Screens Without Borders

I spent an amazing week recently showing movies in some really out back locations. Well; when I say I showed movie’s I really just watched the team from ‘Screens without Borders’ do all the work while I documented their amazing pop out cinema prototype. On a kind of field test tour I joined this amazing vehicle and it’s crew in Alice Springs while they ran remote screenings for indigenous community’s; sometimes more than a days drive out of town.

For portable outdoor screenings film projection has never been an easy proposition. Portable data projectors made things lighter to handle but the screens themselves are usually of the inflatable variety requiring hours of setup time and a portable generator powering a blower to keep the screen inflated. This adds unwanted background noise. The screen itself is also never perfectly flat which creates focus issues and then if there’s any kind of breeze… well, you get the idea.

This pop out cinema does just that. Fully self contained within the box on the back of a Nissan Navara 4 x 4 this five and a half metre cinema screen folds open and stands upright in just eight minutes.

All shows are made up of domestic media files and arranged into playlists on a tablet P.C. A Christie DLP projector rear projects to fill the screen perfectly from its permanent mounting only two and half metres back from the screen.

The speakers similarly fold up from the box to sit perfectly behind the screen giving a central audio presence. There’s no cables to run, nothing needs to be aligned prior and the whole thing runs off on board batteries that charge off the trucks alternator during transit or off mains at base.

The locals were suitable entertained. I was impressed and got some great footage illustrating one of the many advantages of E cinema. Digital isn’t always a dirty word.

You can find out more at www.screenswithoutborders.org

Rob (Bert)