Luke Owen attends the ‘Summer Screens’ outdoor screening of the classic time-travel comedy Back to the Future…
A couple of months ago a friend of mine posted up on his Facebook that he was attending an outdoor screening of one of my favourite movies of all time – Back to the Future. Intrigued, I looked into this further where I discovered a little group called Summer Screens. Not only were they showing Back to the Future in an outdoor format (and The Exorcist the night before), it was only down the road from where I live. On top of that, there would be a beer tent and a BBQ! What could be better?!
The way it works is that rather than buying a ticket, you purchase a deck chair for one (£10) or a bean bag for two (£25). Then all of the luxuries (beer, food etc.) come at a price when you sit down to watch the movie. With three deck chairs bought for me and my friends, we wandered down to Caversham Gardens for the second ever Summer Screens.
When we arrived to get our chairs, the couple in front of us were told that the screening had been sold out which was a good sign that the word was getting out about the little project. However we were informed that the BBQ people had pulled out at the last minute which meant there was only over-priced popcorn (about £3) and bags of chocolate (an unthinkable £2.50) available. My friends and I had not eaten but didn’t want to risk a walk down to the Spice Oven (highly recommended if you’re ever in the Caversham area) in fear of losing the good seats we’d nabbed by being early. So, we did what any good Brit would do in this scenario – we drank ale. We bought two pitchers of ale (£14 – 4 pints in each) and 4 bottles of cider which came to a total of £40 – which does sound a lot on reflection but it lasted us for the majority of the evening (with the purchase of a pre-pitcher pint, we ran out of drink by the time Marty starting playing Johnny B. Goode).
The set up was actually quite cool and a really interesting site. The blow up cinema screen was large enough that it could be seen from the back row and the deck chairs and been set up in such a way that unless someone sat in front of you with massive hair, you’d have a perfect view. The beanbags were set up at the front of the screen and couples were getting cozy on them snuggled under a blanket which did look incredibly comfy. Rather than blare the movie out through speakers, you were given wireless headphones which guaranteed you a clear audio feed for the movie itself. Although mine didn’t work at first, I thought it was a great idea and my headphones were replaced almost immediately.
Even though losing the BBQ was disappointing, it was nothing compared to what I was told by a fellow patron while queuing for the loo. He told me that the previous night’s screening of The Exorcist was something of a disaster with the film cutting to a documentary about Fleetwood Mac every now and again, which did get some laughs from some of the audience and complaints from others. If I’d have been on Twitter, I’d have noticed that fellow Reading based tweeter @MrLondonStreet (who you should all follow by the way) had attended that screening and wasn’t all that impressed with it:
“Good luck for tonight by the way. Summer Screens were pretty useless last night, I hope you have a better evening.”
“No management of the event at all. People talked loudly through the show, they did nothing about it.”
“They kept cutting to a documentary about Fleetwood Mac! The audience were laughing it was so embarrassing.”
“It wasn’t just the tech problems, it was the lack of any customer service at all.”
I am pleased to report that I had a much better evening than poor @MrLondonStreet but it was not without its faults. The management of the event seemed much better from all accounts and problems that my friends and I had were dealt with very quickly, but that didn’t stop the technical bugs of the film screening.
I’m sure that we’ve all seen Back to the Future so I’m going to describe exactly what we saw for the first 10 minutes:
The Universal logo faded in and out and the opening credits began. The camera pans around Doc Brown’s various clocks before we are introduced to our leading hero Marty McFly, who kicks his skateboard under a table which hits a box of Plutonium that we’d just head about on the news. At this point, the screen froze and the film jumped to Marty getting to school late and being told by his girlfriend Jennifer that Principle Strickland is looking for him. This did illicit some groans from the audience, which only intensified when the screen froze again and the film cut back to the Universal logo that opens the film. So we sat through the opening of the movie again and watched the camera pan around the clocks. This time we did see more of Marty as he set up the amplifier to play his tiny guitar before the screen froze again and we jumped forward to Marty and Jennifer being harassed by an old woman about saving the town’s clock tower. From there the film played fine without a hitch, but it meant we missed out on the Huey Lewis cameo.
Once the audience had settled down from their grumbles we were treated to a very decent screening of this amazing film. The sound quality on the headphones was excellent and the atmosphere of watching a film outdoors with ale was fantastic. I’d definitely go again but will be sure to take a blanket with me as it got rather cold by about 10:30 (the film started at 9pm). Hiccups aside, my friends and I had a great time and I would recommend it to anyone. I just hope that when the next one rolls into town, they will have ironed out these bugs because the concept is marvelous and I’d attend one every week if I could.
For more information on Summer Screens, visit the official site.
Luke Owen is a freelance copywriter working for Europe’s biggest golf holiday provider as their web content executive.
