Have you ever been annoyed when your LED fixtures shine in people’s eyes. It sort of kills the mood when you see the red, green and blue diodes shining in your eyes. To fix the issue, Ryan cut circles of plastic diffusing sheets (used for fluorescent lights) and put them 6″ in front of the diodes in their Par 56 LEDs.

The rest of their set is very portable because they meet in a movie theater. They have 1 hour to set-up and about 30 minutes to tear-down their stage area that fills the bottom of a movie theater.

Ryan created 2 custom built crank up truss stands that support 20′ of aluminum trussing with 8 PAR 56 LEDs providing back lighting, 2 PAR 36 LEDs for truss warmers, and 4 SCX500′s. They have a couple more truss pieces, grey curtains, 4 more PAR 36 LEDs, and 4 Wash Bar LEDs to complete their stage appearance.

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.

Here’s what Cameron says:
The design theme that I have been going for has been like a galaxy look, in the sense that it is all about the light. I don’t use any fabrics and I take extra time to make sure everything is black including the gear. I notice that sometimes it’s popular to show off gear but I don’t do that because I believe the lights and sound are there to set up an atmosphere for worship. Also having everything black makes the light beams have more presence. In this design I included par36 light banks (crowd blinders). It is our youth room so they do use them occasionally to give the audience a tan, but there main job is to give off an amber glow. One thing iv learned from my friend Daniel Connell the LD of church on the move is to have that amber glow in all my designs. It really helps with adding warmth to the look and goes great with dark blues and purples.

I realize that I am blessed with how fast our church has grown in the last 2 1/2 year and all the resources that come with that. I also understand that not all churches have that. What I can pass on is when you are buying fixture don’t be afraid to go used. I own 43 movers and only 6 of them I bought new. The 22 fixtures I bought for the new youth room I waited for tours to come to an end and bought the fixture off them. I was able to get 6 month old mac250 entours that normally are $2950 for $1900 each. I did the same with VL2000s and all the lights came with road cases for free.

Another big thing is when you do a big purchase of a few lights or more, go out of state. When you go out of state you don’t pay sales tax. With this last purchase I did it cost me $300 dollars more to ship it in from another state but I saved $6100 because there was no tax.

We’ve entered a new era for churches, one where intelligent lights have become not only accepted but fairly common.  We’re seeing a lot of attention paid to the look and design of our stages and lighting, and one tool that really makes lighting look great is haze. So how much haze should you use?

The short answer: You need as much as it takes to create the look you want.  Genius right?  I can’t tell you specifically how much you need because you need to figure out how much is right for your church by talking with your church leadership and trying out some different amounts.  What I can do is help you figure out what you are trying to accomplish with your haze, which should lead to that answer.  Keep in mind these concepts hold true whether you use oil or water based or one large hazer vs. many smaller ones.

Simply stated haze is used to help people see lighting beams across the open air, allowing you to “paint” the air with color and shapes.  When used effectively it’s a very cool visual element to have and can be a very useful design tool.  The addition of haze allows you to effectively design a look on your stage without having any actual sets. There are three questions in a church environment I think should help determine that.

1. Does the haze need to dissipate by the time the message starts?
   Haze inherently stays in the air for so long, and the thicker your haze is the longer it takes to dissipate and disappear.  If your pastor is not comfortable with a little haze being in the air while he preaches then you need to keep your haze thinner and less saturated.  If a little haze is ok, you can saturate the air significantly during worship. Then it will thin out some during the message.  Generally it sits thin on the ground and works it’s way up so you end up still seeing some haze up higher near the lights.
2. Where are your lights aimed?
   If your lighting is all aimed toward the stage, you only really need to haze the stage area and slightly in front.  If you are aiming lights out away from the stage toward the audience or out towards the ceiling, those beams are coming off stage which means you’ll want your haze to come off stage too.  The more distance you want to cover with your lights, the more haze you’ll need to use and the more saturated you’ll likely need the haze to be.
3. The look–do you want to see beams from ceiling to floor or just part of the way?
   I have seen many churches use just a little bit of haze in their services and you can see it show the beams for a while until you get closer to the stage.  This looks nice and will be perfect for many churches.  Others want to see the beam until the light hits its target.  For that you will need your haze thicker.  You need to play with your thickness here to see what gives you the look you want.  Side note: When lighting with haze, the tighter and more focused the beam, the better it will show.  Zooming out and throwing it out of focus will not give you defined beams.  Also, once beams start overlapping you will lose some of the effect too. Quantity of light doesn’t necessarily mean quality when trying to paint the air with light.

