There is rain, and then there is Scottish rain. As anyone who has tried to make anything truly watertight north of the border knows, it can be a challenge to keep the stuff from seeping, hammering or driving its way in.
As the sun beats down hundreds of miles away in France, specialists have just completed a successful rainproof test of the Screen Machine, Scotland’s iconic mobile cinema, as part of a refurbishment.
It is a simple procedure, done by blasting the purpose-built truck with water, though it took crucial input from long-serving driver and projectionist Iain MacColl to tweak the checks for the wild weather of the Highlands and Islands, which the unique cinema serves.
Recalling the original approach, MacColl says: “The technician got a fire hose and sprayed it over the top, soaking the outside of the cinema from above. It looked as though everything was good and there were no problems.
“So I said, ‘OK, that’s a French rain test. Now we need to do a Scottish one, because the rain there also goes sideways’.” The move revealed leaks that had to
be fixed.
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The distinctive bright-blue hulk of the Screen Machine, instantly recognisable to the many highlanders and islanders who view it as a lifeline, looks new as its two-month refit nears the end.
However, after 12 years on the road touring remote towns and villages to bring blockbusters and alternative films to people who live many miles from traditional cinemas, the HGV has taken a battering from the elements.
The latest upgrade includes an overhaul of the hydraulics needed to convert the truck, Transformers-style, into an 80-seat picture house in car parks in the middle of nowhere.
About 21,000 tickets are sold annually and each screening attracts 35-40 people, the same size of audience as a small-town cinema in Scotland.
It is a dream job for MacColl, a film buff and former lorry driver in his sixties. After nearly 20 years at the wheel, he sees it more as a “way of life”.
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The Screen Machine offers a cinema experience that sitting at home cannot match, and a chance to catch up, especially in winter, when bad weather makes travel difficult or impossible. Last year’s most popular films ranged from Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van to the latest Bridget Jones comedy.
Among the cinemagoers this year are postal worker Alyson Durno and her granddaughters Hollie, 5, and Emily, 7, who enjoyed Disney’s hit musical animation, Moana, in February, during the last tour before the refit. “It’s definitely good for the community and I think it’s well supported,” she says.
The cinema’s creator, Toutenkamion, which translates as “Everything on a truck”, lives up to its name, manufacturing mobile centres from military command posts and medical clinics to catering units at its base in Ladon, 80 miles south of Paris.
The site feels like a film studio lot, and a sign above the door to one of the vast workshops where each truck is made from scratch reads carrossier de rêves, or “coachbuilder of dreams”.
The firm began by making mobile cinemas for the local area, and boss Stephane Girerd says “cinemobiles” remain its most important and interesting product.
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None more so than the Screen Machine, which returns to Arran this week for a relaunch. Its new digital projector, which has three times the previous capacity — allowing it to show more films than before on any one run — will be showcased.
The programme includes the latest in the Pirates of the Caribbean series; Moonlight, winner of this year’s best picture Oscar; and an immersive screening of Scottish-French animation, The Illusionist, where the audience will receive top hats containing goodies including miniature whiskies to drink with the characters on screen. A scent technician has created a gorse soda for audiences to enjoy the aromas of places in the film.
It was a trip to Arran that persuaded Toutenkamion experts that they needed to go back to the drawing board for the Screen Machine to meet the unusual demands of reaching Scotland’s most isolated inhabitants.
Pointing out a roller under the truck, which ensures it does not ground on a CalMac crossing, MacColl says: “We took the Toutenkamion team to the island to show them it’s not like a Dover-to-Calais ferry. When they first saw the boat at Lochranza, they thought we were crazy. They didn’t think the cinema would fit on it.”
The 33-ton Screen Machine has since made it to grateful islanders in places as small and inaccessible as Eigg and the outlying isles of Orkney.
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MacColl shows the Toutenkamion team a video of the cinema getting a battering from Atlantic waves on Barra, prompting Girerd to joke quietly: “You know we sold you a truck, not a boat.”
Gales are of such concern that the cinema has a wind-speed gauge. Pieces of fence or wheelie bin “flying past” are a good indication that it
is time to stop the show, MacColl says.
Locals are likely to ask him to turn up the volume so they can hear the film over the howl. New sound insulation installed during the latest refit should help with that, and better anti-corrosion treatments will combat the impact of the almost ever-present saltwater.
The refit, costing about £120,000, was largely funded by Creative Scotland and the Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which support Regional Screen Scotland, a cinema operator and charity.
Come winter, audiences will feel the benefit of what might be the most welcome addition: underfloor heating. “The biggest complaint we get in winter is that people are cold from their middle down. Now they won’t be,” MacColl says.