Skyfall weekend saw the rugged and attractive members of the Balerno Village Screen committee busy ensuring the five separate screenings were an enormous success with over 400 villagers enjoying the Village Screen experience.

Behind the scenes major developments were accomplished on sound, screen, blackout curtains and blinds.   A massive thank you to David Baillie (decorator), Al Murray scaffold and blind painter supreme, Smithy and Jonathan on the sound system and Jen Jacques for curtain wizardry.  Singling people out is of course iniquitous as the entire committee worked their socks off to make the weekend such a huge success.

Starting on Friday night we squeezed in an extra showing of Skyfall for those who hadn’t picked up tickets.  This show had an age range from three to eighty three and proved very popular, despite the tight timescale for the extra show.  Next up we put on Brave as a Saturday matinee for children, families and the young at heart.

The sound was so powerful that the bears seemed real.  The picture quality was also top notch.  By this time of course everyone was being filmed by Media Co-op who were making a feature of our cinema for Scotmid (our biggest funder). Another great show with almost no popcorn spilt and absolutely no children lost in our tremendous blackout curtain arrangement.

Upwards and onwards the 4pm showing of Skyfall in the Ogston Hall was standing room only with everything going off without a hitch.  Then following a tight turnaround we managed to screen Skyfall in the Ogston and St Joseph’s complete with Aston Martin donated for one night only by Murray Motors, laser and smoke machine from Lindsey Middleton, red carpet from Apex International Hotel and a huge amount of generosity and goodwill from the people of Balerno.

What a fabulous weekend, thanks to everyone for their support. See you next month for Argo (best film at this year’s Oscars) – tickets will be made available soon…..

Martin Gemmell, Chair of Committee