentary, the producers were even trying to get Edgar to film it in NY cause it was getting too expensive to stay in Toronto. Also a subtle gag, scene where Lucas Lee punches Scott through a painted backdrop of the Empire State Building, creating a hole revealing the actual CN tower behind it.
That's what I heard about Canada, more than one city.
IMHO the funniest thing with Toronto was Due South, where they filmed Toronto for Chicago, but for the one episode that took place in Toronto, they went across the lake and shot it in Chicago.
I grew up skateboarding Downtown Vancouver and had friends working on the catering trucks. So much love for these productions and the endless chocolate milk and awesome buffets that would fill us up and keep us going. These productions are a part of our everyday life and as much as it is a shame that Vancouver never plays itself, they are a welcome mobile landmark of our city.
It might be just as well that Vancouver is usually anonymous, considering the number of Uwe Boll films that are shot here. ( Not to mention 50 Shades of Grey -- and 50 Shades II coming soon!)
One thing you didn't mention is the way the population is disguised for foreign consumption. I was at UBC when a U.S. show was shooting a crowd of "students" eating lunch on a large flight of steps, and the real students were watching on the other side. The TV students were taller, prettier, thinner, impeccably groomed, fashionably dressed down, and older-looking than the schlumpy, fresh-faced real students. The racial differences were startling. Half of the real students were white, about 1/4 to 1/3 were East Asian, and the rest were South Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), with a few Native and Middle Eastern kids, which is pretty representative of the city. The TV students were about two-thirds white, one-third black, with exactly one each East Asian and Hispanic kids.
+Flora Posteschild I tried to do this point in early cuts of the video but I couldn't convey it properly with the footage I had. So unfortunately I had to cut it out. But you are totally right. Vancouver is 43% ethnically Asian (meaning South, Southeast, East, I don't think that percentage includes Middle Eastern), which makes it the most Asian city outside of Asia. I have never seen a film shot in Van that is even close to the actual racial makeup of the city. Never.
+Flora Posteschild is "50 shades II coming soon" the actual title of that movie? o_O
Every Frame a Painting
Thanks for the reply, and all the great videos you do. I can appreciate the difficulty. Maybe an alleged U.S. crowd walking down the street compared to a Vancouver crowd walking down the street? But off hand, I can't think of a film to help you.
Real people vs. reel people might be a topic for the future, though. It always bothers me when someone in a film is called or treated as "fat" or "ugly", but if you met them in real life, you'd think they were attractive -- they're just not Hollywood bland.
+hellpander I think it should be called "Shades 51 Through 100 Of Grey"
+Flora Posteschild This to me would actually make an interesting topic.
I'd be bothered by SFU being portrayed like that, if it wasn't really accurate..
I remember re-watching Caprica right after visiting Vancouver and instantly recognizing all these places I had seen in the show.
Vancouver deserves more respect, it's a beautiful city. This is coming from someone from the other side of the world - Melbourne.
Toronto gets a similar deal too doesn't it? I remember Edgar Wright talking about how Scott Pilgrim was one of the rare films filmed in Toronto and actually set there.
Also, really bugs me on The Flash and Arrow how they keep using the same buildings and streets for different cities in the show. I think there was even one week where one location was used on both shows in the same week for different purposes.
I think the main difference between the cities in the shows is that it's always nighttime in Arrow and Daytime in the Flash. It's amazing how much they get away with because of that.
+Mellow Gaming While true, it's not as bad. More films are set in Toronto than Vancouver, and less is shot in Toronto than Vancouver.
+Mellow Gaming There was even a joke about that in the movie - "They make movies in Toronto!?"
+Mellow Gaming One of my sister's favourite TV shows of the 90s, "Forever Knight," shot and set in Toronto. :) Don't know of much others, though...
+Mellow Gaming Well the other movie recently that featured Toronto as the city it was set in was Enemy. And that made the city this awful creepy spider-infested hell.
"there's only been one nagging problem..... the housing market."
And the crackheads in the east and the Chinese gangs laundering money here and the potheads and the homeless people
Hey man I just found your channel. I'm a Vancouverite and I started doing film work; I've "been" in Colorado, New York, Gotham, Texas and more, all within a 30 minute drive. I love this city
I’ve lived in Vancouver my whole life and I never knew we where in so many movies
O know right??
@Fifty Roll Bit unfair. It is a nice city and people do take pride. The flaws are the Homeless, drug problems, bad Music and Bars, and impossible to meet fun, chatty people. But yes, location is great, a beautiful and relaxed small city.
What do you think all those long trailers are for? They film at the PNE a lot
Plus a bunch of TV series.
