Dystopian science fiction frequently depicts a particular type of sky: low cloud cover, a blue-grey light that originates somewhere other than the sun, and rain-slicked surfaces that catch neon reflections from unreadable signs. It feels a little off, a little different from any city you’ve ever visited, which makes it seem futuristic. However, it’s a city you’ve visited or may visit. Vancouver is the location.
The damp hallways of Altered Carbon, the never-ending rain of Blade Runner 2049, and the glass-and-steel settings that have become the standard for anything set in a technologically sophisticated but morally dubious future are examples of the visual language of contemporary science fiction that were not created by a film theorist or art director working from a manifesto. An accountant working out of a tax credit structure created it, at least in large part.
In order to draw in foreign film and television production, British Columbia implemented the Production Services Tax Credit in the 1990s. The credit operated by reimbursing foreign producers who agreed to shoot in the province a significant amount of local labor costs, up to 46% in some configurations. The calculation was simple: if your production was paying local vendors, Canadian staff, and rental properties, the provincial government was essentially covering almost half of that expense. Filming in Vancouver became an economic necessity rather than a pleasure for a mid-budget science fiction series striving to stretch resources into something that appeared expensive.
Producers arrived. When they arrived, they noticed that the city had a particular appearance. The downtown area of Vancouver is dominated by steel frames and glass structures, with streets that are statistically likely to be wet from November through April. The mountains can be seen in certain images because they are close enough. The city has a certain air of refinement, a hint of anonymity, and modern architecture without being ostentatious. It appears somewhat like a place you’d expect a dystopia to be located, yet it doesn’t like Los Angeles or New York. It takes excellent and peculiar photos.
shows that have been localized. Because they frequently worked in the same place, directors and cinematographers created a visual vocabulary centered around it. Because so many people who worked in science fiction television were based in Vancouver and established a look that became synonymous with the genre, that vocabulary expanded throughout the genre more widely. It had been a production site for fifteen years by the time viewers recognized “that sci-fi aesthetic” as a genre cliché.
Another layer was added by the DAVE credit, which focused on post-production, visual effects, and computer animation. Major VFX firms were drawn to establish headquarters in Vancouver by British Columbia’s competitive post-production labor subsidies. Sony Pictures and Industrial Light & Magic Both Imageworks set up substantial offices there, so the computer work that converted Burnaby’s green-screen soundstages into futuristic cities or alien worlds was being done in the same time zone as the filming. Efficiencies realized by combining post-production and location under a single tax jurisdiction strengthened the move.
There was a noticeable downstream impact on the appearance of science fiction. The financial barrier to developing fully digital worlds and digital doubles decreased to the point where they are now commonplace rather than exceptional, with post-production labor expenses falling by 16% to over 50%, depending on the credit arrangement. The expansive CGI armies, the impossibly moving camera across nonexistent locations, and the digital actors moving in ways that no human ever moves are all examples of genre cliches, in part because British Columbia made them affordable enough to become commonplace.
The Vancouver look is now so ingrained in the genre that it reads more like futurism than geography. That’s a strange result for a provincial tax policy, and the bureaucrats who drafted the original credit probably didn’t expect it. However, often aesthetics are determined by where the money ends up rather than by vision statements.
