Starting drive-in movie theatre

[John Wilson]

I might very well ask the same question of you and everyone else who has tried to help you...you are very obviously out of your depth not to mention your budget. Your continued questions to answers already given are quite painful.

[Marcel Birgelen]

If you buy a second hand rental projector - make sure it comes with a suitable lens for the purpose - as buying a lens separately may cost you more than the projector. Also, many of these projectors do not offer HDMI/HDCP inputs, rendering them useless in combination with todays Bluray players. Well, you may be able to buy an HDFury second hand...

About 6 or 7 years ago we did a "micro-road-show" when we got hold of a bunch of Barco Reality 909 Split Packs, which came from some disassembled flight simulators. We had someone revising them, replacing worn-out CRT tubes. We later sold them off to home-theater enthusiasts. But before that, we stacked 4 of those evil things together, came up with some edge-blending solution and did some "pop-up" cinema shows in a bunch of hotels, where we converted the ballroom to a "movie-theater" for a few nights. We used a bunch of HDFurys to go from digital to analog. We built a bunch of wooden crates for the business-end of the 909 Split Packs which would be placed in front of the audience, because of the very short throw of those CRT projectors. But it worked, there's actually not much wrong with short-throw solutions, certainly not with CRT projectors, where you can bend your picture in all kinds of shapes without losing much resolution.

After every build-up, we spent most of the rest of the day getting the edge-blending right, so you could not see the seam. It took an enormous amount of efforts, something you'd never do in normal cinema operations, but it was a vanity geek project. To be honest, the picture itself was one of the best I've ever seen. It had somewhat of the fabric of 35mm due to the lack of a visible pixel grid, the stability of digital and the most perfect blacks ever.

Besides the HD Furys and the custom boxes we designed for the projectors and the screen rig, we practically had all equipment we needed. I can tell you, this, by far blew any $1000 budget already, it was something closer to EUR 15K...

So, the "morale" of the story, if there is one, even though I'm not afraid of employing "ghetto" solutions from time to time, even "ghetto" solutions costs considerable money in this field of business.

[Jacob Tutt]

What you have is more of a business case problem. Assuming you are starting with no equipment you have 3 options

Buy equipment - your presentation quality will suffer, and you will have to invest a lot of time (and wages) learning how to use it.
Rent equipment - you will have a decent quality presentation, but you will have to invest a lot of time (and wages) learning how to use it.
Engage the services of an inflatable screen rental company - you will have excellent quality and time on your hands.

Leave the details about screen size, projector throw, sound system dB and lumens to someone else with the technical expertise. Have a good understanding about your location (sunset, nearby ambient light, power source) and how you want the event to operate, then use your budget to hire an outdoor movie company to do this for you.

Still, with your $1000 you may only be able to get one good event.

You will not be able to screen DCPs. Even if you techinically could, there are no new theatrical release in the near future and the depots that would ship you the films are closed? Program your screenings for blurays you can access easily.

[Bruce Cloutier]

I am not sure a drive-in is the answer to social distancing anyway. In the old days we used to try to pack as many people in the car as possible. I think even once some hid in the trunk. Wrong. I know. But it was the thing I guess. Then we'd all kind of fall out of the car and spread out within earshot of the speakers.

You do greatly reduce the cleaning issue, having to police social spacing, the use of masks, and occupancy limits. I am sure that there are different rules everywhere. My wife and I won't go out together now because, well, we're a couple and haven't abandoned each other. We have always held hands when we walk, and frankly, we don't need people even looking over at us thinking that we are idiots for not maintaining social distancing. And, a huge amount of communications is body language (especially with your significant other) and masks mask that.

Logically there needs to be a way that an immediate family, those who wallow in the some domicile, can declare themselves a viral unit. The unit then has the responsibility to social distance from others. Maybe if you all wear the same color T-shirts or some kind of arm band. Then in public it is okay for those members of the group to physically interact. No one then should think ill of them or take it upon themselves to comment. Or we can just all wait for this thing to run its course and for it to be safe to return to the old normal or some close approximation.

Dropping 80K let alone 10K to try to entertain folks in the short term seems a bit much. Especially when if you build it they will not necessarily come. I am not sure there is enough profit in that.

It might all be worth it if you can think outside of the box and create a new paradigm. You can get a crap load of inexpensive projectors that can adequately fill a 10-foot screen with bright 4K. Maybe distributing the video on lots of little individual screens is a valid approach. Maybe instead of cars you use park benches that can be hosed off and otherwise cleaned by mother nature? Maybe instead of FM you can charge people to pair their Bluetooth earbuds? Bring some combination of creative thinking to bear on the issue. At least then it might just become a great new way to get out to the movies perhaps for years to come. The next fad.

Sorry, just feeling the need to vent some logic.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Bruce, I'm all in for creative thinking We've done some crazy stuff over the years, because we could. Some we did on a shoestring budget, but we often spent far more money than I had planned for, but in the end, the experience was worth it. Just like the stuff we did with a bunch of old CRT projectors, which we blended together. (But keep in mind, those things were DESIGNED to do just that from the get-go.) But even then, most projectors can't be properly edge-blended, simply because they suck at being black. You get all kinds of ugly grey artifacts on the parts where they overlap. Even then, the hardware you need to edge-blend a whole bunch of cheap projectors to fill like a 60ft. screen will set you back more than $1000. I know, because we've been there over the years. Also keep in mind that this is outside, you need to put the projectors in some kind of enclosure.