I love this one! I watched all of LA Plays Itself in one sitting (something I'll probably never do again) and this was just as fascinating, if not more.
Tony, I love your channel - I am hard of hearing and it can be very hard for me to enjoy TH-cam Channels like this because they aren't captioned. Thank you SO much for captioning ALL of your videos. I watched half already, and I look forward to watching more. It means so much of you to make your videos accessible to deaf people like me.
+MatthewHs Well thanks. I originally made English subtitles because so many folks wanted translations into other languages. And since I had the script, I figured it wouldn't take me much more time to make an .srt file (note: it actually takes a few hours). I genuinely had no idea so many hard-of-hearing folks would be using them, but I'm glad I made the call way back when.
As a Seattlite, It's frustrating how misrepresented our City is. My favorite example is near the end of Chronicle, where there is a statue that is holding a javelin that plays a central part of the final few scenes. That statue does not exist in Seattle, and it made me incredibly frustrated. Very often they also include train stations and subways (looking at you, Deadlight), which don't exist in Seattle, all we have is the monorail.
DUDE! Vancouver is the best! I live there too!
+Filip Bezzels Dead pool was shot there too
+Veggies Videos woah
what is it like living there? i always wanted to move there because i wanna get some production work out there. what's the city life like? the girls? everything
It is what you make it to be.
+Dickens Dumont the city is so clean and beautiful, so are the people! everyone is very nice, but I have to warn you housing prices are SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE!!! seriously.
One of my favourites of recent memory was the TV show Once Upon a Time, which takes place in "Storybrooke, Maine" but has Parks Canada signs clearly visible in the background.
Thank you for making this! As a Vancouverite who absolutely loves this beautiful city, I say it's about time we had some movies that were set here.
I have done a lot of extras work in Vancouver.
Shows like
Lucifer
Motive
The Flash
Wayward Pines
and like 100 indy or hallmark cheesy films
It's neat to see how they transform one location into a generic set piece. My favourite is Coquitlam's old riverview mental hospital as it is heavily used in horror-type genres
Me, too. Miracle, Watchmen, Reaper, I Spy (they spent a LOT of money on this piece of crap), Hot Rod, D.C. Sniper
haha that's neat i was also on set for another film at that abandoned hospital. it gave me chills
hell yeah. riverview is creepy. my brother went there for a field trip once. despite living in coquitlam, i've never been there - but i think a lot of my favourite shows have been filmed in the places under arenas, in more modern parts of cities, by sports complexes, etc. i mainly recognize the sports complexes.
My gf tells me stories abt how she used to pick the locks on the doors there with her dad and walk around
Great video as usual. Good Canadian music choices, particularly Destroyer in the opening and then coming full circle with the New Pornogrophers.
Sometimes the subtleties can go unnoticed, but I'd thought I'd let you know someone appreciates them. Keep up the good work!
+Aaron Taylor Not just Canadian, it's all from Vancouver.
+lonestranger AND both bands containing Dan Bejar.
Kinda funny that I am in the middle of reporting all these productions filming here, and somehow never heard about this video organically. Had to learn about it from a geography discord group. Great job.
Someday, someone will make a movie set in Vancouver, but shot in Toronto.
+T0mR0b1n (MajorTom) that actually happened. I can't recall the details, but it was about marijuana & BC Bud. This happened during the peak of the battling tax credits between Toronto & Vancouver a few years back.
"Okay, we're going to shoot the movie in Vancouver."
"Ah, alright. So the movie is set in San Francisco or something?"
"... no it's set in Vancouver."
"... what?"
Simon Fraser University is a depressing building to go to school in. Especially since Vancouver is so often cloudy. No wonder its always an evil base.
+John Smith It's also up a mountain. That adds to the evil base mystique.
+John Smith I tend to think of it as our local Silent Hill
+John Smith I think you can achieve that with lighting better than with actual weather (but I'm not an expert), also it played a really nice city in Battlestar Galactica.
+John Smith it looks nice on the inside though.
+John Smith Agreed. Grey windowless buildings built against a backdrop of a grey sky.Brilliant !!
I'm a Surrey resident myself and visit Vancouver quite often. I notice this quite a lot too. Great video talking about this topic!
They also filmed Fear the Walking Dead in Vancity and disguised it as L.A.
My high school was turned into a high school (Paul R. Williams) in L.A.
+EpicLameGamer I was wondering how they did those downtown riot scenes.
+EpicLameGamer Yep, the cop hoarding water bottles at the Fas Gas station across the street from my house. Good eyes dude
What?really?but where's the palm tree?i mean LA is in tropic area,but Vancouver is not
Shawn Zhang They actually put fake palm trees at the station haha, my girl said it "looks so nice now".... Until they took them down and it looked like shit again LOL
TWOTone. oh i see.but i have to say that is so authentic.same as the downtown scene.
