Last week, zombies took over the Town of Irricana as production for the Netflix series ‘Black Summer’ took place there. 

Chief Administrative Officer for the Town, Ted Cofey says it was quite the experience.

 Crew members watch a scene being filmed in Calgary for the Netflix series 'Black Summer'

“There was a lot of activity just watching these people. They had literally dozens of people strolling around town with clipboards interviewing people and taking photographs, it was really a major production.”

Cofey and his wife were even used as extras in the filming as were other excited people in the town.

“Some people had their houses used, some people had their vehicles used. Everybody was like ‘I’ll do this for free and you’re actually going to pay me?’ Everybody thought it was quite exciting and watching them film and the number of takes they did each time. I had to jump on an army truck at least 15 times before they were happy.”

The series is filming in Calgary this week at Queen Elizabeth High School.

Commissioner of Film, T.V. and Creative Industries for Calgary, Luke Azevedo says the small towns bring some of the best atmospheres for filming these shows.

“It’s great because those towns are very welcoming. There’s a huge economic benefit to the towns during the time that the productions are in there. It gives us so many different looks in Alberta. Geographically speaking, we’re very unique.”

‘Black Summer’ is a spin-off series of the show ‘Z-Nation’ which Calgary was in line for according to line producer Jason Wan Lim.

Wan Lim says that show moved to Washington instead but was grateful that the connections worked to bring ‘Black Summer’ to the Calgary area.

Azevedo goes on to say that many filmmakers are drawn to the landscapes that Alberta towns bring.

“You have the badlands, the prairies, the mountains and two municipalities of over a million people in a three-hour area and then everything in between that most people don’t know. All these towns and the capacity to get those looks in a very short period of time for distance for crews, it’s extremely important for us to be able to do that and this show has obviously taken advantage of it.”

Although filming has wrapped up in Irricana, Cofey says the economic benefit paid off.

“[the producer] his rough estimate was minimum $30,000 we left in your town from paying salaries to extras to renting houses to giving gifts to people, purchasing out of your stores. They fuel up all of their trucks at the local gas station there. They’re very, very interested in leaving as much cash locally as they can just so we’ll invite them back.”

Cofey added that he hopes more film and T.V. productions will look at Irricana for their work.

Production for ‘Black Summer’ will wrap up in Calgary by the end of the week before moving on to Beiseker and Drumheller.

Questions, comments or story ideas? Email us at news@discoverairdrie.com