Outdoor movie and yet another use for front loader

Richard · Jul 12, 2010

Without posting all the in between pictures, we had a movie night for the wifes cousins who came out to the farm and camped this past weekend.

It was a raging success.

We have now done this several times however, virtually all of the earlier attempts were with a much smaller screen...sitting on the back patio of my wifes fathers house, or the front lawn of her uncle's house.

We were using some speakers then that were maybe 20/24" tall with 12" woofer in them. At one of the 'events' they even set the speakers up about 10 feet BEHIND the crowd which I thought was kind of backward....but....I kept my mouth shut since it was a family deal and no one was asking for my thoughts, even though I have more experience and 'toys' in this area.

For this weekend, I was going to shut my mouth again however, they did ask me what I would suggest, so I just told them to let me take care of it.

I dragged my bass bins out of the garage (thank you Brutus!) and the top horn came out of my living room. I decided to make a single stack since both woofer bins combined would add a little meat to the bass and I didn't want to drag another large top horn down from the house.

Additionally, I thought a single source would give the best intelligibility to the sound.

At the risk of being the obtuse, smug, arrogant husband that I am.... I must say this was a smashing success and the sound was absolutely outstanding. Absolutely smoked any of the other setups we've had.

We weren't done taking everything apart (went to bed at 3:00 a.m.) and they were already talking about doing another one this upcoming weekend or soon after....

Having an outdoor movie with your family is recommended.

The screen was a rear projection screen. My brother in law provided the visual tools (projector, screen) as well as the trailer with theater seats bolted down to it and the little concession cart. We didn't use the cart but, my wife did pop everyone some popcorn during the movie so everyone had hot popcorn. We had maybe 25/30 people there for the evening.

Loads of fun

:thumbsup:

Richard · Jul 12, 2010

Here's the audio stack & electronics

I ended up moving everything from the smaller, wobbly table to the larger table.

This was the first time I have ever done this, so was learning on the fly.

Next time we do it I'll have most of these bugs worked out.

beenthere · Jul 12, 2010

What movie did you watch?

Richard · Jul 12, 2010

The movie for the crowd, picked by the crowd, was Avatar. I personally found it to be too long and not terribly interesting. Then again, my "collection" is maybe a total of 40/50 concert DVD's (The Who, Crosby/Stills/Nash, Queen and so on....)

I doubt I personally own 2 movies.

Prior to the official movie starting, I put Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame) "In the Flesh" dvd. There is a beginning to one of his songs where they play the track of a tractor/semi starting its engine. During this part, I was at the volume control, on the wrong side of the speakers but, I cranked it WAY up.

One of the gals sitting in the field was all smiles when she heard/felt that, saying it was like the truck was right next to her.

No one had heard a sound system like this before outside of maybe a movie theater. Being outdoors and in the middle of a desolate land mass, I was able to turn it up a little bit without fear/concern of the neighbors.

The neighbors were of course, the very family members that these people were coming out to visit.

My sister in law says the only kind of movies that are good in this outdoor setting next to the woods are typically of the scary type. I'd be ok with something like Saving Private Ryan with the super intense opening sequence however, I would also fear that the sound of the D-Day invasion going across the lake might cause the people on the other side of the lake to call in the National Reserves and we'd have paratroopers dropping in looking for the trouble makers

tommu56 · Jul 12, 2010

We did a similar thing at scouts with October sky and the kids really enjoyed it it was a camporee based on aviation .
I just used a projection type monitor and a white pvc tarp and conduit frame.

tom