"I will never forgive this" lol
if Vancouver can play the setting of all these locations, then I can't imagine how beautiful, diverse and huge it is. Amazing Vancouver
Come by and say hi. We'd love to have you.
@@jasondashney Sure, Hoping to get admission in UBC for my masters
It’s a foodie’s paradise. There’s so many good places mainly because the food industry has a very good food and safety policy and the market is so diverse with people of different backgrounds making their way, kids grow up with an international taste in food and culture. Our economy is mainly from the US, people here are mainly quiet and law abiding, there’s a lot of places to walk but people here mainly drive to places as things are really spread out. One key thing to know is, Vancouver is really an immigrant’s heaven because it’s slow and yes it’s hard to adjust at first, but once settled down, you’ll find it’s not hard to access to a lot of places, but at the same time, it’s hard to get in a group of people or an inner circle of friends.
Places of note to visit at least once in Vancouver: gay pride, Richmond Night Market, a mall, a park (it doesn’t have to be Van Dusen or QE), or a community centre, Bard on the Beach, Celebration of Light, Stanley Park, or first beach, second beach, and then after that, living in 30 years, it’s not really a big deal. People will complain about the weather, climate change, the food, the traffic, but really Vancouver is boring compared to other places. Peaceful, quiet, law abiding Vancouver.
Sad that its a drug den now thanks to americans exporting drugs up north
👊
A great little show called Continuum let Vancouver play Vancouver a few years back. But I agreed, it would be nice to see us be us a little more often!
Don't forget Highlander. I am speaking of the TV show featuring Adrian Paul, not the movie it was adapted from. They would film half the season in Vancouver, pack up, and film the rest in Paris, the episodes shot in Paris were set in Paris and the ones shot in Vancouver were set in Vancouver.
I'm glad Portland is avoiding this issue but at the same time, it's not helping my rent. Granted, Seattle and Vancouver aren't any better. Please stop moving here.
But everyone loves hippies!
“Wait, they make movies in Toronto?” - Scott Pilgrim
Toronto has a similar burden of being every other city. I had a "THEY LIED TO ME" moment as a child with Short Circuit 2, where Johnny 5 is getting sworn in as an American citizen in front of Queen's Park, mid-Toronto. My favourite "hey I recognize that spot" moment, apart from a stock photo of City Hall being one of the alien destinations in an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, was watching the movie, Kick Ass. Supposedly set in New York, the characters walk out of the Scotiabank Theater, which is exactly where I was watching that film.
Toronto's been getting a little more play as a city that movies can actually be set in, and thus play itself, but it's taken a while for it to be and feel genuine. I remember the 90's show 'Forever Knight' featuring a vampire as a homicide cop in Toronto. Never mind that I couldn't take serious a vampire investigating a death on Queen St. out front of where Bakka Books used to be located, but the city only has maybe 50-60 homicides per year... tops. How the hell were vampires supposed to keep a low profile among that?
+Rob Clark Haha, someone being sworn in as an American in front of _Queen's_ Park, in Canada.
6:40 Do local crews try to sneak Vancouver in? Yes it happens. Teal'c in Stargate SG1 once said "I believe the Canucks of Vancouver are superior warriors." Its filmed in Vancouver but Stargate Command where they embark from takes place in Colorado Springs, it's also where the characters live so they should have been rooting for the Colorado Avalanche.
The external of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex is in the parking lot of the Diablo Dam power plant in the Washington Cascades near the town of Newhalem. It was built for the movie Wargames.
My dad was a DoP. One time when he was shooting, he noticed that all the taxis passing by still had their Vancouver identification on it. He pointed it out to the set department…only to be told that the film *actually took place in Vancouver*
One of the best and most thoughtfully put together TH-cam videos I've seen in awhile. Well done! Love Vancouver!
Wait your city was disguised to be Detroit? Now that is a slap to the face.
xander trejo Robocop was filmed in Houston because the city didn't look urban enough. Now we've got people like yourself who think they have some idea of what the place looks like, when they have no clue.
