PLEASE HELP Community Inflatable Outdoor Movie Theater Project PLEASE HELP

[frankthenoob]

Hello ladies and gentleman I would like to ask you for your help as I would like to know what sort of projector I should get for an idea of mine that I would like to present to my town as a means of both raising money but more importantly fostering a sense of community that I feel have been lost throughout many towns across this great nation of our. I would like to first start off by stating that I am not very bright dont worry I have come to terms with it but because of it I do not understand most of the information presented to me and so am unable to make an informative decision as to which outdoor theater system I should present to my towns board members. I would really appreciate it if I could have your input to help me be have a definite amount needed to fund-raise. My town used to be peacefull I mean I remember when we would all run out the bus and hurry home were we would drop off our backpacks and hurry back outside to play. I mean it did not matter wether you were 9 years old or 18 years old there was always something to do outside and hey if there wasnt then you would come up with something, but nowadays kids rarely go outside and have no imagination as eistntead of coming up with something to do like rallying up for a game of football or paintball or even just hanging around at the library with friends they decide eisntead that the only alternative left to them is taking potentially lethal drugs I mean I will admit that, yeah I might have dabled a bit with marijuana I never touched any of the more addicting and lethal drugs but nowadays kids lack comon sense as the trend of kids doing heroine and cocaine in my town has rapidly increased and I would like to change that as I have thought up of an idea to change the method of how school does saturday detentions by eisntead making them participate in a once a week movie screening for both adults and kids as there would be two shows one early for kids and another for adults and we would hopefully have the permission of the town to use their website to take polls of our residents and have them choose what movie they would like. This would hopefully interest them in our local affairs but we would not stop their but I feel as though I have rambled on long enough and so would like to end with a plea for help as this would mean the world to me as well as many other people who just dont know about it but with your help will soon, Thank you My email is spikerone1@live.com

[CatalinaWOW]

I don't know if your idea will bring your community back, but the discussion of it certainly will help.  Folks here can give advice on model numbers and so on, but first will need to know more about your plans/ambitions.  It makes a great deal of difference whether you are planning to do this for 20 people, 200 or 2000.  Whether your inflatable will be light tight so the projector doesn't need to compete with sunlight.  A projector suitable for a very small crowd with little competing light could cost well under $1000 dollars.  One that could be seen by 2000 under a sunlit translucent plastic dome would be far more expensive.

Also you have a few things to think about.  Will an inflatable be surviveable in your climate without heat/air conditioning?  Will there be seating or do folks bring their own?  Lighting?   Just talking about all of these things and other problems to solve in bringing this off could help bring the community together.

[frankthenoob]

It will be in the Midwest where the average temperature is a cool 70 degrees Fahrenheit and while there is a bit of precipitation and humidity it is mostly a hit of miss kind of thing but if past summer are any indications as we have experienced a drought during the summer for the last 3 summers it will be a dry summer this year as well. I would not only like to incorporate the town right next to us but also the 4 other towns surrounding us as well. I would like to set aside a part of the profits to duplicate it in other towns around us as well and hopefully so on and slowly change the peoples hearts, but enough about my sappy dreams I am hoping to have an audience of 3 thousand people which our first show of the day would be viewed in break day sunlight as I would love to have a kids viewing where we will have 3 events through the summer. Where we would show the movie cars and hopefully with the donation of cardboard boxes and art supplies have a them decorate them and give them the opportunity to experience a drive in theater firsthand which we would ask local high schoolers to help with. I digress though but because incorporating our towns kids is what this is all about there must be some sunlight as I would not like to keep them out to late. Seating will not be provided as I would like it to be a picnic as providing seating would just add to the cost. Do you believe I should buy the parts separately would that lower the cost?

[dmills]

Couple of things to watch..

Firstly, inflatable structures outdoors have another name, a "sail". Inflatable screens have this problem in spades, and usually require significant (as in tonnes) of ballast to be safe (And even then there are upper windspeed limits that require the area to be cleared if they are hit). Scaffolding carrying a screen frame and a proper perforated projection surface is actually easier in some cases.

Secondly, projection has this nasty little gotcha in that the area rises as the square of the screen dimensions, 5000 lumens is ok on a 4m (16 square meters) screen is subdued light, but an 8m (64 square meters) one needs not 10,000 but nearer 20K lumens and that is a LOT of money in video projector. Of course you could go for old school film gear, there is a lot of it kicking around right now, an FP4 or even an old Ross or Westrex in a portacabin with a cakestand and a few KW of xenon lamp would get the job done, but then you need somebody who knows what they are doing with film as opposed to video.

Thirdly, Copyright... DVDs are licensed for private performance only, public presentation usually works on a percentage of the gross subject to a minimum guarantee, rights are an issue here (And the Mouse is really hot on this shit).

Fourth, Cardboard? 'Hello Mr fire marshal please shut me down right now'.

3,000 people in a field is also a major logistics headache, everything from toilets to medical cover, to drinking water......

I would be looking to hire this done, especially if you are only running three events a year, it takes care of all your technical and much of your liability risk, there are folks who will set up a drive in movie in a field.

I am not trying to pour cold water on your thing, but do give the logistics serious thought, do talk to the licensing folks and do run the maths on it.

Regards, Dan.

[cowana]

If you're hoping to do outdoor projection with any degree of light around, I think you're massively underestimating the brightness of the projector you will need.

I've done several outdoor screenings with a range of projectors. For a screening just after sunset (ie still a large amount of ambient light) with a 7m wide screen, even a 10K lumen cinema projector (running a 2kW xenon bulb) struggled to produce a visible image. That was for ~1000 people - I would imagine you would be looking for a similar sized screen for your audience.

If it's significantly after sunset (and actually dark), a 6K lumen projector works well on that sort of size screen. Note you will need one with a very long throw lens - unless you want to have the projector infront of the audience, you'll need it mounted high up right at the back of the setup, projecting over everyone's heads and onto the screen.

Licencing issues aside, none of this is simple to organise and design - you might be better of hiring in equipment. Note that when you're talking about hiring expensive projectors and gear, they usually come with people who will set them up and operate them (liability issues) - which makes things easier (although a whole lot more expensive)...

[JoeN]

Public performance rights were mentioned and they are a pretty big deal in the US at least.  Here is some more information:

http://www.prattlibrary.org/locations/sightsandsounds/?id=11096

[Mechanical Menace]

It will be in the Midwest where the average temperature is a cool 70 degrees Fahrenheit

Please tell me the "cool" in that sentence is a joke?

I mean it did not matter wether you were 9 years old or 18 years old there was always something to do outside and hey if there wasnt then you would come up with something, but nowadays kids rarely go outside and have no imagination as eistntead of coming up with something to do like rallying up for a game of football or paintball or even just hanging around at the library with friends

Police don't like "menacing gangs" roaming the streets, and neither do the people who whine that kids don't go outside as much, so due to that hanging around parks/libraries isn't a good idea, And if they're not white kids...


The other thing is most research suggests that higher tech goodies don't eat into kids outdoor time, or adversely effects their imagination etc, it just leads to them watching less of the idiot box.

So don't worry about the tech. If you want to get that community feeling back get the older folks, police, residents associations and whoever else wants kids to be little adults because they find it easier or less annoying to agree that kids are welcome in public places and allowed to be kids.

[Zero999]

If you do this, how are you going to protect the expensive equipment from theft?

What if there's a fight?

How are you going to stop them taking drugs and alcohol in?

In some places the police need to be informed before every large public event, so they can have extra staff in case there's any trouble.