Jonathan Rasch from The Vineyard Church of Central Illinois in Urbana, Illinois brings us this cool remodel of an existing stage design. (originally posted November 2015)
Before Jonathan was hired on as a creative director, the Technical Director put up a stage set that was inspired by Journey Church’s “Crossing Textures.” (https://churchstagedesignideas.com/crossing-textures/) The tech director pretty much copied the exact specs from Journey Church.
The set stayed up for a solid two years and the senior leadership couldn’t find themselves to part ways with it. They knew the stage needed a new look, so the senior leadership and the creative department put their heads together and came up with a plan.
They had parameters that they needed to stay within—for instance, the crosses had to stay as did the wood wall. That didn’t give Jonathan many options to work with. However, they got creative and this is what they came up with.
Their total budget for the re-design was around $1,600. They stripped the stage down to bare bones and painted the gigantic wood wall all black. This was within the parameters since the wall was still technically there. They also made sure senior leadership understood it was being painted black.
From there they mounted LED tape within the crosses, and powered that with a DMX decoder and power supply from Holiday Coro.
They painted foam board black and mounted that on the backside of the crosses. This toned down the crosses, and still gave Jonathan flexibility to have them there when the pastor wants to see them, and also to take them out of the show altogether.
Jonathan has never been a fan of drum cages. So they had a low profile riser fabricated from a local metal fabricator, and they bought a new kit that would give them the flexibility to mix the house at an acceptable level while keeping the cage off the stage.
What that gave them was the ability to mount lighting in better locations to even out the stage.
They put Coroplast on the Colorado Batten 144’s to diffuse the LED’s. With the zone controllable features, they are able to do some really attractive looking chases with the light bars.
Here’s a list of Lighting gear they used:
Chauvet RH1 hybrid – 4
Chauvet R2 Spot – 15
Chauvet R2 Wash – 10
Chauvet Colorado Batten Tour 144 – 12
Chauvet Color Dash Par Quad 18 – 20
Hi Jonathan,
What did you guys use for stage flooring? The black is a little shiny and looks great!
Hey Jason,
Thanks so much! That’s a product called Masonite board. It definitely gives a nice effect!
Can you tell us about the lights behind the drums? How are they mounted? What brand/model are they?
Hey Mike! Sorry in the delay in response. Lights behind the drums are as follows:
On Truss:
4 – Chauvet Rogue R2 Spots
3 – Chauvet COLORado Batten 144 Tour
The warm glowing lights were some lights we fabricated in house. They are welded on a steel plate, with 1/4″ steel rod. Welded on top of that steel rod is a furnace reducer (http://www.homedepot.com/p/4-in-To-3-in-Round-Reducer-R4X3/100149942). The bulb we wired up and mounted inside that is a Par 36 bulb. (http://www.lampline.com/dwe-ge-679-p)
Hopefully that helps!
Jonathan, thanks for the reply! Loving the design!
I see the 3 colour radio battens mounted horizontally but what are the vertically mounted battens please? Looks great by the way.
Hi Jamie,
I’m the current lighting design for TVCCI. I wasn’t there when this was up, but those are also the same color battens, just placed end to end.