the_busman_chronicles

guelph guerilla drive-ins

categories: guelphite, campmobile

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A few weeks ago I read a posting on Gimodo about “Guerilla Drive-ins”. The concept is pretty simple: find a white wall, borrow an LCD projector and grab your laptop, wait until the sun goes down and have yourself a movie show. We had done something similar on the back wall of our old house about 5 years ago - lawn-chair drive-ins I think we called it.Ā
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The “guerilla” nature also implies some grass-roots, ready in a instant organization. The later can be handled by a simple email list. Picking a different wall every time makes it interesting (technically challenging) and then emailing your friends that day to let them know where to show up makes it spontaneous.Ā
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I mentioned the concept to friend and scinema club founder Dean Palmer. He of course said “Lets do it!”, so then we set out to acquire the right equipment to do it right.Ā
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Projector: the faithful BDS InFocus LCD LP530 Ā
Media Player: my Powerbook G4 (handy for trailers, DVDs and random Quicktimes hiding in my Movies folder)Ā
Screen: a 40ft high white brick wall scouted by Dean in an industrial area of GuelphĀ
Projector Booth: our 78 Westy of courseĀ
Audio: broadcast from the Powerbook with a C.Crane FM Transmitter (we sourced it because it claimed a 70ft range)Ā
Power Source: stolen from a near-by business with 100+ feet of extension cordĀ
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Some comments and observations: Ā
So it all sounds good in concept, but how did it work? Great. Tuesday we did a trial run. We had a glitch where the power dropped out for a few seconds, which caused me to loose a few (more) hairs as I could smell the projector bulb melting. It came back on-line on the second restart, but I’ll never get those hairs back! Next time we’ll run a UPS as backup.Ā
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Sound: The sound was great, even broadcast on a frequency shared by a local college station. Ā
Ambient Light: There were several large lights attached to surrounding buildings. We brought some black “construction grade” garbage bags, duct tape and a small ladder to cover the lights we could reach. The lights we couldn’t reach we just have to live with. I’d like to try it somewhere outside the city, where there is very little ambient light, to see if it makes a difference.Ā
Power: You won’t always have the luxury of having access to power. Some options might be - steal power, find an outside light (any light with a standard socket), remove the shade/cover and screw in one of the old light socket to plug convertors, hope no body catches you; batteries, chain together a few UPS units (I have one designed for servers that I plan to try), the more you chain together the longer you should have power - theoretically; quiet generator, both Yamaha and Honda make ultra portable, ultra quiet generators and with the right sound deflection panels you could deal with the 50 decibels they put out.Ā
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If you’ve done anything similar please feel free to share your ideas. Dean and I plan to do more guerilla drive-ins next summer, as the Canadian weather will so put us out of business.Ā
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