Stage Designs

Glowing Stage Front

Brandon Horst from Ridgeview Bible Church in Chadron, NE brings us this stage front that can change colors and glow.

They designed a permanent installation since they don’t have a budget for stage design and redesign on a continual basis. They church has seating for around 300 and their worship center is not huge, but they wanted to make the stage feel bigger than it looks. They have a corner stage and had a hard time coming up with a good idea to create some symmetry with the building, so after pouring through all the designs on CSDI, they came up with a plan.

They built their stage with an open front and painted all of the wood black to clean things up on the front of the stage. They tried to use styrene lighting panels, but they were too fragile and broke as they held them in place so they ended up using sheets of 6mm twinwall that they picked up at Menards. They were too transparent so Brandon attached the styrene panels on the back side of the stage and then screwed the twinwall to the front to protect the styrene. Twinwall is less than $40 for a 4×8 sheet and is super tough.

They bought a cheap pull down screen on Amazon, and welded some triangle truss together to form a frame for the screen and attached it to the rafters. They also used the same truss to create a truss for lighting in the ceiling. The back of the stage was built with pallet wood the youth group spent many nights tearing apart. They framed 2×4 walls and screwed them to the stage to allow them to be easily removed if they change the design of the stage. The pallet strips were overlapped and nailed to create a solid wall. They also added a beam on the right side of the stage to help with symmetry. Some of the pallet wood was too light, so they ended up fogging them with black spray paint to create some darker colors on the wall.

After they built walls they tried uplighting, but decided since their stage was smaller, they didn’t want people tripping on lights or wires. They decided to mount the lights to the top of the pallet wall and have them shining down. Their lighting system is controlled by Luminair ($100) on an iPad (donated) running through an EntTec Art-Net controller ($150).

Their lights consist of:

  • 9 Chauvet SLIM Par56 LEDs ($80/each) lights shining down on the pallet wall and behind the screen to light up the drums.
  • 8 Chauvet SLIM Par 64 LED ($120/each) lights in the ceiling.
  • 4 American DJ Mega Bar 50 ($120/each) strips under the stage shining from the center to the outside.

They used white foam board under the stage as well to box in and help reflect the light.

  • 8 American DJ PAR-38B Cans ($30/pair) with Edison mounts
  • Feit Electric Par38 Flood lights ($40/light) inside cans

These were controlled by American DJ DP-415 dimmer packs ($115). These work great for their stage lighting and are dimmable LED lights that have a natural color.

  • 8 Par 56 Halogen lights ($40/can) that they only use for spotlights if needed. These were donated too.

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Faux Video Wall One Projection

8 responses to “Glowing Stage Front”

  1. Paul Fowler says:

    Nice job…looks great!
    What obscure material did you use under the stage?

  2. We used Plaskolite on the inside of the 2×4’s. They have a ton of styles, but we used the Prismatic pattern on the inside and then used the 6mm Twinwall on the outside. Twinwall is about bulletproof and holds up well to abuse.

    http://www.plaskolite.com/ProductCatalog/OPTIX-Pattern-12-%28PL-21%29-Prismatic-Acrylic

    • Phil says:

      Brandon, do you have close up pictures of how you mounted the lights on top of the pellet wall?

      • Brandon says:

        Sorry, I missed your comment somehow.

        The lights we used had a mounting bracket as part of the leg that had a hole in it. I took the bracket off the light, screwed it to the wall with a large lag screw and washer and then stuck the light back in.

        I can send a close up pic if needed, but it’s pretty simple. If you get the light tight enough they won’t move.

  3. Brad says:

    How do you prevent/ minimize the front lighting, (for the people on stage), bleeding on the center projection?

    Btw, looks great, love it.

  4. The led lights are set back a little in the can and that helps. I aimed them so the singers are about a third of the way back in the path of the light too. The projector (3000 lumens) is mounted ahead of the lights too and doesn’t have to cut through as much either. If we needed to we have used black foam and black duct tape to create barn doors for the top too. The LEDs don’t get hot do you can shape the light with those. I think it’s in the craft section of most store and is just soft flexible craft foam. It was super helpful to aim one light at a time and help keep the light off the projector as we set it up.

  5. Greg Buchanan says:

    This looks fantastic. Planning on this in my church

  6. Josh Corley says:

    Brandon,

    I sent you a message on Facebook, it may have went to your OTHER FOLDER. Check it out if you have time.

    Thanks,
    Josh

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