“Where nature and civilization meet.” Stanley Park, Vancouver
Photo by Alf Palacios on Unsplash
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is known for its outstanding natural beauty. It is also called “Hollywood North” with good reason. Located on the Pacific coast gives Vancouver relatively mild weather, an ocean waterfront with proximity to rural land, a reasonable travel distance to Hollywood, a variety of architectural styles and on the financial side, the lower Canadian dollar along with government incentives are selling points.
Vancouver is also known as a cluster of top VFX and Animation studios in the world, including Sony Pictures Imageworks, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Animal Logic and others. Life of Pi, District 9, Sherlock Holmes and Cloud Atlas are among the major blockbusters whose digital effects were completed in Vancouver.
The city’s reputation as a digital entertainment and interactive powerhouse has attracted industry-leading conferences like SIGGRAPH, the premiere international event on computer graphics and interactive techniques, which convened here in 2011, 2014, and 2018.
Most digital effects studios are located within one of six “digital districts”: Gastown, Railtown, Yaletown, Mount Pleasant, the downtown core and Kitsilano (these are also popular and distinctive neighbourhoods for shopping, café-hopping, touring public art and architecture, and exploring the city’s vibrant culinary landscape).
Production houses, film studios and digital effects centres are lured to the city by the “Vancouver lifestyle benefit” – the city’s compact core lends itself to a shorter commute time, translating into more time for work as well as exploring the local mountains, ocean and beaches, green spaces, yoga studios, fitness centres and more.
North Shore Studios – previously Lionsgate Studios – and Vancouver Film Studios, are amongst the two largest special effects stages in Canada.
Vancouver Film Studios is one of the largest production facilities outside of Los Angeles, and Bridge Studios in Burnaby (part of Metro Vancouver) has one of the largest special effects stages in North America. Mammoth Studios, a subsidiary of North Shore studios, holds one of the largest film stages in the world at 123,883 square feet (11,509.1 square metres).
Table of Contents
Map of Film Locations in Vancouver
Kudos to FanGirl Quest for this cool map.
Vancouver is nicknamed Hollywood North!
