Has anybody ever tried (and succeeded?) in showing a saturday matinee at a drive-in?

Now all of you are probably looking at this post thinking - what kind of drugs is this guy on? But it seems to me that it is an idea at least worth exploring. From an economic point of view, the more showing of films you have at your drive-in, the more you utilise your assets to produce revenue which is good for the bottom line.

The technical challenge of course involves your 5000 watt projector vs that zillion+ watt projector in the sky (the Sun).

On a much smaller scale I have struck the same problem when trying to watch tv outdoors (I do this when trying to tune in my satellite dish). The solution I have found is to ensure that the screen is shaded.

A matinee session implies an early afternoon timing which means that the sun will be directly overhead.The logical place to put the screen would be facing east as the sun will set in the west.

Around the acreen would need to be put a kind of box to completely shadeout the sun. I don't know whether this would be sufficient though to give a good picture.

Has anybody tried this? It seems to me that the idea would work better with smaller drive-in screens as for a given projector one could get higher luminosity with a smaller screen as against spreading the image over the surface area of a larger screen.

When I left home to go be a projectionist in another town, many years ago, I roomed with an older couple (friends of the family for years). He was a projectionist at one of the big downtown houses.

His wife was always after me to drive her somewhere, take out the garbage or paint something or other. While I didn't mind a little work around their house, it became a bit of an annoyance as she seemed to delight in finding some chore for me to do every day (this despite the fact that I was paying for room and board).

I often used the excuse, "Sorry, got a matinee' today", and left the house." Her husband always seemed to have uncheduled matinee's too, so she understood.

Drive-ins have much more profitable matinees as flea markets. The Florida swap shop is legendary. Click here

The Saturday afternoon matinee will be at 2.00pm as soon as I figure out how to install the black light source.

Realistically I missed my only chance to screen an afternoon matinee while I was at the Skyline Drive-in in Port Moresby. We had a total eclipse that darkened the afternoon that would have allowed me to do a special charity afternoon. I would have strung together a 6000ft spool of short items, cartoons, newsreels etc and started the show just as it was starting to get perceivably dark. By the time it got to the height of the eclipse the picture on the screen would have certainly been quite watchable.

I do remember the birds becoming very active as the darkness fell but
they soon returned to normal as daylight returned. The afternoon took on a strange greenish hue.

I missed the opportunity as I did not find out about the eclipse until it was too late to make the arrangements. If I had a weeks notice we could have turned it into a money making afternoon for one of the charities that would have revelled in the absolutely unique opportunity.

Regards

I think I might have the last laugh here.

I understand that there once was (is?) a Drive-in Theatre in Iceland. Iceland is quite a way North and as you know the further north you go the longer the nights are in Winter.
http://www.eyeoniceland.com/articles/archive/00main4.html

It stands to reason then that in the depths of winter when the nights are incredibly long, a matinee at the Drive-in would just about be possible. I can just imagine Santa in his sleigh at the matinee at the Drive-in.

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