Vancouver, British Columbia has been a popular city for filming television and movies for decades, but you’d have to be deeply familiar with the city to recognize it as the location for productions as diverse as The X-Files and Homeward Bound II: Lost In San Francisco. But a new video from Tony Zhou of Every Day A Painting points out not only the extent to which Vancouver is used, but also the methods employed to transform the city into locations around the globe.
Zhou notes that Vancouver is actually the third most filmed city in North America, but hardly ever plays itself, usually doubling for Seattle, San Francisco, or even New York City. As Zhou is from Vancouver, he becomes disconcerted by the trend, because the city he loves is rarely allowed the chance to form its own identity on film. Rather, it is disguised to resemble itself as little as possible, or given something as silly as a USA Today vending machine as the key distinction to transform it into an American locale.
The video winds up being a strong argument for the richness of the Canadian city, right down to the soundtrack of Vancouver acts like Destroyer, The New Pornographers, and Rascalz.