But the whole idea is that it can be done cheaply, if you invite the correct people to the party to help you. You don't need to buy a projector if you can find someone who has one. You don't need to buy a screen, if you can find someone who can build you a stage rig with a screen. And there is no shame in asking others to help you out, especially in these times.

The problem is, the question isn't really about a creative new concept. If it would be for some kind of "private drive-in cinema", where every car gets its own screen for example, I'd say... interesting idea, let's have a look at how you could make this work, despite all the obvious problems at hand. But until now, it looks more like trying to fit a screw with a hammer.

By the way, if you know a source of REAL CHEAP REAL 4K projectors, I'm all ears. Ah, and just accepting a 4K input signal doesn't count, it needs to have proper 4K panel resolution.

[Bruce Cloutier]

Not withstanding that I have had 4K in my home theater for... I am guessing now 10 years (first LG 4K panel in SW PA), and today for the most part I am forced to enjoy 2K upscaled. Long story. Another rantable experience dealing with DCI and HDMI. Upscaled 2K in a large screen format is still worth the price of admission IMHO.

Yeah. I mean if you can throw something together then why not do it? We have done this in a pop-up outdoor setting (campout) successfully. But then there was no admission. Er... beer donations aside.

I suppose you can create an outdoor distributed theater with 4K flat screens and skip the projection entirely. Those might be easier to enclose too. Certainly scalable. Are outdoor patrons going to be that picky about black levels? They already compromise on sound. For me, sound is as important if not more. Can't go without a good SW.

But if you are going to go out of your way to open up a new venue in this environment, do something special. You would likely get really good press out of it. Plus, it is really exciting to pull something unique off. You need something too to draw customers out of the safety of their caves.

[Marcel Birgelen]

There is a big difference between 4K display panels (both OLED and LCD) and projectors. There aren't really any cheap projectors I know of that can handle 4K natively, most are stuck at FullHD and plenty don't go any further than XGA or WXGA. But most cinema is still just 2K, so that's not really the issue. The issue for large screens is light and light is expensive.

The problem here isn't so much the black level, but the fact that edge-blending leaky projectors, like most modern digital projectors, will give you a horrible image in dark scenes. You'll clearly see the patchwork of individual images and it will look worse than 3-strip Cinerama on a bad day. Also, cheap projectors are almost impossible to correctly calibrate, so you often end up with color differences too.

There is also a noticeable difference between a bunch of friends organizing a backyard BBQ with open-air movie v.s. an event where I actually do pay admission to watch a movie. As for the subwoofer, in a car, you can bring your own subwoofer, believe me, some of them can be more powerful than your average cinema sub...

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

Jake, having been born and raised in Bergen County NJ, and still living close to the county, I have been trying to figure out who you are working for. There are not many independent theatres left anymore in the area.

Aside from the unrealistic budget, where are you planning to open this drive-in? Is the site zoned for a drive-in theatre? If not, your boss will need to apply a zoning variance from the town, and to do that he will need to provide the zoning board traffic studies, noise and light studies, site map showing where and how he is going to handle rest rooms / porta-johns etc. He really does not want to spend a lot of money only to have the town shut him down.

Then, he needs to determine how he is going to handle licensing to show consumer Bluray's in a commercial environment. Most of the studios will have no with problem licensing, but if he is planning on not telling the distributors, at best all his theatres will be cut off for years, and at worse criminally prosecuted. If you were in the city of Nowhere Idaho you could probably get away with unauthorized screenings, but here in the suburbs of NYC you will be found out.

Further, as others have commented, your budget is not realistic. It brings to mind the old saying, if you can't do it right, don't do it at all. I don't mean to be a downer, but your boss should already know all this if he owns an indoor theatre.

I love drive-ins and would be very happy if someone opened a permanent North Jersey drive-in. I learned to run projectors decades ago at the old Hackensack Drive-in. I worked my way though college as the manager and projectionist for a drive-in in Ohio. I came home to NJ and was a partner in one of the last companies to operate the Paramus Drive-in, and I have fond memories of the Allendale Drive-in. All gone now.

[Jake Sinn]

Just so everyone is aware, I am WELL AWARE that a budget of $1,000 is not possible for what he is trying to do. (At least for a quality presentation)

[Sean McKinnon]

I just did a quote for outfitting a temporary drive in for around 80 cars with projector (16,000 Lumen DCI), Lens, Lamp, FM Transmitter, Audio Processor (reusing an existing server) and an OFE screen at a major discount and only one day install it was close to $70,000.

I don't think its worth giving your theatre a bad name or reputation trying to do this for under $1,000 all in. Even IF it were possible (which it isnt) the product would be terrible.

There is an outfit going around selling blow up screens and $3,000 projectors as a package. 12,000 Lumen blu-ray (non DCI) projector supposedly fixed lens 35' throw on a 40' blow up. I can assure you that image is going to look awful.

It may be more reasonable to spend that $1,000 on hiring someone to come in and move your existing machine temporarily but you may end up not having an appropriate lens.

Where are you located?

FYI- Our customer raised almost three times the cost of the projector in a week on go fund me but they are a well established non profit theatre in a unique shall we say captive community.

[Jake Sinn]

Located in NJ, USA