The Outdoor Cinema Company

Hi guys

I’ve decided to distil the post on the Outdoor Cinema company, as there have been several updates and it’s obvious a lot of people are just retweeting without reading.

Please retweet this! It’s only fair this gets seen

So here’s the short version:

I have spoken to Outdoor Cinema company

I’ve had several conversations with Michael, who is behind the events on Facebook and he has kindly agreed to complete this e-mail interview, which covers the main points we discussed:

1. Can you explain a bit of background about The Outdoor Cinema Company & how long it’s been around for?

The Outdoor Cinema has been in the pipeline for a few months now and the initial Facebook events had been planned to be launched in a few weeks. Over the weekend we’d seen a similar event launch so we felt it was important to get our events out as soon as possible so as not get left behind as the busy summer months kick in.

Launching the Facebook & social media channels was for us to gauge interest in the concept so we could scale and plan each event accordingly. Each event that happens as part of The Outdoor Cinema is going to be bespoke to each location – why we ask people to choose their favourite films when signing up.

2. Can you tell us why at the time of publishing the blog post, the Facebook pages and the website was not represented by any company? Meaning, there was no company registered?

As previously mentioned we hadn’t planned to launch this week, We registered the company at the start of the week but due to a administrative error on our part this was delayed (I have sent you proof of this.) A small error, but very badly timed for us…

Initially the events were planned to be run on private owned licence venues or via Temporary Event Notices. Discussions have been going on this week with certain councils and now looking at larger venues in order to meet the expected demand.

3. Do you have any venues confirmed for the events, as of right now?

We do have events pencilled for a run of dates but we are revisiting each site on an individual basis to evaluate their capacity and suitability in response to the increasing demand for each location.

4. I’ve received e-mails claiming that you’re connected with other events on Facebook, such as the Wipeout Events and even events pages for Radio 1 big weekends setup in different cities. Can you confirm if you, your team or any of the companies you are involved with are running any other events currently on Facebook?

I can categorically state that none of these events have anything to do with us or any of the team.

I’d also like to state we are nothing to do with Moonlight Cinema, The Open Air Cinema and any other events that have subsequently popped up.

Since this interview, Michel has completed the company registration procedure for the event.

My apology

I’d like to apologise to Michael and everyone involved in the effort of Outdoor Cinema. He’s been really cool about the whole thing and we’ve talked at length about the importance of being vigilant of when it comes to data security.

From having spoken to Michael, it would seem that the red flags we were getting, such as the huge amount of people “going” to the these events, the lack of a company backing the marketing up were due to rapid expansion rather than any malicious intent.

I sincerely wish he and his team put on some great films.

My Reasoning

I posted last night saying I entirely believed The Outdoor Cinema company was a scam. I did this because I could find no legal entity behind the Outdoor cinema company, they were seemingly promising an event for hundreds of thousands of people and they were capturing data with no policy or saying what they wanted to do with it.

When I tried to reach out to them on Twitter, asking them to let us know what company they are, I was given no answers.

When local councils were contacted, they were told they had never heard of this company and recommended that it be treated like a scam.

It was at this point I was convinced this was merely a data grabbing operation and made my original post.