1 - get to okay from the principal and PTA board.
2 - choose a movie. Most schools like G movies but let's be real - good G movies are rarely made these days. I usually check DVD release dates for movies that come out close to my movie night date and then check what Common Sense Media has to say about the movie (I like to pick movies that green light age 6 and get 4 or 5 stars from parents).
3 - apply for a one-time event/one-time viewing license. It's usually best to not charge admission - it changes the type of license you need. We make up the cost of the license on concessions just like the movie theaters do. Between Criterion Pictures that represents both 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures which includes Dreamworks Animation and Blue Sky Studios and Swank Motion Pictures which represents basically everything else including Disney, New Line and WB, you only need 2 email addresses and you can show any movie you want!
4 - get your ducks in a row - got equipment? projector, screen, dvd player, speakers (and no, computer speakers are not cool)? ask the local theater is they can donate anything - movie passes, popcorn, etc, call pizza places to find out how much it costs for the pizza (PTAs often get a discount b/c they are a non-profit) and decide how much you're going to charge for it, buy drinks and candy at Costco.
5 - advertise! flyers, reservation/order forms, posters and bulletin boards. The good news is that with your site license, they allow you to use the name and official artwork to advertise your event internally (you can't do that outside of the school community though - no radio spots, no billboards, not even the sign outside of the school). My reservation and pizza pre-order form has student name, teacher name, number attending and pizza order info but the most important words on this form are this phrase, "For the safety and security of all who attend, children must be accompanied by an adult."
Now, for what you're all here for - the bulletin board! This huge bulletin board is in the foyer of my kids' school. It's for the PTA's use. This month, we are advertising 2 events - the Barnes & Noble book fair fundraiser and Movie Night.
I did not photograph this as I was doing it, so you're getting the mock up.
Materials:
1 Movie poster
1 yd of cheap black cotton fabric
1 yd of champagne colored tulle
1 sheet of Steam a Seam
1 sheet of black foam board
1 sheet of bright yellow poster board
1 sheet of white poster board (doing it again, I'd go with 2 yellows)
1 Rainbow Loom band (don't tell my kids - I found this one on the floor)
1 black bingo stamper
clear contact paper
popcorn bags
yellow crepe paper
3 different sized round things to trace (I used a demitasse saucer, a regular saucer and a small plate)
scissors, xacto knife, stapler & staples, pins, iron
1 - Make curtains for the poster "movie screen"
I remember when movies screens had curtains and they'd open at the beginning of the movie and close at the end - this was before the oh-so-fun movie trivia was shown when you get in there, of course. After a trip to the Byrd Theater last week to see a preview of Downton Abbey's Season 4 Premier, I decided to make my bulletin board look like an old fashioned move theater (not gilded and grand but, similar). I bought a landscape poster to be the screen. I cut a strip about 4 inches wide of the black fabric so that I now had a 32 inch piece (curtain) and a 4 inch piece (valence). I then cut 1/2 inch strips of the steam-a-seam sheets.
Using the steam-a-seam strips, I "hemmed" the valence piece under.
Make sure to measure the poster when doing this step - the valence should be about 3-4 inches smaller than the poster. I cut the curtain piece in half along the fold and sewed both sides to the valence piece with the selvage edge being on the inside of the curtain - this is the only sewing I did and looking back, I could have gotten away with just using steam-a-seam but I was worried about it falling apart on the bulletin board. Press the seam so that the curtain edge is flat.
Next, make a knife pleat in the curtain section. For the big version, I made 3 outward-facing skip-1 knife pleats. Here on the mock up, I only had room for 1.
I was going as no-sew as I could and used two 1 1/2 inch strips of the 1/2 inch steam-a-seam strips to tack the pleats in place. I removed one side of the paper, ironed it where it needed to go, removed the other side of the paper, refolded the fabric over it and ironed it again
Finally, I folded down, pinned and pressed the top "seam". I did not sew or use steam-a-seam on this one - it's where I hid the staples when I attached it to the bulletin board! I brought it to the school with the pins in it!
The final (mock up) project!
(Landscape works better for this theme but if I could only find a portrait poster, I would have cut the valence from the width rather than length but I think it would require about the same amt of fabric).
2 - The Projector
I went looking for free clip art to help me design my projector. I found at lot in my google search and was reminded that even though it comes up in a google search, doesn't mean that it's actually free or that the person listing it has the copyrights to it... oh well! I came up with a good design based on a lot of the artwork.
On the black foam board, I placed the largest of my round objects (the regular plate) at the top center - maybe a little off to the left of center - and traced. I put the medium sized round object on edge of the board on the right so the center of the plate was at about at the 3/4 mark and traced. I found the center of the smaller circle and made that the "corner" of the main part of the projector. This should cut thru the bottom of my larger circle. I finished up the front of the projector and cut it out using the Xacto knife (getting clean lines on foam board is HARD). So my extraneous pencil marks wouldn't show, I flipped the now-cut-out foam projector. I used some of the white poster board to trace the medium (saucer) and small (demitasse saucer) round stencils and cut into sixths. I rounded the edges and then pasted 5 of the 6 white pieces in the center of the reels (I spaced them better than the diagram below - I think I need to install my really old version of Illustrator so I can make my diagrams look cool again). I (ahem, my husband) cut the large and medium circles out of clear contact paper and put them over the the reels to hold them better and give it a bit of glossy definition (really - it shows up).
 |
| drawing/cutting diagram for the projector |
I found a for-real-free clapboard image and used Paint.net to add the name of the movie, showing date, time and fact that we're selling concessions - print that, trim the edges, paste and cover with contact paper that too!
3 - pulling it together
I was sharing the board this month with another chairperson - B&N bookfair - so we did a bit of over the phone coordination so that we wouldn't step on toes when we got there. It worked fine b/c we both had a very loose idea of what we wanted it to look like. Both of us also forgot how HUGE this bulletin board is! It's 2 "standard" sized outside of classroom bulletin boards butted up to each other in portrait orientation - GI-NORMOUS! Neither of us planned for the space we had... So after I put up the poster, curtain, tulle light and projector, I ran out to Dollar Tree to get popcorn bags, crepe paper and a bingo stamper and grab the poster board I had at home (my initial plan for the light from the projector now replaced by cheap tulle). I stamped the letters to give them the "Marquee" feel. I filled the popcorn bags with yellow crepe paper and stapled them on the board. It looked done. I felt that if I did any more, it would be over done. I'm happy with how it turned out and I hope you have a successful movie night at your school too!
Keep warm and cozy as the temps dip into the single digits here overnight!
No comments:
Post a Comment