Sci-fi film hits Victoria

Got this in a Google alert:


Michael D. Reid, Times ColonistPublished: Saturday, April 26, 2008

The title of a TV miniseries in production here is appropriate, since it will likely make a significant economic impact. The shoot ends a five-month slump sparked by the rising loonie and, to a lesser degree, the writers' strike.

Impact, a $13-million four-hour miniseries starring David James Elliott, Natasha Henstridge and James Cromwell, began shooting in Colwood yesterday, Vancouver-based producer Ted Bauman confirmed. It was the first day of principal photography on a 38-day shoot that will feature a whopping 64 locations from the B.C. legislature to Shawnigan Lake.

Directed by Mike Rohl (Smallville) from a script by Emmy-winning screenwriter Michael Vickerman (Superfire), the effects-heavy sci-fi adventure focuses on the devastating impact of a meteor shower that sends the moon on a collision course with Earth.

Elliott (JAG) plays Alex Kinter, an Ottawa-based astrophysicist who, with a team of Amer- ican and European scientists, including an astronomer played by Henstridge (Species), convene in Washington, D.C., to try to avert disaster. Cromwell (Babe) plays the grandfather of Kinter's children, and Berlin-based actor Benjamin Sadler portrays a German scientific genius.

Scenes currently being filmed depict neighbourhoods in Ottawa, where Kinter's quiet life is disrupted by the news that the moon has been knocked out of its orbit. In weeks to come, Victoria and surrounding areas will be passed off as Washington, Vermont, London, Paris, New Mexico -- with the Centre of the Universe posing as an observatory there -- and Munich.

When filming wraps here, a second-unit crew will capture footage in Berlin "to create a more European feel," Bauman said.

The prolific producer's Bauman Entertainment Inc. is working in association with Munich- based Tandem Communications, Montreal's Muse Entertainment and Jaffe/Braunstein Entertainment, with whom Bauman has partnered here on the TV movies Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Charlie's Angels, The Survivor's Club and I Want to Marry Ryan Banks.

Filming is also slated to take place at downtown locations, restaurants, private homes, the airport and a local gravel pit, posing as the lunar landscape.

The visual effects -- 250 in all -- are complicated, he said, "from meteors hitting the Indian Ocean to a moon explosion."

Greater Victoria's film commissioner, Rod Hardy, said Impact was music to his ears.
"It's wonderful to get our local film crews back to work, to drag them out of mothballs," Hardy said. "We've had set decorators working at Safeway. We're finally starting to see pictures coming back."

mreid@tc.canwest.com

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2008

Link to original article:
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/arts/story.html?id=8773c71d-bf71-4c4b-9c68-0087c5fc10ae