---
author: "Robert Pearce"
authorTwitter: "@RobertWPearce"
desc: "Your significant other and you can do long-distance movie night easily. Here's how."
keywords: "long distance relationships, movie night, skype, dropbox"
title: "Long-Distance Movie Night"
updated: "2023-02-04T18:00:00Z"
---

<img
  alt="Wooden unicorn wall mount"
  decoding="async"
  height="300"
  src="/images/movie-night-cary-grant.webp"
  width="615"
/>

In a long-distance relationship? I currently am, and it sucks, but that will
change someday. My SO (significant other), who is an ocean away and five hours
ahead, and I were recently celebrating the passing of time and wanted to share
a movie night. How were we to do this?

There are many options out there that we explored, such as
[Gaze](https://letsgaze.com), which has a great design (though a questionably
shaky platform), but only supports `.mp4`, `.ogg` and `.woff` files (even if you
alter the webpage to accept all file types). We had our movie in `.avi` and
`.mov`, so this wasn't going to work.

We also tried a few other services but to no avail, so we put our thinking caps
on and solved the problem with these simple steps:

1. Make sure you and your SO each have a copy of the movie (sharing it via
  [Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com) is a _big_ help here)
1. Use Skype to video call your SO
1. Open wine
1. Do a countdown (3...2...1) for when each of you should click play
1. Turn on the mute button when you're not talking/commenting so that his/her
   movie's sound doesn't come over the speakers

This was surprisingly easy, and Skype lets you keep a small version of the
person you're video calling on top of all other screens, so I put her on the top
left of my screen and presto! Long-distance movie night.
