JoeBeaudoinDOTnet

Yes, I’ve been in Vancouver since the 6th. I can tell you now that it’s very beautiful up here. As with any major city, it’s congested like hell and driving is a bitch. Plus there’s construction happening on basically every other road, it seems. On the upside, I can pretty much get anywhere simply by walking. In my travels, I have seen coffee shops (yes, there’s Starbucks; I can get to two of them if I head east), 7-11s, eateries, sub-shops, pubs. There’s even a pretty cool comic book store within 5 miles of where I’m staying.

Of course, the very nice apartment that Alec Peters and I am staying in is a good 20 minutes (by car) to Vancouver Film Studios, which is where Battlestar Galactica was filmed.  (They will be filming the movie up here, and are in pre-production for this.) I’ve met pretty much the main heads of both the art and props departments up here, in addition to the producers: Richard Hudolin, Doug MacLean, Harvey Frand, and others.

I’ve also walked a majority of the sets. Been to CIC, the pilots room, the Cylon baseship set—the hangar bay set was locked down, so we couldn’t get there. Saw the hero Viper Mark II cockpit, Colonial One all in pieces (yes, it comes apart, and they’re breaking it down now to store it, since other shows will start shooting at the stage it presently occupies)… lots of stuff.

Of course, I don’t have pictures of the sets yet. And, to be frank, I probably won’t release some of them until after the series airs, simply out of fear of being spoilery. That, and I signed a NDA, so I deeded over my first born to NBC Universal should I spill something. As I will have access to the final episodes, not to mention the fact that we’ll be having input in the new movie prop and set decoration (”set dec” for short), that was necessary.

And, as part of our job, we’re going to be documenting the breaking of the sets, so those pictures will end up on the Battlestar Props website.

In any event, here’s a picture of the view from the balcony of the apartment, since it’s the only picture I have of Vancouver so far. Yeah, I’m that busy. LOL