Screen Stockport Film Festival needed a new projector to show all screenings for its annual event on Friday 16 October 2015.

The annual festival, now in its 5th year, takes place at the Plaza Super Cinema.  This beautifully restored art deco cinema has its own digital projection but this is located far from the stage area, high in the projection box.

The festival needed to show 45-minute sections of film interspersed with interviews.  It needed to install a flexible solution that can be accessed easily that allow clips of films to be shown throughout the interviews from a laptop.

It has previously used a Canon Home Cinema projector but wanted to upgrade the quality.

Scan Computers, also based near Manchester in Bolton, and a great supporter of the festival approached Optoma for help.

Taking into account the screen size, throw distance and the need for a high lumen, high resolution projector, the EH505 ProScene projector was the obvious choice.  This Full 3D 5,000-lumen projector with WUXGA resolution delivers spectacular image quality and outstanding brightness – ideal for this large venue.

It has multiple lens options, with zoom and focus adjustment to get the exact image size needed, while the wide lens shift range gets the image exactly where it is wanted.

All Optoma projectors use DLP technology, pioneered by Texas Instruments. This uses millions of mirrors to produce high quality imagery which does not suffer colour degradation over time, as sometimes experienced in other projector technologies. The dust-sealed, filter free design prevents dust and dirt from affecting the system ensuring optimal image quality with minimal maintenance. With full support for Crestron, Extron, AMX, PJ-Link and Telnet LAN commands, the projector can be controlled and monitored remotely over a LAN.

Scan installed the projector with a long throw lens at the back of the auditorium.

Tom Francis from Scan, said: "We chose to use an Optoma projector because of the high performance, flexibility and ease of configuration to achieve an excellent, sharp image on the Plaza's large screen, which it completely delivered."

The fifth annual Screen Stockport Film Festival 2015 was held at the Plaza Super Cinema on Friday 16th October

The projector showed all 37 films across the seven categories as well as exclusive clips of Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story as part of a live interview with director Steve Sullivan.

“This year’s festival was our biggest and best yet.” explains Festival Director, Joe Barratt. “We received amazing feedback from our audience, with visitors commenting on the incredibly high-standard of short films on show. The high-performance quality of the Optoma projector also helped us to really bring these unique stories to life on the big screen.” 

Screen Stockport Film Festival has firmly established itself as one of the leading independent film festivals in the North West, screening over 200 short films and supporting over 1000 filmmakers.

Since its creation in 2011, the festival has connected young filmmakers with leading professionals in the industry while bringing together the local community through a celebration of independent film.  Both the festival and its programme of interviews with local directors, producers, writers and actors have placed Stockport as a hotbed of creative talent in the North West.

Independent filmmakers are invited to submit their short films into one of seven categories. These are then judged by a panel of experts.  Its 2015 judging panel included director Carol Morley, producer Cairo Cannon, writer and producer Len Brown and director, producer and editor Steve Sullivan. Col Needham, the CEO and Founder of IMDb, grew up locally and has been the festival’s patron since 2012.