Oh the joy of being the parent of a teenage daughter and rising to the challenge of helping to organise a 15 year old birthday party. D1 decided to have a birthday party at home this year and couldn’t decide on a theme, it went from a disco to fancy dress to an outdoor movie.
In the end the decision was made to settle for an outdoor movie and hope that the weather held up as it was early May.
The next challenge for me was how to make an outdoor movie screen, as it can be quite windy in May so using a sheet as an outdoor movie screen was out.
After much trial and error I decided to try projecting the movie onto a large sheet of white corflute that I already had – Bingo this worked a treat. So a couple of days beforehand off I went to our local hardware store – Bunnings and purchased another sheet of corflute and some white masking tape.
I taped up what was going to be the back of the screen and drilled a couple of small holes in the corners so I could thread some string through in order to hang my backyard movie screen.
I looped the string around a piece of wood which I placed across the top of the wall (see photo below) and tied the bottom corners of my outdoor screen to a couple of nails which I drove into the bricks. Having the outdoor movie screen tied at the top and bottom made it very secure and it did not move or blow around during the movie. So thankfully there were no complaints from a very tough audience of teenage girls!
We discovered that putting the speaker inside a cardboard box enhanced the sound which is why you see a box above.
The scene was further set by adding draping some fairy-lights across and the garden and I also bought an outdoor firepit as the nights can get quite cool. This also worked as a focal attraction and somewhere for a gaggle of teenagers to hang around and chat and listen to their music…
Seating was a mixture of beanbags and beach chairs
Popcorn and soft drinks were supplied non-stop during the movie and this as well as the choice of the movie seemed to keep everyone happy, as we noticed that during the movie not one of the teenagers checked their phone or went on social media – a sure measure of success these days!!
Because we have quite a small backyard our outdoor movie screen worked perfectly and the quality of the projection and sound was good. In fact, it all worked out so well that we hosted an outdoor movie night in the local park for our local friends and neighbours.
This turned out to be a really fun night and a great way of getting to know your neighbours over some drinks and nibbles before the movie starts – but that’s a whole other story!!
