Decide on the application of the screen. If you are building a screen for a home theater or to watch movies, you’ll want to build a wide screen. If you don’t want wide screen, you can build a regular square screen. Part of this decision will be determined by where you choose to hang your screen. Make sure you know your limits of space, especially if you are building in your home. You won’t want a screen that is bigger than the wall you are going to hang it on.
Use 1-inch thick by 4-inch wide wooden boards when making the frame. You can connect these boards together with triangular pieces of plywood or metal “L” brackets. Use white fabric backed with black for the screen surface. You can use other types of white fabrics; usually drapery fabric works well. However, stay away from using bed sheets because projected images will look very poor on them. If you are making a large screen, consider using drywall to reinforce the fabric. Be sure to pull the fabric taut all the way around the frame. You can add a black vinyl lining all the way around the screen to make the screen look more professional.
There are several standard length-to-height ratios for wide screen. The two main standards are Academy, which is the ratio for a television set, and Cinerama, which is the ratio for a movie theater. The Academy ratio is 1.33-to-1 and Cinerama is 2.35-to-1. Use these ratios to adjust the lengths of the boards. 8-foot and 6-foot boards make a good wide-screen frame. If you already know the size your screen needs to be, then disregard the ratios.
If you are putting your screen inside, find a room with little to no outside light. The darker the room is, the better the picture quality will be. There are several ways to hang a screen. You can use heavy-duty picture frame hangers or nails, but to reduce the number of holes in your wall, use aluminum channel iron. It is a lot easier to level the iron on the wall and then attach the screen to it, than to level the screen on the wall. This also supports the screen more than nails and hangers because the weight of the screen is dispersed across the iron. However, channel iron is more expensive. Make sure that the screen is level and centered with the projector.