An outdoor screening in the lovely grounds of the Barn Cinema, Dartington
With weather like this, it's only natural that our thoughts should turn to films in the great outdoors! The Barn Cinema in Dartington, Devon runs lots of Outdoor Cinema screenings every year and here Barn's Cinema Manager & Film Programmer (and ICO Technical Ambassador) Jim Whittle tells us how they do it.
Over to you Jim!
The Barn Cinema runs a full-time film programme with at
least three screenings per day run by a small team of seven staff. Although we all love
working here, we don’t struggle to fill our time so when our Artistic Director
approached me in the cafe and asked ‘Can we do outdoor screenings as well?’ I
of course, said yes! Four years on and our outdoor film programme has expanded
from three screenings per year using 35mm to twenty screenings at five different events at
Dartington and across Devon - now using 2K digital projection with a choice of two
sizes of screen.
Our most recent event was a series of six films over two weekends in July. Our preferred blend of new releases alongside classic and
cult films can make the programming quite tricky; this time around we got a good mix with Walking on Sunshine and Tammy for our new releases (which we also screened inside the Barn Cinema for several days each), A Hard
Day’s Night and The Birds for our classic film offering and for the cult film
lovers, Pulp Fiction and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the
Desert.
A rapt audience at one of Barn's outdoor screenings
The screenings take place in a small car park area
immediately adjacent to the cinema and the cafe in Dartington’s formal gardens, so the location is ideal - both practical and aesthetically pleasing. We
also have the added bonus that should it rain hard, we can quickly move the
audience into the cinema and continue the screening.
For projection, we use an
NEC800C / Doremi server which is located inside the cinema’s stage loading area, meaning at the end of the night we can simply shut the doors and the projector
is safe. For other venues, we have made a shed with portholes to house the
equipment. Our sound system is a Dolby DMA8 plus coupled with a CP650. We only
use centre, left and right channels and feed the signal through a Soundcraft
mixer to a powerful PA system. Our screens are standard cinema type screens
either rigged to a Prolyte truss or a scaffold structure depending on the size
screen we use. We are lucky that Dartington operates several high spec studio
spaces and we have access to the rigging and PA systems as well as some
technicians to help set it all up.
Waiting for the film to begin...
The weeks leading up the screenings are very busy with
equipment being sourced and checked out and a lot of time checking the Met Office website. This year, the weather was very kind with lovely sunny weather;
it remained warm right up until the end of the films. This helped us sell out
most of the screenings with large audiences for the remainder. The events are well supported by local people and there is a marked difference in atmosphere from indoor screenings: people arrive with picnics, wine, blankets and often
dressed up before films. The sight of the audience
(and staff) up and dancing their way through Walking on Sunshine will stay with
me for a while!
Not only do the outdoor screenings provide very welcome
income during what is often a very quiet time for cinemas, but the cinema team
gets a lot from these events. Everyone chips in, from making DCP trailers to
designing posters and handing out leaflets in the town, not to mention rigging
scaffolding, moving PA systems, seats and projectors. It is an enormous amount
of additional hard work but always brings the team together and gives an
enormous sense of achievement. At the end of the night, once everything
has been put away and tidied up, we all share a midnight pint of cider to
unwind!
Would I recommend running outdoor screenings to other indie
exhibitors? Yes, you won’t regret it!
Thank you, Jim!
Last week we launched our new training initiative, Technical Skills for Digital Exhibition with a Forum at BFI Southbank. Read on for a diary of the day and an introduction to #TechSkillsUK from one of our newly appointed Technical Ambassadors - Dave Petty, AV Technician at Cornerhouse in Manchester, who'll be available to advise independent film exhibitors in the North West Hub region as part of the scheme.
Over to our guest blogger, Dave!
The start of the launch at BFI Southbank
Being
invited to the BFI Southbank is something any cine-literate tech geek was never
going to turn down. Well, provided you’re not a born-and-bred Londoner, in
which case the Southbank’s heady tourist pleasures may elicit less excitement. But being a newly-appointed Tech Ambassador for
the ICO's Technical Skills for Digital Exhibition programme, created in conjunction with the BFI Film Audience Network, time away from the
office with the prospect of soaking up a whole day’s worth of technical
knowledge in the company of my fellow technical peers, well – it was an
opportunity not to be missed. But I digress.
The
Tech Ambassador roles have been filled by around two dozen people,
hand-picked from the length and breadth of the United Kingdom to offer their
expertise and specialised knowledge of digital cinema and all its AV-related
trappings to those in need of a helping hand.
David Monk (left), CEO of the European Digital Cinema Forum, with Tech Ambassador Peter Knight of the BKSTS
Independent exhibitors, community
cinemas, film societies and festivals – all entities that may have been
comfortable with 35mm and domestic-level film exhibition (via LCD projectors et
al) but who may be struggling with the transition to digital. And with the
industry pretty much fully converted to digital-only exhibition, the Tech
Ambassadors will hopefully be an invaluable resource for any individual or
organisation that requires a peg-up onto the digital ladder.
After
some brief intros from Hatice Özdemirciler (ICO Head of Training & Professional Development), Tony Jones (Film
Hub Central East) and David Sin (ICO Head of Cinemas), it was over to Jim
Whittle from the Barn Cinema in Dartington, who outlined his prototype site visit to
CUBE in Bristol.
This visit provided a framework for the Tech Ambassador pilot
scheme to build upon. Jim’s extensive knowledge of D-Cinema gave CUBE the
opportunity to convert to digital safe in the knowledge they had someone on hand who
was familiar with kit, spec, and who crucially had worked with the handful of
companies that install everything necessary to exhibit digital films to
DCI-compliant spec. In a world of confusing acronyms and technical minutiae,
someone like Jim is exactly what the independent sector needs; expanding that
role to a fleet of Technical Ambassadors (of which Jim is one) will allow for a faster, more efficient flow of specialist knowledge for those who
most require it.
The national spread of Technical Ambassadors
Pressing
on with the day, we had the pleasure of being bombarded with a whole array of
info from David Monk, CEO of the European Digital Cinema Forum (if you ever
need to know about colour spectrum separation, he’s your man) and Russell
Would, Content Supervisor at the BFI, who gave us a whistle-stop tour of DCP
(Digital Cinema Package) creation from the top level (Clipster) all the way to
free, open source software.
Even for someone familiar with much of the areas
discussed it was a lot to digest, but invaluable in terms of
both brushing up my own technical knowledge, and being able to offer this knowledge to those in need as a Technical
Ambassador.
All
that remains is to be allocated sites across the country we will visit to offer
our advice – with the fleet ranging from freelance AV techs to long-standing
projectionists (and many technical areas in-between), it’s down to the ICO to
assess applicants' needs and fit an Ambassador to their requirements.
A
bespoke service is being offered, and I for one am relishing the
opportunity to help bring independent cinema into the digital age. For what
could be an intimidating prospect for those making the transition, we as
Ambassadors should be able to make the road travelled a little less bumpy.
Thank you, Dave!