It may not be a banner year for film production in New Westminster like last year, but July sure had a lot of lights, cameras and action all over the city.
Twitter timelines and city streets have been alive with scenes being shot. Just last week alone, popular television shows Once Upon A Time, Supergirl, Arrow and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow shot scenes in New West. Even Mayor Jonathan Cote got into the spirit tweeting a picture of himself taken at city hall under the makeshift emblem of Arrow’s Star City joking “Guess that makes me the Mayor of Star City.”
“It was the trifecta of superheroes,” joked city film coordinator Elizabeth Keurvorst referring to Supergirl, Arrow and DC’s Legends.
July has certainly been a busy month, and last week in particular, but 2017 isn’t turning out to be the banner year 2016 was, said Keurvorst.
While the city issued 16 permits to film in July compared to 10 last July, in the two previous months, there were only seven issued (five in June and two in May) compared to 25 in 2016 (15 in May and 10 in June).
“Filming activity varies from year to year and even month to month and week to week,” said Keurvorst in an email to the Record. “Last year, we did see an increase overall, but we don’t expect that same pace this year. That’s true across Metro Vancouver.
“It’s hard to compare activity precisely unless we provide more context. For instance, we may have a particular show that sets up for multiple days as we did in June 2016 with A Series of Unfortunate Events, who spent 22 days at Fraser Shipyards, which is a lower impact than implied by just seeing the number of days of filming.”
A report she supplied to council earlier this year showed 127 permits were issued in 2016 with 203 filming days creating almost $909,000 in gross revenue ($635,000 net) to the city. The city estimated the economic spinoff to New Westminster in 2016 ranged between $1.2 million and $2.5 million.
That far outpaced the previous best year the city had, which was 2015, when 88 permits were issued covering 117 filming days, bringing in more than $557,000 gross revenue to city coffers.
