Portable Rear projection set up for on stage. Ideas?

[Doug Lowthian]

My parameters/limits/opportunities:

• Lots of room backstage. From behind rear curtain to back wall is abour 35 feet.
• I want screen to be about 12 X 15
• Has to disassemble and fit through a standard door (36"x 7 odd feet)
• Relatively low cost (Materials @$500, we have lots of competent labor)
• From screen towards rear of audience is about 70 ft. Audience is wide as well; over 600 seats on a sloping floor.
• We have a front projector mounted under the balcony but it shines on actors.
• Fly may be possible (there is space) but rigging could be a challenge/expense
• We do not have a projector yet but I can spec that out separately I'd like to control it from the light board station at the rear of the audience. We can run cable up and over or along the floor in temporary setups. For this thread I'm interested in screen ideas.

Possibilities:

• Factory made product?
• muslin or other fabric we coat ourselves
• wood, metal, truss framework, self made or factory made

Thank you in advance

 

[derekleffew]

Except for <$500, a Dalite Fast-Fold™ screen meets all your criteria. Often AV houses will sell off used screens in a defunct format ratio.

Above is a "front" surface, but easily replaced with a "rear." The screen snaps on to the aluminum frame.

https://www.controlbooth.com/threads/building-and-rigging-custom-projection-screen.42990/

 

[Aaron Clarke]

Recently used Studio Productions Chameleon™ scrim for rear projection and I was really pleased.

http://www.studio-productions-inc.com/

What I liked
-Super lightweight (20'x20') was 7lbs to ship. Would be easy to put up/take down from a dead hung pipe if need be.
-Hardly needs any stretching to remove wrinkles
-Very cost effective
-Company was very helpful and service was great (we did rent)

Comments about it-
-It's not full opaque (I'm say 20-30% bleed through) so there is some light that's comes through to the audience and if they are inline with the source it may be distracting. We used a projector on the floor so are balcony got some extra brightness but the floor was fine.
-Does give the image an almost brush stroke look due to the texture. I personally liked that, it feels more theatrical then a crystal sharp movie style image which in my mind fits with more shows.
-It would double as a scrim and be useable for revel effects.
-Many colors, we went Med Gray.

As the LD on the show I was really worried about washing out the image and light bouncing back. The Med Gray worked great and reducing bounce back and the washing out is really dependent on how you light and the power of the projector.

Here's a picture of how it turned out.

 

[Doug Lowthian]

Thank you both. the first (Da-Lite) has replacement surfaces for it's frames. Might see what that cost and do our own frame.
The second looks good too. The image looks nice and clear.

 

[RonHebbard]

Recently used Studio Productions Chameleon™ scrim for rear projection and I was really pleased.

http://www.studio-productions-inc.com/

What I liked
-Super lightweight (20'x20') was 7lbs to ship. Would be easy to put up/take down from a dead hung pipe if need be.
-Hardly needs any stretching to remove wrinkles
-Very cost effective
-Company was very helpful and service was great (we did rent)

Comments about it-
-It's not full opaque (I'm say 20-30% bleed through) so there is some light that's comes through to the audience and if they are inline with the source it may be distracting. We used a projector on the floor so are balcony got some extra brightness but the floor was fine.
-Does give the image an almost brush stroke look due to the texture. I personally liked that, it feels more theatrical then a crystal sharp movie style image which in my mind fits with more shows.
-It would double as a scrim and be useable for revel effects.
-Many colors, we went Med Gray.

As the LD on the show I was really worried about washing out the image and light bouncing back. The Med Gray worked great and reducing bounce back and the washing out is really dependent on how you light and the power of the projector.

Here's a picture of how it turned out.

@Aaron Clarke How well would it deal with wide sight lines, a wide audience seated close to the screen? How well will the image on the SR half of the screen appear when viewed from seating far off cenrer at extreme SL?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

 

[Aaron Clarke]

@Aaron Clarke How well would it deal with wide sight lines, a wide audience seated close to the screen? How well will the image on the SR half of the screen appear when viewed from seating far off cenrer at extreme SL?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

I was quite happy with the side view. Our theatre ws approaching a 100/120 degree sight line angle where we had that screen. I'd say 20-30% loss in brightness from our side seats.
Picture attached (sorry Ron if you can't see that, I'm not sure just how blind you are!) was taken from the furthest side seat.
Note: We used two Epson projectors lined up (stacked on top of each other about 18" apart) so I would assume that would help with viewing angles since there would be a slightly different angle coming off the screen from each projector. The AV guy who set them up told me the lumens he felt he was getting but I don't recall what that's number was.

Doug, should mention that if you want to explore this route the company will rent you a screen and should you decide to buy it you just keep that one and pay the difference. They will even discount if there is signs of wear. Though I mentioned we may do this they shipped up a brand new one.

A frustrating non-profit politics story:
I told my group to rent a full stage size (for this production we didn't need full stage width) and our show director offered to pay the rental portion out of the show budget. We were going to invite the various directors and designers to come see it and talk about the benefits and if they wanted to keep and is so organization could pay the difference. The director of productions didn't even want to explore the idea, so we rented a smaller to save a little on the show budget. This was in August and I've already had 3 directors ask about the screen/scrim already for upcoming productions. Now they will spend for each rental when it could have been bought for just a couple hundred dollars more and I'm sure the next director would have been okay to take that bit out of their show budget because its going to be less than renting it again. Darn politics.