0:50 R.I.P Lions Gate
6:46 Metrotown
8:13 Lol I guess that's true XD
I lived in Vancouver for 6 years, and went to college there (not at either of the two big colleges shown in this video, but at Emily Carr, which is the city's art college). I ran into this phenomenon all the time-- not just while watching movies, but while actually being out in the city. I remember very distinctly one afternoon when I was driving to Granville Island to get to class (because at the time, Emily Carr's campus was on the island), and I found myself driving past a long line of yellow taxis. Imagine my confusion when I noticed they all had 'New York Cab Co.' decals on the side! It wasn't until a bit later that I realized I had inadvertently driven through a film set in the course of my daily routine. Over the years, I can also recall seeing several notices from time to time, posted in the mailroom of my apartment building, notifying everyone that film crews would be in the area for shooting, and roads in the neighborhood would be blocked off. And of course, having lived there, I also love being able to watch movies shot in Vancouver and keep my eyes open for locations that are familiar to me-- my favorite one is the Schwarzenegger movie The 6th Day. Not a great movie, but it's always hilarious for me to see the Vancouver Public Library used as the headquarters of an evil cloning corporation. And Harbour Centre being clearly visible in the background during Falkor's flight over the city in The NeverEnding Story is pretty fun for me, too.
To this day, I think the only movie I've ever seen where Vancouver EXPLICITLY plays itself is the Canadian indie film "Everything's Gone Green" (clips of which are shown in this video). And, as mentioned, the big running gag of the movie is about how movies always use it to play other locations.
Agreed my man! I'm from the Vancouver area as well and didn't know it was this bad until now. Thanks for the video!
"I will never forgive this"
I love that Vancouver can play so many parts of the world, to me it shows how so many people from around the world made Canada its home. Its also pretty cool to see the city you grew up in pop up in movies.
I live in Vancouver as well and I saw Ryan Reynolds on the bridge near Rogers arena and it was awsome
@Zk AY You're*
@Zk AY you're*
@Zk AY you're*
Reported
@Zk AY I am literally 11 wtf is wrong with you
Thanks for bringing me here, YMS! This is pretty darn cool :D
"the next station is , MetroTown." Ahhhhh my pre-teen years wrapped into one single skytrain announcement.
Calling it: A major movie will be set in Vancouver, but not shot in the city.
Double calling it - it'll be shot in Montreal, with cuts to Montreal being shot in Toronto, with cuts to Vancouver being shot in Toronto.
Wait - I just realized I got that last part mixed up - cuts to Toronto being shot in Vancouver.
Just to ensure the confusion is kept up.
Vancouver is such a beautiful city, it needs more film recognition. Vancouver forever!!
Great sign: "Come for the tax breaks stay for the marijuana." LOL! From one Vancouverite to another...I tip my hat to you sir. Excellent job.
@Hippy(Bboomer) you sound like an old man yelling at libtards to get away from his lawn
@Hippy(Bboomer) Film tax credits. Nothing to do with the price of gas. Why are you mad at a joke?
Intersection with Richard Gere was one of the only mainstream movies that took place in Vancouver for the whole thing. I was really surprised when I saw it.
The show Continuum is actually set in Vancouver. I highly recommend it.
Oh yeah! That show was tight!
Yep. It is great! There's a quick shot from the show at 7:48 when he's talking about shows/films set in Vancouver. :D
I love the Vancouver film industry, It employs my parents, so intern keeps a roof over my head, it employs my sister and many others. I also love that I can recognize the location of a lot of shots, especially when there are films on the Burrard bridge.
I'm a simple man.
I see Vancouver I upvote
It's common to shoot scenes taking place on a battleship on the USS _Alabama_, which is permanently docked in Mobile, Alabama as a museum ship. Most of the 1992 action film _Under Siege_ was shot there, even though it's supposed to take place on the USS _Missouri_, and it was most recently used as a stand-in for the USS _Indianapolis_ in the upcoming Nicolas Cage film _USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage_ (none of these are even the same class of warship).
+Dr Shaym the shootout in the bridge in "Exit Wounds" was shot in the Canadian City of Calgary playing Detroit to further shatter any Stephen Segal reality.
+MisterSable In fairness dude if you're watching Segal for gritty realism then that's kind of on you
Haha! No one really watches Segal movies. I was making a point that nothing he will ever do could approach a documentary any more than a vampire movie could.
Dang.
I never knew how special Vancouver was.
Though I live there, I never noticed the background of flims were the beautiful mountains we have.
My favorite Vancouver film moment is on a show it actually displayed itself as Vancouver, Continuum. A buddy I know that goes to sets like myself, one day caught them filming in Burnaby, pretending to be Vancouver.... then several hours later, they moved about 5 minutes away, to Vancouver, and that scene was taking place in, you guessed it, Burnaby. Like WHY?
Vancouver plays itself in continuum.
i was looking for someone to mention this THX
I work at canada post and I can't tell you how many of our vehicles ive seen in movies that are supposed to be set in the states haha.
Really? How do they accidentally get on set?
As someone from Vancouver I loved this video!
The 1994 film "Intersection", with Richard Gere,Sharon Stone, and Lolita Davidovich, was filmed in Vancouver and was SET there too.