'All's Faire': The Ren is Back in Town

“This tis the story of a band of gentlefolk who strive to bring forthe the finest renntertainment on the entire Delmarva Peninsula!” The folks at Dinosaur Diorama have been busy this month, serving up its first full-length episode of The Burg since 2007 that clocked in at a whopping 20 minutes. Then on November 17th, they premiered their first season of the “Renntertainment” comedy, All’s Faire

Now you may be asking yourself, “wait, this is the FIRST season of All’s Faire? Wasn’t that a Streamy-nominated show last year?” I had the chance to correspond with Dinosaur Diorama’s Thom Woodley to get the details on how the current episodes tie into the Kingdom of Gary-shire upon Delmarva universe of Alls Faire.

“We did use some of what we shot in 2008,” said Woodley. “Those 9 shorts are nonchronological – they’re just slices of life at the faire. Actually, we just took those out of our larger script last year because we wanted to shoot something, but didn’t have the resources to do more than a one day shoot. So we’ve made use of some of what we shot. How we’re treating it is that the first ‘season’ was more like a pilot. We’re calling this the First Season.”

I had the pleasure of getting to check out the first four episodes and while I recognized a few of the scenes as having come from the original “slice-of-life” episodes, for a first-time watcher, the transition between the two is pretty seamless. “We shot the 9 shorts in June 2008, posted a trailer in July, and posted the finished shorts in early September,” explained Woodley. “The rest of it we shot in 2009 – mostly in August, with a bit in September. The 2008 stuff we shot all at the New Jersey Renaissance Kingdom) before opening and during the day while customers were there. This year, we shot three days in Pennsylvania, with a group called Midsummer Productions who do the Midsummer Renn Faire, a very small faire they do in Lehighton, PA on the weekends in May and June.” They also shot a few interiors in New York, a day in Prospect Park, as well as some scenes with comedian Dave Hill at the Maryland faire. Mandy Bruno and Robert Bogue of Guiding Light both appear in substantial roles, and there may be a couple of other cameos towards the end of the series, according to Woodley.

“All in all, it adds up to a little over 5 days of shooting, not including the 2008 stuff,” continued Woodley. “So that’s kind of nice in that we beat a personal record and shot 55 pages in 3 days. Of course, having to shoot that fast means that sometimes there are moments that don’t quite work out in the editing room, which is unfortunate, but there was very little, ridiculously little, money for this, so we do what we can.”

The layout of the show is one that Dinosaur Diorama is hoping to continue honing. “This is a format we’re exploring,” added Woodley. “100 minutes equals a series. We hope to do several 100 minute series a year, all geared towards a slightly different audience. We are looking for sponsors who want to reach very specific audiences.”

New episodes of All’s Faire are released every Tuesday at www.allsfaire.tv. Prepare thyselves to be entertained most rigorously. Hey nonnie nonnie.