How To: Host a Movie Themed Birthday Party

Blogosphere, welcome back! Today, I am super excited to be sharing with you some tips and tricks for hosting your very own movie themed birthday party! What makes me such an expert you ask? Just the fact that I may or may not have recently hosted one myself. Sure, there were literally 6 people there including me, but I'm still counting that as a party. Want the perfect how-to guide? Stay tuned to make all your party dreams come true.

Preliminary Stuff

Invitations

The first thing you need to worry about are invitations. Of course, there are some fun, movie themed invitation templates that you can get from the world wide web, however I decided to make my own because I wanted to jazz it up and personalise it (plus, I really wanted them to be pink). And here my friends is the result:

I thought they looked pretty snazzy if I do say so myself. Plus, it literally took me about 2 minutes to make on Pages (the wondrous powers of MacBooks will never cease to amaze me).

Costume

Of course, given that you are planning to throw a movie themed birthday party, costumes are an absolute must. As you can clearly tell from the invitation, my costume theme was to come dressed as a certain movie character, however you can make the theme whatever you want really. Some people just revolve their parties around a Hollywood glamour theme, while other people request that you dress up as your favourite celebrity. Whatever the pre-requisite, we've got you covered. I decided to go as Sandy from 'Grease' for my party, pretty much because I already had a really awesome, old, 50's style dance costume lying around that I was dying to wear again (plus, 'Grease' happens to be one of my favourite movies ever, so that was a plus). However in the midst of my initial costume search, I found a truly terrific website. It's this place called 'Delta's Dazzling Costumes', and it seriously has one of the largest costume ranges ever. Everything's relatively cheap, and the national shipping is super quick. It is Australian, however luckily for those of you living in vegemite-less destinations, Delta's happens to deliver internationally, how cool is that? Here are some examples of the costumes you may consider purchasing for your next party. 

Rydell High Cheerleader, 'Grease'

Magenta, 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'

Minnie Mouse, Disney Franchise

Game Ideas

Movie Bingo

This game's pretty self explanatory. Assuming everyone knows how to play bingo (because seriously, who doesn't?), all you really need for this one are a bunch of movie themed bingo cards and you're set. Basically, each card has a different cinematic common occurrence on it like falling in love or breaking into song, and the first person to fill up their row yells 'Bingo' and wins the whole thing. Simple? That's what I thought. Now all you need to do is download this handy pdf and off you go!

Movie Themed 'Family Feud'

This one my friends may be a tad more confusing. Those of you familiar with the art of making computer games using Keynote will find this to be a walk in the park, however if you literally have no idea what you just read, I suggest you tread carefully. Okay, welcome to Keynote, your new best friend. Unfortunately, this is only a Macbook application, so if you're a classic PC lover, there's not really any hope for you with this one. 

What is it?

Well, Movie Themed 'Family Feud' is basically just a movie themed computer game. How does 'Family Feud' come into it? Answer is, it doesn't really. How does it work? I'm so glad you asked.

There are two even teams, and someone will be made team captain of each (hint: this should be the member with the least movie knowledge of the group, you'll understand why in a second). The team captain will be taken into a top secret space before the game begins and shown all of the answers to each of the questions. Then the game is ready to begin. 

To give you an example, my first question was 'Name the Most Popular Cameron Diaz Movies'. From that, the other team members are to come up with 5 suggestions each, and from them, you choose the best answers. For instance, the correct answers in accordance with IMDB were 'Sex Tape', 'The Other Woman', 'There's Something About Mary', 'Bad Teacher' and 'The Mask'. If I was captain and my team members managed to get all 5 of these collectively out of the 5 individual ones they listed, then I would put a tick next to all of the correct ones. However, if collectively they only managed to get 3, I would obviously tick the correct answers, and then just put a tick next to two other random movies before the answers are revealed. The team with the most answers correct wins that particular question. I initially created the whole team captain thing because I made the computer game and wanted to avoid bias (plus I also desperately wanted to play, so I made it work). As if that wasn't complicated enough, now you get to read all about how to actually make it. 

