@FringeOnSet: Remote Adventures in Set Hunting, 2010-2012

By Ellen (@FringeFridayNet - fringefriday.net)

Today, I run the general Fringe info Twitter account @FringeFridayNet - but it originally started out as @FringeOnSet, a Twitter account devoted to hunting down and tweeting information about the filming of Fringe on the streets of Vancouver, BC!  For two years, the FringeOnSet account was on the case - tweeting and retreating pictures and information on where you might see the cast and crew of Fringe filming the next exciting episode...

The funny thing is that I live thousands of miles away from Vancouver - on the East Coast of the USA. So I was pretty pumped to discover, one fine evening in July 2010, that the filming of the eagerly anticipated Fringe Season 3 premiere was happening - and people on the scene were tweeting about it - live, in real time!

Here's the first picture from the first day of filming 3x01 "Olivia" - the scene where Peter comes out of the government hearing to reunite with Walter and Bolivia.  It was filmed on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery, and here right before the eyes of Twitter, were John and Josh posing for the cameras of a lucky fan. So exciting… and so far away for so many of us! Thus the FringeOnSet Twitter account was born.

Although fans have always managed to find out filming locations of their favorite shows, until the age of Twitter, this knowledge wasn't available in real-time. Now it's possible for anyone to share filming location tips and head down to a location before the crews have even set up for the day. This can be a fun thing, or a not so fun thing (for the cast and crew, who are there to work). So, over time, I and my other set-hunters gradually started to develop a sense of restraint about what to share. (For example, tweeting random Fringe star sightings when they were clearly not on the job... that's something I personally wouldn't do.)

Some time around the end of the third season, the paparazzi and set tipster stuff seemed to get a little out of hand. Someone who was hanging around the set - we never found out who, but it wasn't a fan - claimed to have retrieved a discarded call sheet from the trash, and posted images of it on Twitter. What was on the call sheet document was EXTREMELY spoilery, and even though set reports are almost by definition spoiler-friendly, I refused to tweet it out, and I'm proud that so many other Fringe fans also refused to pass it on either. We were really pretty outraged and disappointed that someone around the set would have done such a thing.
(However, since the show is now over and all danger of spoilers have passed, here's a photo of the notorious call sheet in question and its shocking revelation that "Walternate kills Olivia.")

However, that incident gave me and some of the other "set stalkers" some pause. We certainly didn't want to do anything that would make things difficult for the Fringe crew or ruin the experience for fans. So, after that incident, I think most of us took care to think a little more carefully about passing out information on Twitter. At least one of the professional photographers also decided to keep a more respectful distance. Fortunately, our spies on the streets of Vancouver were also mostly very respectful of the crew.

One fun memory of the FringeOnSet experience was when a devoted Josh Jackson fan from Australia traveled to Vancouver in hopes of seeing the filming. By sheer bad luck, she had scheduled her trip just at the time that Josh would not be on set - the beginning of Season 4 filming, when Peter of course was not in any of the episodes!  It seemed she would have to go all the way back home to Australia without ever having met Josh on set.  However, one evening, Josh unexpectedly showed up at one of the exterior sets - and those of us watching helplessly on Twitter, thousands of miles away around the world (and in real-time, mind you) were in a tizzy! "OMG, someone in Vancouver has got to find her and tell her JOSH IS THERE!!!" We were trying to find out what hotel she was staying at, so we could call her and get her quickly out to the set!  It all had a happy ending though, as she was indeed at the location already and finally got to see him. Whew…

As Fringe drew nearer to an end of filming in the fall of 2012, I think paranoia about serious spoilers somehow getting out, was at an all-time peak! Those of us who enjoyed discussing spoilers and set photos, felt we had a duty to protect the spoiler-free from anything that might come up.  

One day toward the very end of Season 5 filming, a local Vancouver guy named Sean (@scoobykoo) - who often snagged great candid pictures of meeting the cast of Fringe - posted to his Twitter account a seemingly innocent photo of himself with Joshua Jackson at an outdoor shoot, all smiles. Sean commented that he believed he was watching the filming of the final scenes of the show, although he wasn't sure. However, a few of us "trained observers" looked more closely at the photo and realized it contained a GIGANTIC spoiler for the end of the series... something that the photographer probably couldn't have known, but a fan would notice. Joshua was wearing the same gray T-shirt under his coat, that he had been wearing in the season premiere! The spoiler implications of this, were enormous... as Josh's costume implied that the last scenes of the season were from the same time frame as the first. (This, of course, indeed turned out to be the case, with the "reset" back to 2015.)

"OMG!" a fan DM'd me when she saw Sean's photo. "Should we ask him to take it down???" Well, we clucked about this nervously amongst ourselves for the entire afternoon, but in the end, wound up just hoping that nobody else saw Sean's photo and looked more closely at it. As far as we know, nobody but us diehard set watchers noticed!

All good things have to come to an end, and so did FringeOnSet. Filming concluded on the night of December 13 2012, and into the morning of the 14th. It was very satisfying yet of course, very poignant to man the Twitter account one last time and tweet "live" reports as the main cast members of Fringe wrapped the series one by one. First was Jasika Nicole... then John Noble and Michael Ceveris together... then Anna Torv... and finally, long after the sun had come up in Vancouver, Joshua Jackson.

No more vicarious set adventures from thousands of miles away... but, a probably lifelong appreciation for the people and places of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia! I probably know more about the streets and neighborhoods of Vancouver than anyone who hasn't actually visited there... yet!  -Ellen