We had our first movie night last night on the same night as our Pizza Night we started later than pizza time and had the movie in the gym ( No auditorum) we advertised no chairs to bring blankets and pillows to get comfy on the floor! we showed the movie with a projector the school owned! Our gym is equiped with a sound system to tap into. We charged $2.00 per person at the door and sold water bottles $.50 each and popcorn (bought premade large bags at shoprite ($2.00 a bag) cups 32ozs. from the party store for $1.50 each halfway through the movie we announced free refills with you empty popcorn cup. we had about 150 people and made $500.00. As a k-3 school and lacking volunteers this year we used High school commiinity service group kids to work the whole thing with myself and my co-chair overseeing. This was the easiest and funnest fundraiser and social night ever! ps- our school carried a license that cover the showing of the film! PPS we also had the classes vote on the movie, we gave them 3 choices to select what would be shown. They loved this!
We received our movie night package and had our first movie today for the kids as a Christmas treat. We advertised in our newsletters for a projector and found out a parent had one and has offered to donate it for our movie nights. He hooked it up to a DVD player and we happen to have a big screen in our hall. The kids LOVED it. We passed out tickets to each child upon entering and at the end of the event, raffled off the movie. We also had a few other holiday-themed items to raffle away. We're looking forward to doing a movie 'night' next for our families.
The constuction crew is still invading our lot with the construction of our new auditorium (rumor has it we are having a HUGE party when they leave!!) but this will be a perfect event to make use of our new space! Keep the advise and ideas coming!!!!
Critter- I'm printing the screen idea! You better keep that Mom!
On the topic of projection tools, digital projectors (kind of like this: www.crystalgraphics.com/projectors/main.asp)
are becoming really common among salespeople. I'd wager most schools would have some salespeople moms or dads with access to one.
You can connect them to a laptop with a DVD player and project the image to quite a good size on a blank wall or screen. I actually use this set-up with good success in my house when the nieces and nephews come over.
I spent some time talking with the movie licensing folks and learned something not listed on the sites; in addition to the generic movie poster, they also have available many actual movie poster images to send via email for posting in your school. Request, print, use! Great!
(NOTE: make certain to use the title-specific posters ONLY in your school. Posting them say, at the grocery would be an infringing use of the poster per Movie Licensing)
Fortunately, our media center has a dvd projector of some sort that was able to give a great image on the large screen. I'll post more details if I can get brand, specs, etc. but basically it was a unit our from our media center. In a pinch, you might be able to rent such a unit, but that would add cost to your event.