Step 1 - Create all of your pages

Well, first you need to decide what you want your pages to look like. I decided to have 5 questions, given that you have to have an odd number to eliminate all chance of a tie. My pages are as follows:

Opening - 

This page is pretty easy. You get a background, you get a logo, you get some text boxes and off you go. Think it's simple? Savour it while it lasts. 

Instructions - 

If you can't work this one out for yourself, there's no hope for you. Just seriously write what you want people to do and make them do it. 

Questions - 

This is what your first questions page will look like. Basically, all you need to do with this one is find a question, get a picture, and slap in a 'See Answers' button. This is the page you will stay on while your team members are busily searching their minds for some answers. 

Say hello to the second questions page. This, I kid you not, is pretty much an exact replica of the first one. Start off by copy and pasting the original question slide, before deleting the 'See Answers' text box and replacing it with the answers. As you may or may not know, 'Family Feud' works by drawing its answers from a public poll. Of course, I do not expect you to survey random people and ask them all these questions. I just googled 'Popular Cameron Diaz Movies' and a bunch of her films frequently mentioned on the web came up. Don't believe me? Feast your eyes upon the evidence. 

 

Now you've got the gist of it, you pretty much just do that for all of the other questions. 

Ending - 

This is seriously the easiest slide of them all. You just need two text boxes and you're done!

Step 2 - Linking it all together

Now you've got all your slides done and dusted, it's time to connect them so you can actually physically play the game properly. You see the words below that I underlined on the slide? These will be your buttons.

It's officially time to get everything connecting. First, highlight the word you want linked to another page and click on the little inspector icon at the top right hand side of the screen. 

Now you've done that, click on the 9th icon that looks like a blue arrow. 

Then tick the box that reads 'Enable as a hyperlink'. 

Change the number down the bottom to the slide you want this button to link to. 

And bam, you're done! Do this for every button in the slideshow and you'll have one, super terrific movie themed 'Family Feud' game on your hands. 

Character Mash-Up

Compared to the last game, this one will seem ridiculously easy and simple to prepare. Basically, all you need to do is find 6 pictures of random movie characters and put them on a word document. After you do this, print out 2 copies, cut each picture into four strips, and then place each set into a separate envelope. Then, the two teams will get and envelope each, and the fastest group to piece the pictures back together correctly wins the game. Simplicity as its best!

Prop Scavenger Hunt

This one, I'm warning you now, is super fun. It was a big hit, and totally worth all of the deceit and treachery going down between the teams. So basically, all you have to do is buy a bunch of movie related props, get a family member to hide them in random places around your house, divide your friends into two teams and let the games begin. But remember, no lounge cushions will be left unturned. 

Spoofs and Remakes

For this one, everyone needs to get a hold on their dramatic selves (luckily mine isn't too hard to find). Considering there were 6 people in total at my party, I organised 3 scripts from random movies, found an awesome scene between two people, and changed everyone's character names. The activity was to totally re-imagine the dualogue and change-up the relationship between the characters. Plus, you just got brownie points if you were able to accurately guess the origin of each script. For inspiration, my chosen scenes are below:

Scene 1

This just so happens to be a dualogue from everyone's new favourite Disney sisters Anna and Elsa from 'Frozen'. 

Scene 2

If you got this one, you're seriously just a movie genius. This is a little, totally forgettable scene between the Principal and the Janitor in 'The Breakfast Club'. 

Scene 3

Believe it or not, you're hearing from Brad and Janet from 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show', because I just couldn't resist. 

Quote Lucky Dip

This is also probably one of the most simple games on the list, however I am proud to say it was executed beautifully by my mother. Seeing as I wanted to participate, she gladly found me 12 movie quotes to be cut up, put in a hat, and passed around in a circle. It was similar to pass the parcel, as we all just kept handing it around until the music stopped and someone pulled out a quote. Everyone by the end of the game got two quotes each, and if they got it correct they got a point, and if not, well they just suck. We had an awesome array of quotes, ranging from 'The Fault in Our Stars' to 'Bad Lip Reading', and extending to this 'Legally Blonde' beauty below:

So that's seriously the end of my mammoth post. Congratulations on completing it all the way through, you should win some kind of award! Now at least you know how to throw an awesome, movie themed birthday party all thanks to the wondrous help of Teenage Fanatic. Now go and plan your own lives! Til' next time . . .

Annabel xx