Location Scout
Zen's Extreme Adventures, shot across Alberta.
Vibe Boards · Slugline & Tone · The Full Location List · In & Around Calgary
Location Scout
Everything here is a suggestion only. These are creative and mood references meant to start the conversation, not confirmed locations. Nothing has been scouted in person, permitted, priced, or locked. Every site is subject to an in-person scout, access agreements, permits, seasonal availability, and budget, and any of it may change.
These are mood references, not locked locations. Each board is about the vibe the scene needs first; the named sites are where that feel already lives, all within roughly a three-hour drive of Calgary.
The truest alien terrain in Canada: eroded coulees, banded sandstone, bentonite hoodoos. Horseshoe Canyon (closer, easier crew access) already doubled badlands in The Revenant.
The definitive god's-eye paradise: turquoise glacial water inside a natural amphitheatre of ten peaks. The grandeur the fall of Atlantis is built on.
A glacial reservoir that literally hides a submerged ghost town, perfect for a drowned city, with an epic water-and-mountain plate to composite the 2171 skyline onto.
Exterior: Calgary's tallest, cleanest glass monoliths. Brookfield East (247 m) is the literal Janus tower with rooftop and skyline-plate potential; The Bow's curved façade reads instantly as a future HQ. Interior: the Calgary Central Library's hexagonal glass-and-white architecture gives Janus a designed, non-generic future institution instead of a plain office floor.
Atlas's standing wooden tipple over the badlands is a ready-made scaffold-over-a-chasm Diamond Mine. Rat's Nest is a genuine 4 km wild cave with an underground pool: the treasure cave with water, for real.
The single most-used interior in the pilot, and the hardest brief: a grand estate with a real wood-paneled library whose bookcase wall hides a secret room.
A grand 1891 sandstone manor with the exact asset the script needs: a period library with a fireplace and built-in glass-fronted bookcases, plus three acres of heritage gardens. Already an accredited film-ready museum (a Netflix K-drama shot here in 2026).
INT. THE MANOR - THE LIBRARY - DAY
Tam and Zen step into a Victorian-style room, overstuffed leather furniture worn soft, antique display cases catching the light, and dominating it all, a floor-to-ceiling BOOKCASE WALL.
TAM
Now this room is my personal favorite.
Zen takes it in, hand trailing near the spines.
ZEN
No wonder. What beautiful books.
Tam crosses to an ornately carved desk set against the Bookcase Wall.
TAM
They are. But that's not why it's my favorite...
He slides open a desk drawer and presses his palm flat to a biometric screen hidden inside. A soft tone reads him, and -
The entire Bookcase Wall glides aside, books and all, opening onto a hidden room beyond.
EXTConcentric rings of marble and water on the last day: volcanic smoke, red lava from the outer ring, a blood-tinged tiered fountain. Apocalyptic scale.
INTDark zone to carved hieroglyph stone to a dressed tunnel pierced by crystal skylights that shatter light into color.
INTA monumental Egyptian plaza inside a hollow mountain: columns, obelisks, intact gold, twin staircases, a Bastet-flanked temple over an altar of chests.
INT / EXTA wet 1995 London high street at dusk: rain-streaked reflections, umbrellas, period shopfronts, a worn red double-decker.
INTA torch-lit sea cave split by black water, scattered skeletons, burst sacks of gold, sharks finning in the dark.
INTA deep open pit, sky far above, a rotted scaffold clinging to a diamond-studded wall over a chasm. Vertigo.
INTA small torchlit medieval shop, three saffron-robed monks finishing the painted Dynasty Chest.
INTA serene monk's meditation chamber, a window onto a tiered temple complex.
EXT + INT · most shoot daysA mid-century-modern house skinned with 22nd-century tech and a faceted glass garden dome, on a waterside lot. The Victorian library's bookcase wall slides open to a hidden Reflection Room (meditation + workshop); plus a blast-door test chamber, client presentation room, staff meeting room.
EXTA drowned LA: island chain ringed by dark water and glittering towers, the Hollywood sign on a bobbing barge, skies laced with levicars.
INT / EXTA red-metalwork future tower over a dock. Zen's office, rooftop landing pad, a wraparound CEO suite, a darkened surveillance command room, Calvin's office.
EXTA sunset waterside market under a red sky: lit stalls, banners, gulls, waves on pilings, a glittering island skyline across the water.
INTA museum-preview tent: a Megaquake holoscreen, a deep-ocean diorama of sunken LA, salvaged Hollywood relics including a broken gold Oscar.
INTThe cabin of a sleek self-driving flying car, glass reflecting desert and mountains.
EXT / INTAn arid high-mountain desert, a jagged crevasse, wild caverns narrowing to a vapor-venting chamber that becomes the torch-lit Red Cavern: a wall of crimson smoke and the veiled, snake-haired Woman of the Crimson Dark.