A Sumas Prairie farm has been transformed into the site of a volcanic eruption, as the TV action mini-series World on Fire is being filmed there this week.
On Monday, a corn field on Maher Road, in southeast Abbotsford, owned by Harm Vanderlinde, looked like a disaster scene, with a fire truck, ambulance, Humvee, soldiers, paramedics, firefighters, and a massive crane raising and lowering a futuristic orb, as smoke drifted across the scene.
World on Fire is being shot by Reunion Pictures of North Vancouver in a two-episode package for television. The four-hour miniseries is being produced by U..S.-based Sonar Entertainment.
Assistant location manager David Tamkin said Reunion did a considerable amount of shooting in downtown Chilliwack earlier in the month.
Location scouts chose the Abbotsford farm because they liked a classic big red barn on site, and the mountain views provided the right backdrop for a volcano movie.
The movie is set in small-town Oregon, where an oil drilling company taps into a vein of compressed magma and sets off a chain reaction of volcanic eruptions.
The “save the world” scenes were being shot in Abbotsford, with the pod containing the hero geologist lowered by crane down into the heart of the volcano.
The effects crew was also to detonate an explosion to create a geyser effect that was to send debris 90 feet into the air. Meanwhile, smoke machines were simulating volcanic ash drifting across the scenes.
– With files from the Chilliwack Progress