rockover

Azucena, for the last year and a half, has been showing a movie at her local church (http://www.saintwilliams.org/movies). We'll probably show one a month or every other month depending on if she can rent the space. For awhile, it's been at the old church, but the last few times, it has been at the pavilion at the new church. The pavilion is nothing more than a kitchen, restroom, and open dance floor.
We take care of the drinks and popcorn and Steve always shows up with cookies. Our first time out, we were able to get about 70 people to show up. Since then, it's been between 40 and 60.
To get an audience, Azucena will put up mini posters around the area along with movie "business" cards so people don't forget. We've been impressed with the response even during times where we thought it would be real sparse. Yesterday was a great example.
These movies are planned weeks in advance. She gets permission from Ignatious Press (http://www.ignatius.com/index.aspx) to show movies like "Bernadette" and "Padre Pio" among others. We always have an intermission to give everyone a chance to stretch, get more popcorn and talk to Azucena about the movie with options to purchase their own copy.

Back to yesterday. We found out early on that the temperature was going to dip to the 30's. This was not good as the Pavilion is totally open air. We tried to use another building (the RE if I'm not mistaken), but we couldn't track down the key. So, with people starting to show up and the temperature starting to drop, someone suggested we use the kitchen. After checking it out, we figured with the 15 - 20 or so people that might show up, it would work. We had the wall to project the movie, we had some room for chairs and counter space for popcorn and drinks and a few kids to sit. It might be tight, but yeah, it'll work.
So while everyone helps set up, I start on the popcorn and a generous lady (sorry, I never got her name) helped with hot cider and sodas and cleanup (we got done around 10:30 and she had a 2am adoration).
By the time the movies starts, we have over 40 people. Geez, it's in the 30's and people want to watch an outdoor movie. Yeah, it's indoors, but they didn't know that. We've got got people craning their necks to watch around the stove hood, several sitting next to the freezers that turn on and off, and smell the popcorn each time it's made. After about 1/2 hour into the movie, we pause to raise one of the counters to allow another dozen people to watch it from outside.
I'm trapped in the corner with the popcorn and sodas and Azucena is trapped outside. Fortunately, we brought plenty of blankets to pass around. Even with coats, it still got plenty cold. We figured we had close to 60 people show up and that doesn't count the few who didn't stay for the showing. My guess is "Padre Pio" is real reason we had this many people. I'm curious if we had a true movie setting, how many would show up. Hopefully we'll show "Padre Pio" again and find out. Usually, I'm isolated while doing popcorn, but this time, I get to watch the whole movie, so it was nice to see what everyone else sees.

Ok, now to give kudos. I'm impressed every time we show a movie. Kids come along and generally behave pretty well. No matter what is going on, we have a good turnout. We do have our problems, mostly sound, but we work those out and people still show up. Our first showing at the Pavilion last month, we were in new territory and ended with one speaker. We corrected it for this showing and had 4 speakers (playing the dvd on one player, sending the sound through another dvd player and the video through an LCD (figure that out techies)). But we were not expecting the cold. To have all these people show up and several sitting in the cold is just too much to comprehend. We had kids. We had a few elderlies. We had a three hour movie!. Yes, we did lose some during intermission, but it gives those that were sitting outside a chance to warm up inside. And I do want to thank everyone for expressing their thanks on the wonderful popcorn. Unfortunately, I can only take so much credit. I measure out the butter oil, measure out the popcorn, pop until it's done, spray some butter salt, mix and bag. We use one of those commercial popcorn poppers, so that helps with consistency.