Answer these three questions and I think you’ll be able to easily answer how much haze you need.  As always, please add comments, thoughts, or questions below.

Also, as a bonus, here’s another great example of architectural/environmental projection.

Do you need to use the same brand of fog fluid as your fog machine?
Simply put…no. Although some brand names might be better for your system, using non-brand names won’t necessarily “break” your fogger. The truly important quality of the fog fluid is the purity. If you want your fog machine to last its longest, use the purest quality fog fluid you can find. If you can find fog fluid that is 1.5 parts impurities per million or under you’ll probably do fine.

Can a fog machine be used to produce haze?
Yes. If you want a very light Haze, you can dilute your fog fluid with distilled water until you get the grade of haze desired. (Never use tap water.) When you achieve a light haze, you may not see much fog coming out of the machine, but the air will be full of tiny particles that your lights will be seen shining through. Don’t be surprised if you have to activate your fogger more often than usual. That’s how it works with haze.

Will scented fog fluid clog your machine faster?
Nope. The biggest thing that will clog your machine is accumulated dust or jugs of fluid that have been left open for a long time.

How often should you clean your machine?
A clogged fog machine is trash. There is no reasonable means of removing the burnt clog. To keep it from creating a build up of impurities, run half a cup of UNCLOGIT through it after every 40 hours of operation or no longer than 3 months. This will help prevent clogs from forming. After running the UNCLOGIT through it, you should run a little regular fog fluid through it to provide lubrication for the pump.

Thanks to Cheaplights.com for sharing this in info their article.

Well, to start, companies like NSI have been making digitally controlled lighting boards and dimmer packs with signals carried through 3-pin XLR cables long before the term DMX was ever heard of here in America. (NSI calls their proprietary signal MICROPLEX and they still use it today). What do you think those digital signals were carried through back before the late 90′s when DMX was introduced to the commercial market here in America? Microphone cables.

Perhaps some cables marked “DMX Cable” might perform better than some cables marked “Microphone Cable”, but it can also be proven that some mid to high grade MIC cables work better than some DMX cables and if you and your audience can’t tell the difference, who cares? What does matter is which pins the wires are connected to on the 3 pin XLR plug.

Thanks to CheapLights.com for this article.

But Wait!

Jeff Ekstrand, Technical Director at Willow Creek North Shore has this to say: (and check out his comment below)

Our North Shore campus, where I’m the TD, runs approx. 25 movers, plus rentals. It’s an 850-seat room, to give an idea of size.

We have approx. 200-250’ in cable from console to our DMX Split. We have spans of anywhere from 6-75’ between fixtures in some places. Our installation is not ideal, given necessary cable paths and rental agreements (we rent from a school), so there are many variables that make it an absolute necessity to have the proper cable spec for a lot of our systems.

My guess, from my other experiences with various churches and consultation/training, is that a lot of other churches deal with the same type of less-than-ideal circumstances.

So sometimes proper DMX cables may be necessary…I personally use regular mic cable for our 25 fixtures…but they are simple LED par cans…

1. Don’t light primary faces. LED provides a rather unnatural light. The only time I use LED to light faces is during a worship set when I want to take notice away from the band…but even then I put a regular par can on the worship leader’s face so they can connect properly.
2. Be aware that people with epilepsy will have a problem with these lights. One of our drummers had to start wearing sunglasses while he played to avoid getting headaches and we’ve had one or two problems with someone feeling dizzy during the worship set. This could be a result of the video backgrounds we use too…but just be aware it may cause some problems for you. The solution: either have a place that isn’t overwhelming with LED lights or just limit the LED lighting in the room…perhaps don’t have the lights off.
3. LED par cans don’t work that well through fog. They are usually a little less bright than traditional par cans and they are less focussed–since their light comes from multiple bulbs.
4. You’ll potentially have problems with your camera equipment and LED lighting because some sort of cycles happen. I’ve seen this when we record at 60i frames…when we get to 30p or 25p we don’t have the same issues. Check out an example of the problems we have here: http://www.vimeo.com/7667880
   It seems to be the use of red that causes the camera to do this…it doesn’t do it for green and blue as badly.
5. Don’t point the lights toward the audience. Since the LED cans mix red, green, and blue, it won’t have the desired color appearance to the audience. They will just see a bunch of little lights pointed at them. Plus they can be pretty annoying to look at.