Day 19 of the ‘Mortal Instruments: City of Bones’ filming was a wild goose chase to find the set location. In the end, our amazing Toronto blogger @pindis6 (Ryan!) was victorious in what all TMI fans deem a most anxiously awaited scene: Midnight Flower/Greenhouse anyone??? PS. Guess what else? MORE pics coming soon!!

The Mortal Instruments Set Day 19 #TMISetDay19 – Ryan Deshpande @pindis6 // twitter

So I woke up at 5:00 am, got ready, and left by 6:00 am and rode my bike to my friend Noor’s house. My friend Abigail arrived, and the three of us took a Mississauga Transit bus to Islington subway station at 7. We were to meet our other friends, Khela and Elaina, over there (they were taking a bus that stopped close to their houses). We arrived at Islington station, only to find out that in a muddle of confusion, our friends had gotten off at Kipling station. So we got onto the subway and went back to Kipling, and picked them up (it seems unnecessary, but I’m the only person out of the 5 of us who really knew how to navigate the subway). Now the journey began!

Our first stop was St. Clair West station. We arrived there at 8:30. Abigail had a job interview at Aritzia, so that was where we were headed. A transit authority told us to take the eastbound streetcar, and pointed out which one it was. My friends got onto the streetcar, and I stayed at the front to ask the driver if it stopped at Spadina Road, to which he told me to.. get off the streetcar! Confused, I got off and motioned for my friends to join me, but the driver closed the doors and took off! I got out of the station and ran after the streetcar, which stopped a block away, and my friends ran off. Turns out that streetcar was going westbound, which is why he told us to get off… haha. When that confusion was over with, we went back into the subway station (the man let us back in with our old transfers) and found out which streetcar to take on our own. We were off! We got off at Spadina Road and walked north. Abigail finished her interview, and then the real set hunting began.

We thought they’d be filming at Casa Loma, which was several blocks down Spadina Road, so we walked there. The place is beautiful. We saw so many crew members.. but it turns out they were cleaning up the equipment. They were done filming at Casa Loma. We tried to ask as many crew members as we could, but they were all sworn to secrecy, and didn’t tell us. The Casa Loma staff didn’t know anything either. Bummed, we went to a picnic table outside the stone fence/wall of the castle and had some snacks. Then we decided that the wall was low enough for us to climb and see the castle courtyard… so we did that! There was nothing on the other side except the garden and some people who paid to tour the castle. We went back to the entrance for a final round of asking. The crew members didn’t say anything.. but there was this one man sitting in a truck. We went up to him and asked where the cast might be today.. and he gave us an intersection, and mentioned something about a garden.

It was 11:00 am by now, so we walked to Dupont subway station, and hopped on. We got off at King station and walked to the intersection he told us (Jarvis & Adelaide). However, there was no set in sight. Then we remembered what the man told us about some Garden… After some major internet searching on my phone, we found out what “Garden” he was talking about. It was several blocks north of the intersection we were waiting at. Finally we found our way to this Garden, which was really a huge park with many pretty plants. In the centre was a huge GREENHOUSE. And right enough, we saw TMI crew members setting up the lighting equipment! We walked into the greenhouse and explored. It was so pretty, and I thought it would be perfect for the only greenhouse scene in the book… *cough*. Placed in the centre of the greenhouse garden were these cute cream coloured plants… which lit up.

One of the prop technicians told us that they’d be filming at night today, which only confirmed our suspicions: The Midnight Flower scene. It was crazy! We were so excited. It was 1:00 and we had 4.5 hours to kill (we wanted to come back a bit early). So we ate at Harvey’s nearby. By the time we were finished, it was pouring rain! We took out our umbrellas and went back to the set. There was no real progress, so we decided to walk down the road to find somewhere to kill time and hide from the rain. We found this adorable little café called “mylk uncookies”. It’s a very organic/holistic/naturalistic shop, it was like a mini Starbucks. The drinks were delicious, and the owner was so nice too. She let us spend 3 hours there (we weren’t even bored! She had playing cards and Scrabble!).

At 5:30 it stopped raining and we headed back to the set and looked through the greenhouse again. They had built a green spiral staircase in one corner. The main change was in our absence, a bunch of trailers parked along the road at the end of the park. We hung around them for a little, but nobody came out, and this crew member was eyeing us suspiciously, so we backed off. A few minutes later, we saw two girls walking in our direction. We were talking loudly about TMI, and they stopped to ask us about the movie. Turns out they were looking for the set too! So Sam and Danielle joined us, and 5 became 7. We hung out around the greenhouse set, waiting for people to start walking in. By about 6:30 it was getting really cold.

Then, we saw two people who looked so much like Lily and Jamie walking to the set! It wasn’t them, but we think they were the stunt doubles! They waved high to us and entered the greenhouse. It was 7:00 and the set was officially closed off to the public. We kept waiting and waiting, freezing our butts off and trying to see Lily or Jamie. A police officer came and talked to us. He was employed for TMI. He was so nice! We were laughing and sharing stories about our favourite books. At 8:00, we decided that we couldn’t wait at the side of the set any longer, so we walked up to the front, not entering the actual set area. The location manager was there with our police friend, so we were all talking and having fun. The location manager was telling us how many movies and shows he’d been managing locations for! (His job consisted of keeping us away from the set, haha.) By 8:30, we were asked to leave the front of the set and go back to the side. We assumed the actors were on their way. We walked to their trailers to see what was happening, but nobody was coming out, so we just waiting back at our set-viewing spot. Then, a white van came driving through the park and dropped LILY and JAMIE off right where we were standing with the location manager just half an hour earlier! We called out to them, but sadly they didn’t look at us

After looking at the actors for a good 20 mins, they went into the greenhouse and didn’t come out. We decided to go home, because it was getting really late and we had an hour and a half transit ride home. We said bye to our new friends and exchanged information. Sam and Danielle were so nice, they walked us to the streetcar that would take us to the nearest subway station. Then we parted ways. All in all, it was an awesome, but tiring day. I only got home at 11:00 pm.

So that’s that! My TMIMovie experience. I can’t wait to watch the greenhouse scene in the actual movie!

The picture which I thought would get everyone excited is the picture of the MIDNIGHT FLOWERS!

In the picture “Our view of the set.jpg” the girl in the picture is the suspected Clary stunt double!

My friends:

Abigail – @hiyabigail

Elaina – @pindis9 (don’t get confused with my pindis6)

Khela – @ToddyPoddy

Noor – doesn’t have twitter

Sam – has twitter, but she hasn’t followed me yet, so I don’t know her twitter name

Danielle – Same as Sam