Stage Designs

String Portals

The Water of Life Media/Worship/Communications Department from Water of Life Community Church in Fontana, CA brings us these string portal-like panels.

They wanted to take a new angle to string art by adding texture and multiple light angles. They backlit/inside lit the string with LED RGB tape, then had multiple standard house rig moving head washes and LED pars light the string from the front and the side as well.

The frames were all made of 2×4 stock lumber, and the flown pieces had metal rigging points added to them for structure and safety. They painted the wood frames black to get them to disappear against their backdrop.

Each frame was made up of a few LED tape strips, so each frame had multiple zone lighting control with DMX decoders, but done much less expensively than pixel tape.

The string was a thick twine from a construction supply house, and each strand was woven throughout the frame over black drywall screws on the front face of the frame. They used over 15,000 ft of twine in total.

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Most Popular Stages – October 2016 Once Was Blind

4 responses to “String Portals”

  1. John Weaver says:

    Love this design, thank you! It’s very reachable. Can you tell us where you got the twine, what kind it was, cost?

    • Joe Chappell says:

      Hey John, We tried a few options from Home Depot, Amazon and Uline. They either were too expensive or not thick enough, so they looked too thin from the seats. Here is the product we landed on, it also comes in large spools for a much easier installation process.

      https://www.mcmaster.com/#1932t4/=1570nw5

      We used almost 3 spools of the 50 lb, 7300ft long version. They have other options and so does Uline if you want a thinner product.

  2. AJ Guptill says:

    Looks great! How are you guys pulling off the triple wide IMAG?

    • Joe Chappell says:

      Thanks AJ. The screen is not quite a triple wide. It’s kind of an in-between ratio that fits the space as best we could. But the answer to your question is its controlled via Christie Spyder. We use a full screen (center cut) for worship with lyrics keyed over, and for the sermon or speaking we use a 16×9 center canvas with banners or other content on the sides to fill the entire screen. In some of the pictures you can see the full wide worship canvas and also a few images of the true 16×9 center canvas when our pastor is up preaching.

      The theory behind it is we want the worship to be larger than life and more artistic. But for the sermon we have to fit in true 16×9 to allow our off-site campus’s and web videos to see the entire image. Hope that helps.

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