The X-Files back to Vancouver
Initially, the series was to be filmed in southern California, but it creator, Chris Carter, found forests and an atmosphere in Vancouver that gave it the look it needed.
Virtually anyone with a passing recollection of the TV series will recall how Duchovny created a flap by complaining about Vancouver’s incessant rain on a TV talk show in 1997.
The show packed up and left Vancouver for Los Angeles the following year, for a variety of reasons. Although there was sadness over its departure, The X-Files left behind a legacy. It put Vancouver on the map as a place to shoot science-fiction shows. And it left behind crews who knew how to bring dark, alien worlds to life.
The sizable crew that worked on the show gave it a trademark look, and a number of B.C. crew members won Emmy Awards, including art directors Gary Allen, Shirley Inget and Graeme Murray and sound mixer Michael Williamson.
The success of the The X-Files and two other Vancouver-made shows of that era, The Outer Limits and Poltergeist: The Legacy, brought other paranormal-themed or outright science fiction series here, including Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Andromeda, Millennium, Supernatural, Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Kyle-XY and Flash Gordon.
Vancouver seems to know how to create a dark, brooding, otherworldly presence. As a result, the U.S. sci-fi cable network, owned by Time Warner, has been a steady buyer of shows and movies made here.
Despite whatever reservations he may once have had, Duchovny was back, along with Anderson and Carter, to shoot the second X-Files movie. (The first debuted in 1998.)
Judging by a post-production “thank-you hug” for local media, Vancouver is still the unnamed star. After shooting on the second film wrapped, Carter said: “The city has definitely been one of the secrets of our success . and it’s just one of the reasons why we came back.”
It’s a stand-alone feature, not a continuation of either the TV series or the earlier film. However, co-writer Frank Spotnitz has said that it is “true to everything that’s come before.”
Will Carter be as successful in reaching into the shadows of the human mind as he was in the TV show, which had one of the best runs in series television since I Love Lucy? Moviegoers will have to decide.
Six years have passed in the lives of Mulder and Scully, but the intrepid investigators are still consumed by a desire for truth – and maybe even for each other.
And Duchovny, Anderson and Carter were all back, just like old times, to shoot a film based on a series that put Vancouver on the map in the sci-fi film world.
read more http://www.canada.com