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You didn't mention if you were hanging a pull down screen or mounting a perm wall screen. I have a perm wall screen but here is my experience. This is a bit extensive, but hopefully useful, as I wanted a professional installation and had to plan it out carefully.
I ended up finding the studs by hand, knowing that the screen wall was 16" OC (on center) and removed an outlet plate to verify (outlet boxes are usually screwed sideways onto studs), then measured 16" increments. The screen frame was screwed in with 3" wood screws (2 on each side, 3 on top and bottom) after pre drilling to avoid splitting either the studs (it's a bearing wall) or drywall. What you can do is use a very small drill and drill slowly on the inner most portion of the hole you want. You always want to drill your first holes toward the inside of the outline of the object you are mounting; holes inside the object can be hidden but holes outside the outline will have to be patched. Drill slowly with little force and you'll know when you hit a stud; I happen to hit all 10 of mine. My screen is an extremely high tension fixed wall screen so I had to make sure the frame wasn't going to pull out of the wall under tension once the screen surface was mounted. I used a level for each section of the frame as it was hung (6 sections total)
Once the screen was mounted I determined 11' throw distance for 106" diagonal. I verified distance and lens shift functions on the wall, from a height on the floor equal to the desired ceiling height (+/- distances from screen top to ceiling and screen top to bottom) before I even started marking out the screen outline. Be careful not to hang your screen too high or too low or otherwise out of range of your projector from its finished mounting position.
Knowing half the screen width (short side) and the throw distance I wanted (long side), I triangulated to 3 places on the ceiling at 11' foot to make sure I had a line perfectly parallel to the wall. The beams in the ceiling ran perpendicular to the screen, so I had 2 cases: one where the projector mount was in between beams or the case where it was straddled on both sides of one beam. Projector placement is critical so I decided no matter what was up there, that is where the projector had to go Turns out it was in between two beams. I drilled a small hole in the inner most spot where a hole was needed to allow room for repositioning and used a coat hanger to probe and find the location once up in the attic. I cut a piece of 2x6 lumber to 1' 10 1/2" to fit exactly between the beams (which are 2' OC) and screwed this piece in between the beams flush with the drywall after pre drilling the beams and the ends of the 2x6. This is crucial when screwing things into lumber flush with sheetrock as the wood could expand and crack or separate the dry wall or at the very least, disturb the plaster.
I stenciled the ceiling with the mount and drilled the holes in the ceiling before mounting the 2x6 so I could make sure it was centered where it needed to be. After that, it was just a matter of screwing in the mount ceiling plate.
Installing the wall plate for the cables was easy; I just located a stud based on 16" (or 24") increments from the nearest outlet and stenciled the outline of the box. I drilled a tiny hole in the CENTER of the outline that way if the box is 2" wide, I have 1 inch left or right I could move the outline without the first hole being a problem. Probe for stud with coat hanger, adjust outline if needed, and saw the drywall away after scoring with a box cutter.
The hardest part was spending an hour or more on a 111 F record Sunday up in the attic drilling through the top plate of the wall to drop the cables down... as a bearing wall it is a double top plate so it's 3" thick, more than most hole saws can cut. Also there was fire blocking (or just a place to screw drywall into) a few feet down from the top plate... basically imagine a 36" drill extension with a cutting tip going into a 1" hole at the top of the wall and trying to center and cut a hole in another 2x4 a couple feet below the first hole and not being able to see anything... then imagine threading a thick component video cable with thick connector ends though that hole and trying to push it down the second hole a few feet into the wall and not being able to see...
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