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Wanted 3m wide Cinema Screen - Community Cinema

DRD

DRD

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Joined
Oct 26, 2014
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5,441
Location
Newark
I am setting up a not for profit community cinema in my village hall

I have a spare amp/ speakers/ blu ray. A friend has access to a suitable projector. So these will come for free.

What we do not have is a screen. And the layout of my village hall (doors/ fire exits in the shorter gable end walls) means that we cannot project onto a wall or mount a screen on the wall

Does anyone have a freestanding big projector screen sat around ?

Thanks


D
 
Hi
I got an electric ceiling mount electric screen which electrically closes up. The unit then hangs maybe 300mm total when closed up.
it plugs in and there is a lead that hangs down with up down buttons. There was a remote with it but that's long gone, but gettable.
It was taken down working ready for Ebay.
If it is for a genuine cause then you can have it but would have to collect from Solihull .
It should work but no guarantees,
Tom
 
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Hi. Thank you for the kind offer. We really need a freestanding one unfortunately, with a tripod of similar

They go for about 30 quid, but the last one on gumtree was in Cornwall

D
 
You could make one out of a rectangular garden sail. Just need a few attach points and you can tension it up for viewing or unhook it and fold it away.
 
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thanks for the suggestion

Like everything, I am wanting to go a bit overkill with this. I can hire a very good projector/ 3m wide portable screen from a cinema charity but it means a 2h round trip to collect it and then again to return it. Our village hall has velux windows and the blinds are adequate but not perfect. So in Summer I will need a bright (expensive) projector. I will hire for the first few shows as I want to put on the highest quality experience I can. Lots of these community cinemas fail unfortunately. And I am a great believer in first impressions. We are putting on a bar, hot dogs, pop corn, ice creams, the local women's institute have been asked to do hot drinks too

If I can prove the concept, get the tills rolling, I would then look to buy kit for the cinema in two waves. Wave 1 would be is cheap and cheerful - the standard of a typical village hall cinema - £500 projector type scenario. Wave 2 would be good quality - £1500 plus projector, glass bead screen. This would allow the wave 1 kit to become backup/ available for other village hall users

I know a welder who will knock me up a stand very cost effectively as wave 1 kit - but I want to get a nicer looking thing if I can. It should just be a matter of patience and scanning gumtree/ ebay

There is not much to do in my village save the 1 pub, drugs and underage sex. So hopefully the cinema might enrich the place a bit as all our amenities are just being turned into housing
 
Thanks for the suggestion, 275 sounds like a great price for one of these. I was wondering about used, but you never know how long a used bulb will last. The charity rents out a hd 5000 lumens one which is what I will start with.

I tried a 2500 lumens one in the village hall during daylight hours with all the blinds closed and that seemed ok to me - but I think it would struggle in the summer

I have big floor standing speakers and a big pioneer av amp that I can lend it in the short term

the thing about starting these cinemas is that you have no idea how many will show, yet you must cover fixed costs:

£85 Film licence
£25 village hall fee
£25 bar fee
£15 blu ray
£25 equipment hire

So you need to bring in £150 or so just to break even. Round here these little cinemas charge about £3 a seat and show films that are 6 months to 2 years old. You can show ones at about 10 weeks BUT it can turn into a nightmare if the disc does not arrive from the licensing firm, as you will have presold tickets and have no way of getting hold of the disc. It is much safer to wait until they are out on blu ray, which is what these places seem to do

I now also understand why cinemas do hot dogs and pop corn as these offer fantastic margins and require very limited catering skill. Wikinder "premium" hot dogs in jars cost about £1.50 for 8 in a glass jar. These are made with real cuts of meat (cheap hot dogs use mechanically recovered meat) . 2 year shelf life, pre cooked. Tea and coffee literally cost nothing. Pop corn virtually costs nothing. Whatever ice creams are on offer at the supermarket cost buttons too. These sorts of things could massively increase spend per head and profits

If I can get 50 or so bums on seats it would break even on tickets. I am hoping for more like 100 attendees a show and if folk spend say on average £1 a head on the above - this could get quite profitable and enable equipment purchase. With about 8 shows a year, you would be making a couple of grand a year
 
I thought about that, but I can't be ****d. I took my Funhouse to the village fete a couple of years ago. It took less than 20 I think. Just not worth the logistics, risk to back/ game/ car
 
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