Here’s a little update from all of us at the Fringe Team to all of you in Fringe land. Don’t hesitate to stop by Fringe Central anytime…we pretty much sleep there, so someone should be there to assist you.

Happy Fringing!

Ben

REVIEWS
We have made a few changes to how paneling for the Fringe works, including (controversial) anonymous reviews, automatic approval, and a published list of panelists. Read more…

FRINGE CENTRAL
For those of you who’d like a place to hang out where the beer flows freely and the laughs go on to the wee hours of the evening, stop by Fringe Central at 1625 N Las Palmas (entrance on Las Palmas, walk around to the West side of the building). We have a bar/cafe and lots of cheer and with a $5 Fringe Card, you can drink for the duration of the Fringe for $2 a beer.

Let me repeat that: $2 per beer! You cannot find a better deal in Los Angeles anywhere.

FRINGE JAMES hosted by THE BRITISH INVASION
At 11:30pm every night through the 23rd, we are hosting the FRINGE JAMS hosted by our friends across the pond with the British Invasion. Have a bit of your show you’d like to stage in front of a well-lubricated audience? Stop by the Fringe Jam (free & no reservation required) and laugh it up. You can come and leave as you please – talk to some new friends, do a piece from your show, and have a few drinks. New at the bar today: Delicious sangria. nice.

VISIBILITY STAGING
Thanks to everyone who came out today. We set up a little impromptu faire in the Egyptian Courtyard to draw in families and tourists passing by. From this point forward, show up anytime during the following slots (no reservation needed) and promote your show. Feel free to bring set pieces, costumed actors, dance performances – come anytime and do anything. The Egyptian Courtyard is located directly east of the intersection of Hollywood and Las Palmas on the south side of Hollywood blvd.

We have the space during these slots:

• 1pm to 7:30pm June 20;
• 2pm to 7:30pm 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25
• 11am to 7pm June 26
• 2pm to 5pm June 27

CORRESPONDENCE
We have posted our first correspondence video. Check out your fellow participants in interview mode.

T-SHIRTS
Supplies are very limited and they are going fast. There won’t be another chance to own the 2010 official Fringe T-shirt available at Fringe Central (1625 N Las Palmas). Want to buy a bunch for your cast? Buy 9 and get number 10 for free.

OPENING PARTY SLIDESHOW IN LA WEEKLY
Send these links to all your friends and tweet facebook all about. If we get a lot of views, it will be featured on the LA Weekly website:

• Slide Show 1
• Slide Show 2

We’ve made a few changes to how paneling works based on some feedback we are receiving…

First off, we have made the application project automatic. No more waiting for an overworked fringe staffer to approve you – you are automatically approved to start reviewing. If we find that bogus panelists are being added, we will go back an disable the account. So, reviews will no longer be slowed down by pending applications. Good Stuff.

We have also enabled a controversial “anonymous” feature to reviews. Many of you have requested this feature and several of you feel uncomfortable with this due to issues of transparency. We weighed both options. In the end, we decided anonymous reviewers may be more honest – especially if they are fellow participants. In the end, these reviews are for the benefit of patrons, and honest reviews lend to a better patron experience. If there is fishiness, we will investigate on our end.

Finally, we have published a list of all panelists so that participants can invite them to attend their shows.

So jump in there and review all the shows you have seen thus far…think of it as a public service.

Ben

Come get them while they last! Only a limited supply of t-shirt were printed this year.

Shirts are $20 and available for sale at the Fringe Central Box Office. Our sole offering for first year merchandise was designed by Fringe Art Director Gavin Worth.

We’ve had some requests on how to custom fit the shirts for ladies. Here’s a picture of Fringe Central volunteer Liz Steele in a modified shirt. We do on-site modifications for those interested. The men’s version includes a collar.

For those of you interested in bulk discounts, we are offering a “buy 9, get a tenth free” rebate – for those producers who’d like to buy a bunch for their casts.

Grab ’em while they are available!

Ben

We are proud to introduce our first group discount program: The Fringe Friend Program. This is a tool Fringe patrons can use to get the most out of their Fringe experience.

How it Works

Purchase a Friends card at Fringe Central or via our web store. Prices are only $5 per card.

What You Get

Discounts to a wide array of businesses in central Hollywood including bars, restaurants, cafes, stores, tourist destinations, and services. Including one dollar of all beers at the Fringe Central bar.

The VIP Program

Interested in a little extra bang for your Fringe dollar? For $50 you enjoy these added benefits:

• A Fringe T-Shirt in any size
• One Free drink a night at Fringe Central
• 2 Tickets to the Fringe Awards Ceremony (reservation required)
• A selection of products from
• A Guide signed by the Fringe staff

Enci Box just reposted one of our favorite Fringe promos on Bitter-Lemons.com today; I thought I’d use the opportunity to provide a little “behind the scenes” information.

First off, this is the only promo not filmed in Hollywood (shudder). It was a rainy day in December 2009 – we all congregated very early in a wonderful space near the Downtown Arts District to shoot. The idea was to produce a promo that featured local artists. Obviously, this one was slightly challenging to coordinate, if for no other reason that artists usually don’t like 7am on a Saturday.

Ken Peterson, who directed the promo, made a whole lot of boiled eggs. I don’t know why I remember this so vividly – there were A LOT of boiled eggs. So much so that the artists involved finally needed to ask me to stop pushing the eggs on them between takes. Director: “Cut, reset!” Ben: “Anyone want a boiled egg?”

Julisa Smith, the hidden talent behind the Blue Freak (the most playful and fun loving of the bunch) was there right on time. Let me just say, Julisa is an amazingly good sport. We have dragged her around LA in spandex across so many shoots and events and she was just amazingly easy and wonderful the whole time. Cast her in your next feature film, Mr. Scorsese.

A couple other critical artists weren’t so prompt – leading to some interesting “oh god, what now?” questions and one Festival Director pathetically standing in the pouring rain peeking into every car racing by for our missing performers.

Dave McKeever had bought the new camera and constructed a makeshift dolly out of a piece of wood and a handtruck we had just purchased at Home Depot – worked like a charm. We actually refer to this promo as the “dolly shot” promo when speaking of it.

The song is the same as the title of the promo: “The Sunny Side of the Street” an oldie but goodie. The Petrojvic Blasting Company (amazing band) actually pre-recored the song in the kitchen five minutes before we started shooting. Two takes and we had it – the acoustics were actually surprisingly good, I imagine we will have more kitchen-based recording studios in the future.

And so the dolly began … past the band, into Scarlett’s feather dance and, past the Kinetic Theory contortionist, across LA Contemporary Dance/KDub Dance, beyond the folks of Need Theater and Rogue Artist Ensemble, and finally back to the band again. The mirror (which was initially a pesky problem) turned into an interesting “artifice moment” when you saw the Fringe production team (Ken, Dave, Stacy, Ben) reflected with the band moving to their second position behind us. Brecht would be so proud.

You also might notice (this promo is worth a few re-watches) that two of the band members have switched instruments in the final shot. Took us a little too long to figure this out in the editing room.

It was a pleasure to produce this promo on a rainy LA morning in December. We ended up with a whole lot of boiled eggs.

Ben