Stage Designs

Checkered Dots

Gary Brownell along with Faith Church in St. Louis, Missouri brings us this cool patterned design. (Originally posted December 2014)

Gary was tasked to design a stage for 3 permanent campuses and one portable campus. The time from the concept/design to the start of the new series was very limited. With that in mind, he needed to use the existing frame structure that was currently on stage but have a completely different look. In his designs, he likes the stage pieces to look like something actually used currently in concerts, award shows, or talent competition shows. The look he went with was the Chauvet Nexus look that is very popular now.

They used black Coroplast, then cut small holes for the Nexus look and a larger hole for the incandescent light look. They covered the smaller holes with Lee 216 diffusion gel ($125 per roll) and lit from the rear, from the ground up, using existing LED light bars. They put 10″ work lights ($12 Lowes) in the larger holes and connected them to existing dimmers. They used 60-watt clear silver bowl bulbs ($2.84 1000bulbs.com) for an authentic look. Then they velcroed the Coroplast to the frame.

Then Gary made 16ft verticle LED tubes. These 8ft tube pieces were clear fluorescent tube covers ($4.50 Home Depot) with Lee 216 diffusion gel inside lit by 5050-300 RGB LED tape (Amazon $11.36) inside. They were connected to a DMX controller ($249 superbrightleds.com) and two 12-volt 30amp power supplies. ($25 Amazon).

The vibrant LED color looked great on TV. And people ask how the church can afford such “expensive” lights. $12 work lights, $11 LED tape, and hole cutouts for the existing LED bars.

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Segments Titanium

15 responses to “Checkered Dots”

  1. jeff lyon says:

    great look. love the concept and the execution. wondering what the vertical LED tubes were attached to.

    • Gary says:

      The LED tubes were tie wrapped to the an existing metal framework piece that was curved. With the tubes attached to the curved sections it broke up the rest of the stage and gave the curved sections a column look.

      • Pastor Anthony De Los Santos says:

        I know y’all used the tube for the upright and the frame work was metal but what did you attach to the metal framework to cover the metal framework to make it look like a column

  2. Mathew says:

    Looks Awesome.
    What wat the frame made out of and what was it attached to?

  3. I see in the pictures the giant 10’s. How did you make those?

    • Gary Brownell says:

      We cut it out of black 8×4 sheets of Coroplast and gaff taped it together. The front is clear coroplast, not the best choice because you can sort of see the LED tape inside. For info on the LED tape, there is another design I did with hexagons that came out about a week after this design. It give detail on the tape and connecting it to DMX. The only difference is that the tape is inside tubes.

  4. Andria says:

    Awesome look, love it! Could you tell me if you used full white diffusion and what are the exact dimensions of the small and large holes?

    • Gary Brownell says:

      I used full diffusion. Lee 216. The small holes are 6 inches and we used a 6 inch hole cutter on a drill. The holes on the larger holes are 11 3/4 inches but will change depending on the brand of work lights.

  5. Tiffany says:

    How big are the coroplast pieces with the small 6” holes and the large hole? 4×8 sheets?

    • Gary Brownell says:

      3×5 feet. We cut them to fit the existing framework. The Coroclaw tool makes the cuts with the grain straight and fast.

  6. Tom Zieman says:

    Well thought out look, What did you use to secure the diffusion lens to the back of the Coroplast?

  7. JB says:

    How much Lee 216 diffusion gel sheets did you get for the all the LED tubes?

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