Caprica back on Location

by spacepug

I cannot tell you how pleased I was to see this empty chair in the midst of a crowd of extras and film crew today.  Caprica is back in Vancouver and was shooting today at the Central Library in Downtown Vancouver.   Polly Walker is the main reason I’m wishing January 22, 2010 would get here faster.  Not only is she an extremely talented actress (watch Rome if you are unfamiliar with her work), but she did so much with so little screen time in the Caprica pilot.  She made the character of Clarice seem sinister yet sympathetic, and absolutely fascinating.

Here’s a link to a few pictures I took of today’s shoot.  Nothing spoilery except for some costume items that give a sense of atmosphere.  Oh yeah, and some random guy in the crowd who I didn’t even notice was there until I got home and checked the pics…leave it to spacepug to miss the handsome leading man!

Since Caprica will be shooting in Vancouver for several more months, I want to make a couple of  things clear.  I will not publish shooting locations in advance.  I will not publish any photos that I believe are spoilers.  In general, I think true fans are much more careful of not spoiling something for their fellow fans since they themselves want to enjoy the show completely when it finally airs….many months from now.   What I will do is pass along whatever snippets I think will help keep fans excited and interested in what is coming.  Clear? Maybe not.  We will see…

We Are Coming, We Are Coming…

…to Atlanta!  Several members of the 13th Colony will be on hand for this year’s Dragon*Con in Atlanta.  We’re not just coming from Vancouver, but places across the globe, including bloggers spacepug and gem, as well as our excellent reviewer millari.

If you’re a reader of this blog and plan to attend, let us know in the comments below.  We’ll be pretty easy to spot thanks to the spiffy new stickers Frik and Frak are showing off below!  If you see us around the con, come up and say  “hello.”  The best part of these last couple of years running this blog has been meeting fellow BSG fans from all over the world, both virtually and in person, and this is just another great occasion to do so.

And what a great year for BSG fans to gather at Dragon*Con.  Guests this year include:  Alessandro Juliani (Gaeta), Dirk Benedict (Starbuck, for the original fans), Edward James Olmos (Adama), Kandyse McClure (Dualla), Kate Vernon (Ellen), Luciana Carro (Kat), Mary McDonnell (Roslin), Michael Trucco (Anders) and Richard Hatch (Zarek, Apollo).  Also attending (just not “officially”) will be Aaron Douglas (Tyrol).

Hope to see you there!

True North Strong and Geek

July 1^st is Canada Day, and 2009 marked our 142nd anniversary as a country.  We do much the same as everyone else around the world on their national holidays, we celebrate with parades and fireworks.  This year though, the sci-fi fans of Vancouver did something a bit different.  We banded together as a nation of geeks and marched under one banner.

North Vancouver’s Canada Day parade featured a contingent of science fiction fans dressed as characters from a wide range of genre favourites: Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, BSG, Firefly, Harry Potter, Men in Black and Watchmen.  A special acknowledgement has to go to the Greater Vancouver Stargate Meetup Group, whose members built a Stargate on top of  a van, making it appear as though the van was a makeshift puddle-jumper stuck mid-transit.  They did an awesome job.   So Say We All!

Space Channel streams the “Frakkin’ End”

It’s almost old news by now, but I thought I would post this one anyway…

As part of their coverage of the finale of Battlestar Galactica, Space Channel (Canada’s science fiction channel) did a one hour Fandom Forum, a live broadcast featuring an in-studio audience of Toronto BSG fans, and some “live hits” out to Vancouver for the 13^th Colony’s Finale Party.  The complete one hour program is now streaming online, broken into seven segments.

In my admittedly biased opinion, here are what I think are the best bits:

Part 1: 2:08 to 3:13 (intro to the Vancouver party)

Part 2: 4:30 to 6:11 (Ahem…Spacepug, aka Madame President, and the Hybrid)

(Parts 3, 4 and 5: Alas, no us.)

Part 6: 3:10 to 3:55 (RDM, MM & EJO thank the Canadian fans)

Part 6: 3:56 to 5:36 (Natasha interviews our Six, Baltar, Starbuck and Tyrol, plus the Hybrid)

Part 7: 3:45 to 4:41 (Wrap up from Vancouver)

Congratulations to everyone who participated, on both ends of the country.  Space was thrilled with the ratings for the show, and with their first ever fully live broadcast.  We’ve extended the invitation for them to come back to Vancouver for another special in conjunction with “The Plan” in November or “Caprica” next year, so keep your fingers crossed.

“Perfection Achieved. End of Line”

by spacepug

It was an amazing experience. 110 enthusiastic Battlestar Galactica fans jammed into LaFontana Caffe in Burnaby, chanting “So Say We All” for the benefit of a live television viewing audience across Canada.  I’m proud to say we gave our favourite show the frakkin’ good send-off it deserved.

Space Channel did their first ever fully live, coast to coast event called the “Fandom Forum” after the airing of the final episode of Battlestar Galactica.  The discussion was based in their studio in Toronto, but Vancouver provided a number of live interludes, and most of the entertainment value.   The 13^th Colonists in Vancouver really stepped up.  With a little less than two weeks to prepare, we had many people in costume, lots of BSG decorations, and our very own hybrid.  Seth had them in stitches in Toronto when he delivered his opinion of the last episode, “Perfection achieved.  End of line.”   Of course, that may have had something to do with fans wondering just where Natasha Eloi had put her hand when it went into the tub of “goo.”

