Movie parties

Birthday parties seem to get harder as your kids get older. When they start hitting eight, nine and ten, pass-the-parcel and musical statues just don’t seem to cut it any more. So, when my own daughter, Frankie, asked if she could have a ‘movie party’ with her friends – where they planned to film their own version of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ – it was with more than a little trepidation that my wife and I agreed. Little did we know that just three years later we’d be running a business – Movie Parties – helping other parents to do the same!

At first we refused poor Frankie’s innocent request. ‘Too hard,’ we said. ‘Too complicated.’ But then we remembered how much the children love watching our old home movies; how they love putting on plays and generally showing-off. ‘OK,’ we said, always ones to spot a learning opportunity, ‘but only if you write the script!’

Inspired

Inspired by the thought of becoming a film star, Frankie toiled away for weeks, and her relentless enthusiasm was infectious. A fortnight before the party, she gave a copy of her script to her friends and told them to arrive on the day dressed for their part. At school, they organised mini-rehearsals in the playground, and before we knew it, we were all really looking forward to finally shouting, ‘Action!’

We spent a warm afternoon filming, stopping now and then for snacks and drinks, and heard enough excited laughter in one day to keep us going for weeks afterwards. After party tea, we showed the girls the rough cut of the movie they’d made, and just the looks on their faces made the whole thing worthwhile.

Inspired by how hard they’d worked, we found out how to put the video onto the our computer, cleaned it up, added titles and an ‘outtakes’ section, and even created a few more special effects. A couple of months later, we invited the cast and their parents back to the house and screened the world premiere of the finished film, handing out Oscars and other prizes as we went along.

The whole experience reminded us how great it was to find something that children and their parents can get enthusiastic about together.

Knowing how much fun we’d all had made us wonder whether other people might like to do the same sort of thing; and a couple of years later, Movie Parties was born. The idea remains true to Frankie’s original: you host a party, and you make a movie at the same time using your own home camcorder.

At the end of the party, everyone watches the premiere of the film on the TV. To make things easier, the Movie Parties website offers a range of original scripts covering fun stuff that kids of that age (roughly 8-14) enjoy – music and dancing, swordfights, spies, aliens, and even a haunted sleepover.

Thankfully, it seems we’re not alone in our enthusiasm – movie parties are proving popular in the UK, the USA and Australia.

Frankie, now a grumpy teenager, is naturally rather embarrassed about the whole thing these days – even if she does still watch her own version of Lord of the Rings from time to time!

Author

Andrew Burgess has spent over twenty years working in Internet, mobile and new media companies, and co-invented the world’s first virtual newscaster. He has written for The Guardian newspaper about life as a Dad working part-time, and launched Movie Parties this year after deciding that he just couldn’t put it off any longer. Andrew has three children and lives in Yorkshire