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Last night we did our first real outdoor movie. We had a great spot right next to the bay (5 meter away from the water) in the Berkeley Marina. 12 people showed up, and we watch Cinema Paradiso preceded by a historic Popeye cartoon and some shorts by Thomas Edison from 1901. It was amazing to watch a movie in that setting, a view over the Bay Bridge, San Francisco and the Golden Gate. I've been wanting to do outdoor movies since I saw an outdoor screening at Plaza Futura in Eindhoven, Netherlands in 1995, and I was very happy last night to finally make it happen. The location and movie choice were 'secret' until a few hours prior to the movie and were disclosed through an 800 number. Here are the pictures.
Comments:
Christian,
I am hosting an outdoor movie night the first weekend in Oct. Is there any thing special I should know? You seem to have this down to a science... any helpful hints please email me at carriesayers@hotmail.com! Thanks in advance, and if you are in MI the first weekend stop by!
Carrie,
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These movie nights outdoors are great. I'd be happy to give you some more info. I used a farily dim and old projector, that can only project 640 * 480 pixels, with 300 lumens brightness. These days you can buy an Infocus X1 or something similar for around $800 with over 1000 lumes and 800 * 600 pixels. But you probably already have a projector. For power I use 2 golf cart batteries, they are the U2000 model from Interstate Batteries, they are 6 Volts each, and put in series they give 12 Volts. More info at ibsa.com, search for U2000. We played a movie that was over 150 minutes on these batteries using my projector, DVD player and speakers. If your Projector uses more power, you might need more batteries. To turn the 12V power into 120V I use a 600 Watt pure-sine wave inverter, such as: http://www.skingcompany.com/detail.asp?product_ID=PST-60S-12 I used a regular stand-alone DVD player, with an s-video cable going to the projector. For sound I used a Cambridge Soundworks speaker system. They sell 'computer' speaker systems, that are reasonable in quality and weight. I used a 2.1 (2 speakers + 1 subwooder) system I used a Tripod Screen, like the ones people use for slide-shows, mine was about 60" wide. Depending on the location you might needs some ropes and stakes to tie it down. If you have enough light output, you might be able to project on a wall outside. And then lots of warm clothes, at least here in the San Francisco Bay Area, it might be better where you are. I also used a tripod with a custom plate on top to put the projector on. It makes it very convenient in turns of adjustments and location to have it on a tripod. Otherwise you end up stacking boxes etc, and it becomes a shaky solution. The tripod is a heavy duty Bogen tripod. I hope this wasn't too technical, let me know if you have more questions, and let me know how it goes. Christian |