Episode 7: The Imperfections of Memory

Oh, memory! Why must you be so imperfect?

We start Episode 7 with a hazy running flashback from Amanda:

I seem to recall in a previous episode's commentary track that was discussing the various uses to which the Riverview Hospital building in Coquitlam were being put, a reference to "we filmed Amanda's flashback sequences here as well." I have no desire to go back and listen to all the commentary tracks to confirm, so until I'm proven wrong, I will assume that this scene was also filmed at Riverview.

We cut to a makeshift memorial to the MagLev bombing victims, and present-day Amanda acting crazy:

This plaza is located at Hastings & Broughton in Vancouver.  From a street view, you can see how the pillars and background buildings line up:

Later, Amanda cries in her Mercedes:

I always appreciate it when the post-production team leaves in the street names, in this case, Jervis St. at Hastings:

We pay another visit to Lacy & Zoe at a V-Club, which would seem to be at the Vancouver Orpheum. (Note the many chandeliers, which the Orpheum has in spades.) However, this would have been a highly dressed location at the Orpheum, as it has neither wooden stairs nor cigarette machines. It looks like some wood paneling would have been thrown up as well. The carpet matches, though.

Joseph goes to confront some punk kid who might lead him to Tamara:

This one stumped me for a while, even with the suggestion that this was filmed at the Watchmen backlot at Byrne & Marine in Burnaby. However, Flickr user Jeff Hitchcock took some great pictures earlier this year that solves the mystery. First, his pic of "Lenny's":

Picture by Jeff Hitchcock

 Based on a Street View picture of this location, you can see the building across the street from "Lenny's" that houses the alley where Tammy's boyfriend Heracles works in the non-virtual world:

Amanda later goes on a merry chase in search of her ghost brother:

Based on the geography of this scene (the way the streets meet and the buildings line up) I was able to find the starting point for this scene: the intersection of Jervis, Pender and Melville:

 

You can see the red building above (and Melville) when the camera whip-pans to the right, below:

Here's a close-up of the red brick apartment building:

Google street view let me reproduce a kind of mirror image of the picture above:

You can see the building and the distinctive shape of the hand rails. Switching to Bing's street view you can see the white pillars:

We look back to Amanda, who now has a different building in the background:

Panning around Google Street View finds this building and the sign as well:

 Amanda's spectral brother is now perched on some steps (with CGI crap in our line of sight...).

That tree is totally CG.

Then we start running:

The best view I could find of these stairs was from the top:

 

As you go uphill on Melville, this is the first alley you get to. You can see the buildings & bushes when Amanda turns the corner, below:

Her brother then ducks into a parking garage:

Which is just down the alley:

Once they enter the parking garage, we switch locations. We see Amanda pass large circular cut-outs in the concrete wall.

This is the parking garage adjacent to the Coal Harbour Community Centre (note the square opening followed by two circular cut-outs to the right)

At the tail end of the chase sequence we get a glimpse of a location we'll revisit shortly, the forest bridge:

We pay a visit to New Cap City:

While some of the backgrounds are clearly CG'd, the foregrounds were filmed at the aforementioned Watchmen backlot near Byrne & Marine in Burnaby. Here is an aerial view of the lot:

If you watch the movie you will see the brownstone block as well as the "Gunga Diner" cafe that are visible in these scenes. It also explains the US Highway signs.

Lacy & Keon on a playground:

The buildings and view made me suspect that this was in Coal Harbour. Sure enough, there's a playground on the top of the Coal Harbour Community Centre, and the view matches what you'd see from there:

  
We go back to New Cap City:

You can see the door above on the following aerial at Railway & Dunlevy:

We then move to a building with a loading dock:

This is the back of the East Lawn building at the Riverview Hospital:

Finally we go back to the building we saw in the aerial earlier (note the shape of the door is the same):

If you turn the aerial view around and look north, you'll see the big red building from the shot above:

Finally, this episode featured a deleted scene with some on-location filming:

They walk by the same house (#114) twice. It turns out that 114 is a sufficiently unusual house number in Vancouver that I was able to virtually scout them all out, but didn't find it. I then did the same thing in Burnaby, with no luck. New Westminster, however, was a hit! This house turned out to be 114 Queens Ave in New Westminster; the nearby park is Queens Park:

This was a very location-heavy episode!