Events and community · Dundonald, South Ayrshire · October 2018

Dundonald Castle pop-up cinema: Rocky Horror and The Goonies in a fourteenth-century keep

Dundonald Castle’s visitor centre asked Lairds to bring our pop-up cinema into the castle for a night. We screened The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Goonies under the vaulted ceilings, with lasers, lighting, haze and a fancy-dress audience.

Client

Dundonald Castle Visitor Centre

Venue

Dundonald Castle, South Ayrshire

Scope

Pop-up cinema, projection, sound, lighting, lasers and haze

Date

October 2018

The brief

Dundonald Castle is one of Scotland’s most historic buildings, a royal castle on a hill above the village, with vaulted stone ceilings, walkways and a view over the whole of Ayrshire. We are locals; we have visited many times. When the visitor centre asked whether we could put a cinema inside it for a community evening, the answer was obvious.

The films were The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Goonies, which set the tone: cult, colourful, a little bit macabre, and an audience that was going to turn up in costume.

What we did

Lairds brought our own pop-up cinema to the castle: screen, HD projection and a sound system sized for a stone hall that was never designed for either, plus the lighting, lasers and haze that turn a film screening into an event. Setting up in a scheduled ancient monument means nothing fixed, nothing marked, every cable routed to be invisible and removable, and the whole thing in and out in a day. The visitor centre looked after the audience and the hot dogs; we looked after everything that plugged in.

The result

An audience in fancy dress, smoke rolling across the courtyard, lasers under a medieval ceiling and two films that have never looked better. It is the kind of evening a village remembers, and it is why we keep the pop-up cinema ready for community work alongside the installation business. We would do it again tomorrow.

The night

The Rocky Horror Picture Show on the pop-up cinema screen at Dundonald Castle

Lasers through haze inside Dundonald Castle during the pop-up cinema night

Film title on screen in the vaulted hall at Dundonald Castle

Setting up the pop-up cinema at Dundonald Castle in the afternoon

The cinema screen in place at Dundonald Castle before the audience arrived

The audience in fancy dress at the Dundonald Castle cinema night

What we brought

A complete cinema for one night: screen and projector, sound, lighting, lasers and haze, with the crew to run it and strike it, leaving the castle exactly as we found it.