I think I’ve always been slightly intimidated by the idea of planning an outdoor movie. There are too many variables that could lead to disaster! What projector do I buy and will it work? What if the sound is terrible? Do I need a screen and what do I get? Will this cost way more than it’s worth?! Even after reading countless reviews on everything, I’ve still been uneasy about the whole thing. Until my 13 year old daughter decided she wanted an outdoor movie party for her birthday. Intimidation is no longer an issue when you’re under a deadline.
If you’re like me and you have no idea where to start, it’s your lucky day because I’m going to help you out a little. My daughter’s party was a great success and we didn’t spend a fortune buying everything we needed for an awesome outdoor movie. I should also mention we were starting from scratch. We had nothing. I had three days, my daughter had a vision of what she wanted and that was it! I’m going to give you list of exactly what we bought, where it came from and how much we spent. All I can tell you is thank goodness for Amazon Prime- saving lives every two days. 🙂
Outdoor movie breakdown
- Projector. I spent some time researching projectors. My biggest concerns when reading reviews were quality of the picture and price. I didn’t want to end up with a lemon that was going to be a waste of our time and money. I also did not want to spend an arm and a leg getting this outdoor movie going!
This is the projector I decided on. I found it on Amazon as one of their Amazon’s Choice items. It got good reviews and was under $100. It proved to be an easy setup and the picture was great. You can find it HERE. This projector is compatible with laptops, PCs, tablets, DVD and Blu-ray players, smartphones, iPads, iPods, etc. You name it and it will most likely connect. It is NOT wireless, however. You will need a cord to connect to these things. It does have a three year warranty and the day after I purchased the projector, I received an email directly from the company ensuring that I was satisfied with the product and telling me to contact them directly if I had any questions or problems. - Screen. Originally I thought we might be able to use a large blank wall on the outside of our house as a screen. And then I realized the air conditioners were directly underneath the wall and you’d never be able to hear the movie with the units turning on all the time. So I decided to purchase a screen and I’m so glad I did! It was really easy and made for a clearer picture.
This screen is also an Amazon’s Choice and received great reviews. You can find it HERE and it was $34.99 when I bought it. It actually was not what I expected when it arrived, though. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this! The screen is made of stretchy polyester fabric with grommets on the top and bottom to attach wherever you’re hanging it. It comes with hooks and double-sided tape (kind of like Command strips), if you’re attaching it to a wall. It also has two bundles of nylon rope, if you choose to tie it down. The screen is awesome. It stretches to be a great size, is easy to put up and take down, and folds small to store when you are done.
We attached ours to our balcony with bungee cords through the upper grommets and then tied the bottom down with rope attached to tent stakes and rocks to ensure the stakes didn’t pull out during the movie. It was so easy and worked great. - DVD or Blu-Ray Player. I don’t really feel the need to link our Blu-Ray player. It’s just a Samsung something or other- nothing special. The projector comes with the cord you need to connect the two.
- Speakers. The projector has a small speaker, but we didn’t think it would put out enough sound for the kids to be able to hear well outside. We have a wireless speaker that we use in our house and really love and figured we’d just hook it up to the projector.
You can find our speaker HERE, but it is a little pricey. We’ve had ours for a few years and LOVE it. The sound is amazing. I also love that it’s wireless and I can control it with my phone from the other room. Anyway, it’s great but not a necessity for your outdoor movie. Any speaker will do- even speakers for your computer, if you have them. The only catch is you need an audio cable to connect the speaker to the projector. I actually wasn’t sure what I needed when I first thought of attaching our speaker. So I looked at the inputs on the speaker, then looked at the inputs on the projector and made a run to Walmart to see what I could find. I made a random guess on what I needed and happened to be right… I am not tech savvy in any way.
Although I bought my audio cable at Walmart, I’m going to link to the same thing at Amazon HERE just because it’s easy to throw it in your cart with the rest of your stuff. I spent under $5 for this cord. It was so easy and worked like a charm! - Connecting to a phone or tablet. Even though we had the DVD our daughter was going to play for her party, I wanted to be prepared just in case I needed to connect to my phone for something else. I bought a Lightning to HDMI adapter and I’m fairly certain that we will use it in the future.
I paid less than $15 for it on Amazon HERE. I’m actually anxious to try it out since we didn’t have time after the party. It would be so easy to pull up a movie from Netflix or Amazon!
Do’s and Don’ts
*Be prepared with extension cords and possibly a powerstrip to plug into. You will need to plug in the projector, the DVD player (if you’re using one) and possibly the speaker.
*It needs to be dark to see the movie on the screen. Projectors need the dark and you will be disappointed if you forget that. Plan accordingly. We ended up starting the movie nearly a half hour later than planned because it was still too light outside. It’s the hazard of having a late June birthday- the longest days of the year!
*Take the time the night before to set everything up so you will have no mistakes the night of your movie. You will need something for the projector to sit on in order to get it high enough to hit the screen. It may be a little bit of trial and error at first, but shouldn’t take long to figure out.
Now that we have the setup of our outdoor movie theatre worked out, I foresee we will be using it often. It is so much easier than I imagined! I hope this takes the guesswork out of it for you, as well. It’s at least enough to get you started on the right track. 🙂
