Subscribe to Sunday| Magazine online for free! (from the makers of CSDI)
Stephen and Christopher Ellis from Arlington Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Arlington, Texas brings us this lighting design from a Kristian Stanfill concert.
The primary color sets were created using 4 MAC 250s, 2 Elations, 2 Studio Color 575s, 8 par 36 cans shooting up from planter boxes, 4 Studio Colors mounted on an over head truss, and 2 rented led baton bars. Check out the video to get an idea of what it looked like.
I write and speak about the creative process – especially for churches. Call me a resource for the church creative wanting to make their ministry better.
Some nice looks here
Hey guys my church has a real small budget and have a lot of repairs to be made however I am trying to enhance the worship experience with lighting. How can I do this with low cost but big return?
Lighting is one of the most expensive parts of any worship experience. If I were you, I would definatly buy LED lights if anything. They will be a little more expensive, but once you have them, there is really no maintenance and they will last a very, very long time. Hope this helps!
Hey Matt, if your limited to working with non intelligent lighting there are quite a few options that fall inside of $200 and under budgets. If you send me some pictures of your stage setup I could make some specific recommendations. My email is S.paulellis@gmail.com.
Stephen,
Would you be willing to make some recommendations for me? We are about to move into a new building, and I want to make our student worship center as exciting as I can make it.
Justin I would go with LED 36 cans to start with, they are light and easy to control, as well lower cost. Also LED batons can provide a lot of wash for backdrops.
Lots of companies are going led and flooding the used market with pars and boards like Smartfade 1248. You can also pick up the dimmers pretty cheap and gels are only a couple dollars. Have the praise team put on a couple car washes or dinners (praise team provide entertainment) and raise money outside the church budget to pick up the extra parts. Also talk to your local lighting supply store. if you have a Barbizon nearby I would use them. I am in Phoenix and ours is priceless. They may be able to help you with used gear and repairs.
If I get those LED Par 64 – 36 lights, does it create the washed effect, or would I need haze?
You would need haze, we use one large size hazer for a 750 seat sanctuary, if that helps.
Thanks, that does help. Our sanctuary seats 300. So any ideas on a hazer? How much money are we talking? Sorry to bother you, but thanks. We’ve used one once and it went over well, but we didn’t use enough. We’d still have to play with it.
The prizes and sizes of hazers varies a lot I would recommend calling your local theater supply shop and getting a quote or asking Jonathan he might have written a post on the best hazers.
Hello,
Does anybody have any good advice on continuous stage lighting for our small church. I would say we could seat maybe 200 at the most, so it’s a pretty small church. We are planning to start live video streaming and the lighting is just horrible. We have fluorescent lights over the congregation and then small can lights over the stage. We need something that really brightens up the speakers face for the video camera. Our budget is not very big but I am interested in that LED idea. But I get frustrated when I try to do any research online because all I get in the results is how to do this fantastic multiple color display that seems like every church in the country is doing but obviously their budget is way bigger than ours :-) Basically what I’m looking for is two lights mounted on the ceiling, one to the left of the preacher one to the right. Something that removes all shadows especially from the face and really lightens it up but I am not looking for spotlights that blind the preacher. Friends, any ideas?
Hello,
I am the lighting guy at Calvary Chapel Carson City our sanctuary seats roughly 300 people. We started to incorporate LED lighting about two years ago. Like you we do not have a very large budget. I don’t know what your specific needs are but I would NOT advise using led fixtures to light preachers or musicians. I have tried before with RGB and RGBA leds, RGB LED’s produce a very very cool blueish white. this i have found is not ideal for lighting. if you are looking to light a preacher or worship leader i would advise using Ellipsoidal fixtures. The color temperature is much lower and natural appearing. Where i like to use my Leds is on targets like hanging stage decor or the back wall. Also note that you do get what you pay for. Many cheaper fixtures tend to flicker, and do not dim smoothly which can be a big issue for video. Currently I have a total of 8 LED fixtures all Chauvet or ADJ, and so far i have been extremely pleased. Just make sure the fixtures have “TRI” LEDS. Also as far as blinding the teacher you may want to consider changing the angle at which the lights are aimed, and mounted.
Hey looking for some ideas for my church, Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, a 10,800 seat facility, we haven’t done very much with the lighting, we recently purchased some spandex forms and some led movers, ultimately I would like to change the stage design every 4 months with a fresh new look that adds to the service without being a distraction, and do it at a low cost. What do you suggest?