I STILL need some help with organising this end of "Film night"!

It looks like I'll not be doing it as a "public service" but continuing to do it as a private venture in my discord channel most likely with my friend who really enjoys it, running (after careful consideration) MOST of the films we watched last year! 

What we really need to do it right, is a rich benefactor to set us up a legit zoom account that will allow us to do it properly, and allow people the levels of communication and anonymity that they require. 

I'd be that rich benefactor, but there really seems very little demand for it and I am definitely not rich...  

I love this idea and if you can get it sorted how you'll work it I'm game to giving it a go. It's a good way of autistic people getting together without really getting together if you know what I mean.

The group I do we decided to do something very similar with Zoom but changed to MT as Zoom wasn't the best, there was a lot of lag and it didn't cope especially well. Always had the microphone option but everyone preferred to text chat rather than vocally, which suited me as I don't like talking either. I only ever really talk to my cats LOL. I choose dvds from my own personal collection, ranging from things like Disney to Jurassic Park to The Italian Job from 1969 - moi's movie taste is very mixed just like my music taste. I like a bit of everything LOL.

Please keep us posted on how your film night planning goes. I hope you find it as good an experience as I have with my own.

What about Teams? You can use a desktop app or go through the browser. Attendees only need a browser. No time limit. Choice of camera and mic on/off. Not sure about use on mobile devices though. Not sure how it copes with streaming. I've only ever attended meetings via the browser, never hosted.

I used to attend a weekly film night run on a Saturday evening by my dope dealer in the nineteen eighties.

As an undiagnosed Aspergery kid trying to come to terms with a very difficult life I found it to be an oasis where I could go and be with a load of people without all that boring small talk.

AND IT WAS FREE, most important for a poor person that is. 

When reading of some other people here's general lack of social opportunity (and in some cases skills) and having recently used zoom to keep a mate who's wife had died in a foreign country and who had other problems living in my garage in a virtual way for a few weeks, I believed I could see a way of watching a bucket load of really good films AND giving a bunch of isolated souls an opportunity to expose themselves socially and safely to others.

With Zoom etc. You don't HAVE to share video or sound, the least socially adapted could just watch the film and listen to other peoples conversations for weeks on end I thought, but eventually, people would want to say something about the film I reasoned, then maybe people who normally live in splendid isolation might find themselves eased in to things a bit. etc.

I only had about ten or so films that I know to be "universally good" and since the service wasn't attended by strangers me and my mate took breaks whenever we wanted, talked across the film etc, but the good films people DON;T talk across.

That's how you know they are good. and I've got quite a few now. We are just about to filter out the experimental ones that don't make the grade last year and see how many I actually do have. 

It takes a special sort of person I found to persistenlty advertise the weeks film, remind people of how it works and keep the post bumped up the listings so it can be seen, and whilst I tried quite hard last year, it seems I am not that person. 

I enlisted a non spergy friend to help me remember each week to "put the bloody film on" (what I sought for myself out of the excercise, was an asessment of how reliable I can be, when not being paid a lot of money to be..) and when film nght failed it turned out that HE really looked forwards to it, so since he is a good, (honest and helpful, useful, and he finds me useful, type of) friend, I kept it going last year for his beneoft and actually came to enjoy it myself. 

And yes, this year I plan to watch most of the films again! (just phoned him to confirm that he actually wants to do it all again) and later tonight we will winnow down the shelf to the "brilliant" films, sort out the order of the first half a dozen and make a shopping list for the next years "experimental" section. but some films like "caveman" and "tomorrow I shall be scalding myself with tea" and "galaxy quest" will ALWAYS make the cut... 

Most people have really slow upload capability, but for some reason I get decent speed. 

last year we tried multiple hosts using zoom and I had what theirs do not.

As a paid up CT paranoid type, I assume they had to give me extra bandwidth so as all the spying would work and not cause my machine to slow down like it used to..

I had a brief trial and it seemed to work O.K.

The price of proper zoom membership is prohibitive.

I've identified an upcoming need for a new kind of P-P communication client software more like the voicephones seen in sci-fi films,like bladerunner  but can't pay for the talent yet to get it done.

Can you tell me a bit more about film night in general? This is the first iv'e got wind of it. interested.

you may find this helpfull https://youtu.be/l5Cdc5sCwcI

Ive previously run films over discord using vlc and the discord desktop aps screen capture feture. I've found lag (aspecially video vs audio), bandwidth and associated poor image quality to be the bigest issues.