Natasha impressed all of the 13^th Colonists with her wit and enthusiasm.  Many of the people who got to meet her seemed as “wowed” as they might have been had one of the actors from the show been present.  The night was all about the fans, and none of us will ever forget the experience.  Space was thrilled with the Vancouver contribution to their show, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see further collaborations between Space and the 13^th Colony in the future.

And yes, the topper had to be when Ron Moore came on and thanked the Canadian fans, including the 13^th Colony, for their support of Battlestar Galactica.  You are very welcome, Mr. Moore.  You and the rest of the cast & crew have given us so many hours of amazing quality television in return.  We’ll be talking about this show for a long time, and we’ll keep the friends we’ve made through BSG fandom for even longer than that.

We can rightfully say that the 13^th Colony is the biggest BSG fan club in Canada.  The last episode may have aired, but we’re not going anywhere.  Caprica, The Plan…we’ve got plenty to do.

“So Say We All!”

We slayed 'em in TO

Space Visits the 13th Colony

We’ve been planning our Battlestar Galactica Finale party for months, and now Space Channel’s getting in on it.

Space is sending Natasha Eloi out to join us for The Frakkin’ End on Friday March 20th, and she will be reporting live from our location during the one-hour Fandom Forum after the show airs.  If you’re not one of the lucky people who gets to participate at the CTV studios in Toronto, or our Vancouver event, the forum will also be streaming live at spacecast.com The forum broadcast starts at 8pm PDT, 11pm EDT, following the two-hour finale of Battlestar Galactica.

We’ll be packed in tight at LaFontana thanks to the enthusiastic response from Vancouver’s sci-fi community, and it promises to be a once in a lifetime opportunity.  To our knowledge, Space has never recognized a fan club in this way, and we are truly honoured they’ve chosen us.

We’ll have a special BSG menu including ambrosia, lots of people in BSG costumes, the largest collection of BSG mini-mates ever assembled in one place, and a special guest…our very own hybrid.

Tune in, geek out!  So say we all…

The one and only Battlestar Blog

by spacepug

Yes, I suppose you could call this a battlestar blog, but it isn’t THE battlestar blog.  That one is over in the Livejournal community battlestar_blog and if you haven’t already found it, you’ll want to go over here and take a look.

If you want breaking news & rumours, in-depth discussions, meta content or just your daily dose of BSG squee, you can find all of it at battlestar_blog.  It is one of the most active communities of fans I’ve come across and Grant does a great job of moderating.

You don’t have to be a member of Livejournal to view the community, but you will have to join if you want to contribute or comment.  LJ is free and an easy introduction to blogging.  Be warned though…once you start blogging, you might not be able to stop!

I have to say a special “thank you” to the people over at battlestar_blog.  I was lucky enough to be voted amongst the winners of their recent Halloween Costume Contest and got this beautiful die-cast metal version of Colonial One as a prize.  It now proudly sits on my shelf.

Adventures in BSG Costuming

by spacepug

Never before have I tried to dress up like a character from one of my favourite shows on TV. Granted, I’ve never run a fan club before either, so this is all new territory! I’ve never had much of a costuming bent and I’m more likely to hurt myself with a sewing machine than actually put two pieces of fabric together using one. Alas, I decided that my husband and I would attend the 13^th Colony’s “Halloween on Caprica” party as the Chief and Cally.

Luckily, I started planning several weeks in advance. The first step was to acquire as many screen shots as I could. Many thanks to Galactica BBS for their wonderful galleries.

The orange jumpsuits were ordered from Gostwear in Quebec. You pay a little more for ordering orange, but you save on taxes & import duties when you buy within Canada. The BSG patches from ScifiGeeks.com Both were ordered early to allow for shipping time, but honestly, everything arrived quickly. The next trick was trying to find reflective tape for the stripes down the side. I found it at a local industrial safety store, but for the 30ft we needed for two costumes, it would have been $54 for one roll. I went down to local legendary fabric store Dressew and bought the same length of reflective ribbon for $9 and a $1 package of reflective tape big enough to make the squares on each side of the chest.

Luckily I have access to a grommet tool at work, so we were able to put grommets in the legs, though they aren’t nearly as large as the ones on the actual costumes.

It was the toolbelts that were the hardest. We figured out early that they must be affixed to the jumpsuits with snaps and once again Dresssew had packages of 10 large snaps with tools to apply them, for $3.50 Each costume used 14 snaps. Six on the front of the toolbelt, four on the back, and two on each wrist cuff.

It was really tough to find a soft vinyl with ridges. After looking in several places, we settled on a roll of rigid vinyl flooring from Home Depot for < $20. No amount of glue would affix the pockets, and I don’t have access to an industrial sewing machine, so I had to sew the pockets on by hand, using an embroidery needle and a metal thimble. After one day, my fingers were bloody. Later on, someone suggested using needle nose plyers to pull the needle through the vinyl. Good tip. Wish I’d thought of it earlier….

Finally, just because I’m a little twisted, I decided to go to the party as “Popsicle Cally” instead of just “Happy Cally.” Some blue eyeshadow and eyebrow pencil gave that fresh out of the airlock look, a liberal application of silver glitter for ice crystals and there you have it. The centurion in a noose was a great conversation starter…

It was a challenge but it was very rewarding. Still not sure I’ve caught the costuming bug, but at least now I have a great reason to con my husband into coming with me to Dragon*Con next year….. “But dear, we have such cool costumes to wear…”