Stage Designs

Tightly Lined

Jon Mckinley from Calvary Christian Center in Pottstown, PA brings us this Coroplast-filled stage design. (originally posted March 2016)

Every year their creative team sits down and tries to figure out a cost effective “default” stage that they can use. They did a lot of research online and on CSDI and decided to piece some elements together from different stages to make it work for them and their building.

First they love working with Coroplast. They have used it a few times before and it is pretty cheap yet durable and lights amazingly. So they went to their local sign shop and got 3 sheets. Two of the sheets they had them cut ($5 a sheet to cut) into 2″ strips. This gave them 48 strips. The center section of lines was 8′ wide, and each side side 4′. So they took 24 of the 8′ strips and cut them in half to get their side sections. They made frames out of 1×3 and stapled the strips directly to them spaced 2′ apart. The center section they had to make braces for it because of its size.

The pillars were also Coroplast. They took one sheet and cut it in half then scored the two halves with a letter opener. They folded them to a 90 degree angle and put some wood braces in them. They bowed a little on the sides, but they had to use the spare wood they had laying around.

The stripped sections were lit with mega bars from the floor, and the pillars were lit with LED par 64’s. They also had 7 RGBW par 64’s on the ceiling coming in to flood the entire stage.

Total they spent on this stage was right around $50.

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Lanterned Reel Christmas

5 responses to “Tightly Lined”

  1. Ryan says:

    So simple yet massively effective. Love this!!!

  2. Bill says:

    Looks great! I bet it would look cool if you projected on it too.

  3. Ricky says:

    Could u email very detailed instructions for this project. Light placement, maybe some pics from the rear

    • Jon Mckinley says:

      Hey there. I can’t take any pictures from the back because everything is right up against the wall. Each section is 8 feet tall. The two side sections are 4 feet wide. We made a frame out of 1×2’s painted black. The 8 foot section in the middle has 3 braces keeping it propped. It also has an extra 1×2 in the middle to help with bowing. All the coroplast we had professionally cut and we stapled them on. They are 2 inch strips spaced 2 inches apart. For lights we have 1 three foot strip light at the bottom about 6 inches away pointed about halfway up the strips. For the middle section we have 2 lights set the same. The pillars are one 4×8 piece of coroplast cut in half. Once it was cut we scored one side so we could bend it in half. We used 2 par 64 LEDs roughly 6 inches away pointed at the middle of the pillar. We also have full lights mounted on our ceiling. 4 are pilling the stripped sections. And 3 are used for video and color filling the band.

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