Backyard Theater Forum

This is an older movie but it`s a petty good one for the whole family,,
"The last starfighter" 

I was thinking of doing a double-feature this summer with The Last Starfighter & Tron -- as they're both great classic sci-fi's that have sequels in the works... 

I know, this reply is late (but still plenty of time before July 4th) -- If you have a crowd that can handle a classic movie, I might suggest Yankee Doodle Dandy -- one of my personal favorites, and a member of the AFI top 100 films of all time....

Last season we started with the Princess Bride, this year I'll be starting with an older classic that I hope my viewing audience will appreciate...  Disney's Song of the South (I finally got around to finding my PAL transfer that had been missing since I moved a few years back) -- I also plan on screening Avatar and the original Tron at some point this season... (I have had lots of interest in Tron with the sequel coming out this winter...)

Might I suggest a holiday classic (ok, classic might be too strong of a word), but a movie I remember enjoying when I was a kid watching it on t.v.  -- Santa Clause Conquers the Martians -- a movie that's made it onto many "worst picture of all times" list, a movie that was so bad that its copyright holder opted not to renew it, thus it is available with other public domain material at the Internet Archive -- http://www.archive.org/details/santa_claus_conquers_the_martians_ipod

It's cheesy, poorly acted, and so much funnier then it was ever meant to be..

On an off topic note I've been fiddling with the private beta of wave.google.com for the last couple of months -- though I"m not completely sold on it, I know there is a lot of talk and interest in it out there on the internet... 

And just in case any BYT'ers are interested in trying it out I have about a dozen invites that I can share... so just message me with your existing gmail address and I'll send you one...

(boy the above sounds spammy -- full disclosure, I don't work for google (though I wouldn't mind it, can someone find me a job there?) I just like playing with new toys, especially when they're free)

 


ewp, just saw this:  http://backyardtheater.com/forums/index.php?topic=4811.0

well even more invites for the taking...

Doing my final showing of the year tonight, a double feature of E.T.  & Wolverine origins (with a pre-show featuring the Betty Boop/Cab Calloway cartoon ¨The Old Man of the Mountain¨)

Im starting much earlier than usual to fit the second flick so Im going to need to set things up in record time after work today...  Hopefully it will be a wind-free afternoon so that the setup goes smoothly...

Best of luck to everyone, and Happy Halloween!

Long time mac user here (I remember when hard drives were optional)... though still somewhat newbie BYT'er -- but for my last showing I had all my pre-show (audio & video) in a play list on VideoLan Client (I subject my guests and neighbors to theater organ music for an hour before the sun sets enough for me to start the video-pre show) I have my macbookpro hooked up via a DVI<->HDMI cable to an HDMI switch which also has an up-sampling DVD player (already queued up to the main feature) connected to it.... the last video clip of my pre-show is the SMPTE Universal Leader, during which time I hit the remote for the HDMI switch/unpause the DVD player...    then I can relax for awhile...   

I might try fiddling with handbrake a bit more... I was having issues with odd encoding glitches when I was getting ready for my first showing, so I settled on the above method... but having everything prepared on a single dvd would make movie-night a bit simpler for me....

could also be the kettle corn glaze is worse....  or I'm just exceptionally lazy and it seemed like work to me then it might seem like to someone else...   so as with most things, your millage may vary.

I have used the glazes that snappy popcorn uses in my kettle a few times (the kettle corn flavor), but only small batches....  cleanup is a lot of work but can be done with a really really hot/damp cloth (resist the urge to submerge) --  but once again this was after only a single batch,  if you have a crowd that requires you make numerous batches cleanup could get ugly if not downright impossible... 

funny thing..  Hollywood Forever is one of the main reasons I built my BYT.  My wife and I had one of our first dates there (once you get beyond the creepy idea factor, it's really quite cool)  -- And it has a great "cool" factor when you're watching an old Paramount movie, and you can clearly see the Paramount lot and water tower about 500 yards away.  Or we saw Rebel Without a Cause there, and the scenes at the Griffith Observatory were even cooler when you could look to your left and see the Observatory up on the hills....   

4. Budget will be exceeded.

Number 4 should be number 1 on the list.

Randy
Illinois

nah, if you're up-front with the wife about number four, you'll never get to learn the rest of the list...   

1. Measuring twice, and cutting once doesn't really matter if you got your math wrong..
2. Make more popcorn
3. 16feet X 9feet is BIG.... much bigger than you think it is
4. Budget will be exceeded.
5. That tree that you don't think is going to be an issue -- is going to be an issue
6. Make more popcorn.
7. Learn to tie a slipknot (or hire a boyscout)
8. Just because home-depot says it's 10 feet long, doesn't mean it's 10 feet long..
9. yes.... more popcorn.
10.  Wind Happens

Well last night was my first showing.  We had about a dozen people in the audience (sadly an outbreak of the stomach flu prevented any children from attending... ewps) We showed The Princess Bride and it was a big success.  Next to the movie the popcorn was the biggest hit of the night.

Things didn't go quite perfectly.. I'd planned on doing a test run though on friday night, but winds kicked up which required me to fly by the seat of my pants on saturday....

I had scheduled an 8pm showtime.... I had everything set up by 6:30, and started pre-show theatre organ music at 7pm (I had the mp3's in a VideoLan playlist along with my preshow clips)  at 8pm the first video clip started playing, and I quickly adjusted the projector a bit, 6 minutes later a bugs bunny short (falling hare) the blender/20th century fox fanfare with "Lightside Twilight Cinema" in lights....   I followed the fanfare with the "china girl" countdown to help cover me switch audio/hdmi inputs to the upsampling DVD player where I had the DVD queued up and paused.

overall a successful first showing, there are things I think I could have done better, but my guests haven't read this forum to know what is possible, so they were much more easily impressed than I was.....

now it's time to start planning the second showing..... 

The HDMI spec say's 10 meters max for standard HDMI cables but they leave the door open for "enhanced" cables which might include extra electronic "magic" (my words not theirs)  otherwise repeaters would most likely be needed for that long of a run...

http://www.hdmi.org/learningcenter/faq.aspx#44

Just checking the weather forecast here... supposed to be over 80F here today....  grrr I'll most likely have to turn on the A/C  (It's not easy being me....)