With Vancouver a no-go zone for location filming during the Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games, film and TV producers are bailing and shifting shoots to the burbs.

Vancouver indie producer Jason James of Resonance Films is shooting Carl Bessai’s gritty thriller Repeaters in Mission, BC, an hour outside the city.

‘It’s nice to get out of the city,’ says James. ‘Mission hasn’t had a lot of filming, so the town is open to us being here. They’re working to help us out, and avoiding street closures.’

James still faces some Olympic restrictions after being denied a film permit to shoot a key action stunt scene at a local hydro dam cordoned off to protect against possible attack during the Games. The exodus follows the city deciding to issue no permits for downtown street shooting during the Olympics for security and traffic reasons.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson is cordial about it, using his fingers as virtual quotation marks to tell the local Directors Guild of Canada in a Dec. 22 letter: ‘Vancouver remains ‘open’ to you as well.’ Translation: stay out of sight on local soundstages or in post facilities until you get the all-clear.

All of which has a two-week event to thrill the world shaping up into two months of disruption for Hollywood North.

City hall hints production crews and honeywagons may slowly return to public view in the Olympic control area after the closing ceremonies on Feb. 28, ‘and by early April we’ll be back in business as you’ve come to expect,’ Robertson said in his letter.

Of course, the Olympic exodus coincides with local producers increasingly going outside Vancouver for tax-credit advantages after Ontario sweetened its own film subsidies.

Screen Siren Pictures producer Christine Haebler also chose to shoot in the sticks, working alongside coproducer The Film Farm on Daydream Nation in Maple Ridge, 45 minutes from Vancouver.

‘We are shooting so far out of town there’s no inconvenience. We get the pick of the equipment and crews. We have great trucks and there’s a lot of people available,’ Haebler says.

However, producers needing to shoot back in Vancouver through the Games have been thrown off their routines.

Documentary producer Sue Ridout of Vancouver-based Dreamfilm Productions rarely works in a studio and will be out and about in the next few months completing separate films for the CBC and Discovery Channel.

‘The vast majority of our work is location shooting. So either we’re going to be in and out of Vancouver airport trying to negotiate through the Olympic crowds, or trying to figure out how to go about the city and do the filming we need to do,’ Ridout says.

Besides the Games crush, Vancouver airport also promises increased security measures on U.S.-bound flights in the wake of the recent Christmas Day terror plot.

The solution for Kristina Matistic, a Vancouver-based co-host/producer of W’s The Shopping Bags series from Worldwide Bag Media, is to dim the office lights and declare an Olympic hiatus.

‘Our office won’t be closed completely. Editing may continue. We’ll still need to figure out transportation for those who need to be there,’ says Matistic, who plans her own travel break.

Another reason to get out of Dodge: the Olympics have disrupted normal business supply chains for producers.

Dreamfilm’s Ridout says she received notice that couriers will make deliveries during the Olympics from midnight to 6 a.m. to help reduce traffic snarls during the day.

Producers also report freelance camera operators have been hired on by foreign broadcasters to help shoot the Games, and set decorators have found work dressing national pavilions and other prestige Olympic venues.

Local equipment rental shops expect to do brisk business during the Games, especially with generators going to Olympic venues. Dave Bowen at Red Rentals Vancouver expects a host of last-minute requests: ‘Could be an eleventh-hour panic, so we’ll operate 24 hours.’

And on screen…

And what many are calling the first ‘digital Olympics’ in Canada’s backyard will keep broadcasters on top of their game.

To provide round-the-clock TV and online live sporting coverage, host network CTV shifted its most popular U.S. series to its secondary A stations during the Games.

Will their pricey investment in the Vancouver Games broadcast rights pay off for CTV and Rogers Media, the lead players in the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium? Stateside, NBC says it expects to lose money on its Olympics telecast as ad revenue fails to cover the $820 million cost to purchase the U.S. rights.

Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium president Keith Pelley isn’t making his own predictions. Instead, he argues Canada hosting the Games will produce record TV ratings and motivated advertisers.

‘There’s a groundswell of interest that gives us a tremendous amount of confidence leading into Vancouver 2010. We have signed more than 140 sponsors to date, which is triple what any other Canadian broadcaster has previously sold for an Olympic Games, and we are entering into a feverish selling period that will continue through the Games,’ Pelley says.

Rival Canadian networks aren’t standing down during the Games.

Global Television plans a double shot of Fox’s 24 and CBS’ Survivor 20: Heroes vs. Villains in February to siphon off CTV viewers.

And Citytv stations will air The Dark Blue weeknights at 10 p.m. from Feb. 15-26 to replace NBC’s ill-fated Jay Leno talker.

And the digital Olympics is expected to turbo-charge mobile TV in Canada. Bell Canada, having just launched the iPhone smartphone as part of its offerings, will provide 4,500 hours of 2010 Games programming to its mobile phone customers and on its Bell TV direct-broadcast-satellite service in HD, via a deal with the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium.

Bell will also provide GSM mobile phone coverage in Vancouver/Whistler. There’ll be ample ‘fat minutes’ when the assembled foreign media and Olympics organizers use their phones 24/7 to access up-to-date Games data and information.