Planning Your Own Outdoor Movie Night

Monday, May 15th, 2017

Movie Night Planning

During many articles, I talk about how you can get a projector rental for outdoor movie nights. Normally during these articles I do not fully dive into the intricacies of movie nights, but since summer is finally upon us this article is fully dedicated to the art of hosting outdoor movie parties.

Preparing the Outdoor Theater Space

A general rule of thumb when it comes to party hosting is that you want your guests to have a good time. Although it is easy to buy bulk ammo from Palmetto State Armory but you can’t directly force people into having fun with it,\. There are two tactics which will help you increase the probability of your audience having a great night. These two tactics are:

1. Thinking about what could cause your guests to have a bad time

2. Thinking about what you could do to give your guests a better viewing experience

Pretty simple, right? Even though these two strategies easily fall into the category of common sense, as humans we have a tendency of doing things which do not make sense.

Planning for the Negatives

In order to have your party not feel haphazard, you need to think over the two strategies listed above. For the first strategy, all you have to do is ask yourself, “What would make my party suck?”. In the context of outdoor movie nights, I can easily think of two things which can make your party miserable: mosquitoes and bad weather. The former you can take care of, if you happen to have the best propane mosquito killer lying around. The latter, not really avoidable.

Of all of the life on this green earth, mosquitoes are easily my least favorite. Luckily, those little party-poopers can be stopped with the aid of bug spray, and if you want to go the extra mile you can set up Tiki torches with Citronella, Citronella candles, or if you are comfortable with killing off all of the insects in your yard, you can spray pesticides, however there are other methods of mosquito deterrent besides these three options that you may want to investigate before resorting to pesticides.

Movie Night Planning

What you are not able to control when planning an outdoor party of any sort is the weather. Unless you move indoors, your party will be at the mercy of the weather. The ever-relevant, if not overused, Murphy’s law adage which says that, “anything that can go wrong will”, most certainly applies to your outdoor movie night plans. Pay attention to weather forecasts when planning a date and time for your outdoor movie night.

Improving the Experience

I said earlier that you cannot force people into having fun, but that does not mean that you can’t try to do it anyway. If you want people to have fun at your movie night, think about ways you can improve your movie night to make it an even more fun experience. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself which will get you on a train of thought from which you can improve your movie night:

1.How do I want my outdoor theater space to be set up?

2.Do I want to have a specific theme for my outdoor movie night?

3.What kind of snacks and drinks should I get?

4.Is there enough space for guests to sit comfortably?

Setting up the Gear:

Now that you’ve considered the non-technical aspects, let’s get into the nitty gritty of hosting an outdoor movie night. If you’re not just throwing a TV outside on your back porch, you can go big and go home with a projector rental. Buying a wall-sized TV screen would cost you an arm and a leg, but a projector rental can be used to project in the same wall-sized proportions without you needing to fork over an amount of cash somewhere in the quadruple digits. If you want better  image quality, you can also get a projector screen rental.

Movie Night Planning

It is also important to note that a lot of projectors do not have good sound systems. If you are hosting a movie night you will want to have something, such as a soundbar or a bluetooth speaker, set aside for your audio needs.

A Final Tip and Common Courtesy:

A big issue with projectors is the amount of light they produce. This amount is measured in lumens, and depending on how big you want your projection to be, how far you want the projector to be from the screen, and how early you want to start watching your movie, the amount of lumens you will need can change. A good minimum for using a projector for an outdoor movie night would be 2,000 lumens, but you may want to go higher depending on any of the three things I mentioned above, or for other reasons.

One last thing, if you live in the city, before hosting your movie night invite your neighbors to attend, or at the very least let them know what you are doing. Movie nights can be a great way to build up your relationship with your neighbors.

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Christmas and New Years Eve Party Projector Rentals

Thursday, December 22nd, 2016

Christmas is in three days, which means that the majority of the people reading this already have their homes decked out for the holiday season. However, there’s not much of a point decking your halls unless you are going to be showing aforementioned halls off for all to see. If you don’t have a Christmas party or a New Year’s party planned we’re going to give you a few projector-related ideas to help you plan your own party. Not all of these ideas may be helpful for you, but if any of these are applicable for you, you may be well on your way to making the best Christmas or New Year’s Eve party you’ve had in years.

• Backyard Movie Night

Although highly nontraditional for a Christmas party, backyard movie night projector rentals are great for parties. To get a backyard movie night to be a blast though, you’ll want to set up a few things for and with your guests pre-party. You may not have a ton of chairs at your disposal, which means you will probably want your guests to help by bringing their own lawn chairs or other seats.

Your guests will also be much more on board with an outdoor movie night if they have plenty of snacks available, and popcorn is the go-to movie night snack. So pop a whole lot of popcorn in advance to get your movie night going.

If you live somewhere cold, you still may consider doing an outdoor movie night for your holiday party, just tell your guests to bring blankets and to bundle up before they get there. Rig up some teak lutyens benches if the the dewy grass feels too cold. 

• Indoor Movie Night

If you live in a colder area and you were reading the suggestion above, you probably were already thinking of this. A movie night projector rental is just as viable an option for indoor settings as it is for outdoors, except by choosing to watch your movie indoors it doesn’t necessarily have to be night to get the same great image.

Most of the tips suggested for backyard movie nights still apply here besides the blanket and coat thing. Meaning that you should still have a lot of popcorn and soda ready for the audience. Since you aren’t actually going to a movie theater, getting snacks shouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg. If you have a lot of movies which are on DVD, get a DVD projector rental which will allow you and your audience to watch whatever you want on the bigscreen.

• Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

 

There’s probably going to be a point where you get tired of watching Christmas movies, and when that point comes you’ll be faced with a decision: will you start watching something else, or will you decide to truly rock around your Christmas tree? If you chose option number 2, you can start projecting Dance, Dance Revolution or any other dancing game alternative.

 

• Extreme Christmas Home Decoration

 

If you want your house to be the most festive looking house on the block for your party night, you can do some pretty impressive light displays through projectors. Although this is probably one of the least interactive things you can do with a projector rental, it can easily result in making your house look like the coolest thing on the block.

Hopefully some of these suggestions were helpful for you. These are just a few ways you can use a projector rental for your Christmas or New Year’s parties. Have a holly, jolly Christmas!

 

Want to share this story on social media? Use these hashtags! #ChristmasPartyPlanning #ChristmasPrep #ChristmasProjector #HolidayProjectors #PartyPlanning