Queer As Folk (2000 TV Series) - Filming and Production

Filming and Production

For a table of the episodes for seasons 1-5, see List of Queer as Folk episodes.

Queer as Folk was produced by Cowlip Productions, Tony Jonas Productions and Temple Street Productions in association with Channel 4 Television Corporation (the co-owner of the original UK series) and Showcase. Warner Bros. Television holds the international distribution rights to the series outside the US and Canada (where Showtime Entertainment/CBS Television Distribution owns the rights).

The show's original theme song, "Spunk", was written and performed by Greek Buck and was used during seasons one through three. When the main title sequence for the show was changed for seasons four and five, the theme song was changed to "Cue the Pulse to Begin" performed by Burnside Project. However, as a tip-of-the-hat to Greek Buck, the count-in from "Spunk" was left in the new opening sequence before "Cue the Pulse to Begin" was played.

All five seasons were filmed in wide-screen HDTV; however, only seasons 4 and 5 were regularly broadcast in HDTV in both the U.S. and Canada. In the U.S., Showtime did run Seasons 1, 2 and 3 in HDTV on Tuesday nights as a special repeat of an episode's full-screen broadcast the previous Sunday. These HDTV broadcasts from the first three seasons were not broadcast by Showcase in Canada. The episodes that appear in the commercially released DVD packages were taken from the HDTV versions.

Keeping up with the technology, Queer as Folk's Season 5 was one of the first series to be recorded using the relatively new digital video process rather than being made exclusively on film. The raw digital video was combined with some scenes that were filmed into a finished episode and then color corrected using a computer process to make the entire episode appear to be filmed.

Throughout all five seasons, the series was filmed primarily at Dufferin Gate Studios in Etobicoke, Ontario (a southwestern borough of Toronto). Exterior scenes however were shot in Pittsburgh.

Many of Season 3's non-location scenes of Babylon, Woody's and Liberty Diner were filmed at Greystone Studios in Mississauga (the city adjacent to Toronto's western border).

These same scenes for seasons 4 and 5 were filmed at the now-former Dufferin Gate Studios "B Studio" in Mississauga about 10–15 minutes from Dufferin Gate's home in Etobicoke. (This studio is now used by Shaftesbury Films as the home base for several of its projects, including the series The Listener).

The series finale of Queer as Folk originally included additional scenes (some new and some extended from their final presentation) that put the episode's running time to just under 64 minutes. This extra material was deleted from the episode before it was broadcast presumably because Showtime didn't want the program to run longer than 60 minutes. The final edit of the episode is slightly over 58 minutes. The deleted scenes are presented in the Queer as Folk Season 5 DVD package. The most notable deletion was a scene near the end of the episode that pays homage to the series' first episode. In the deleted scene, a young blond-haired gay teen who looks like Justin is seen on Liberty Avenue, obviously for his first time, and as Justin did in the first episode, steps across Liberty Avenue and splashes through a puddle. This was meant to signify that the series had come full circle. It was ultimately deleted because the idea of "full circle" was already present in the final Michael-Brian scene (which preceded the deleted scene) and the use of the remix of "Proud" as the series' closing theme.