Stage Designs

Throwback: Discochecks

Paul Maynard from Thomas Road Baptist Church Student Ministries in Lynchburg, VA brings us this large, colorful discotheque wall inspired by Gallons of Light and Radiant Squares. (Originally posted April 2014)

They wanted to do a large scale set design for their “Episode” event, which is a weekend winter retreat for students from multiple churches. The decision was made to make a large wall of gridded squares, lit from the inside using LED strips. Due to cost, they decided to only light every other square.

The wall consisted of 90 squares (45 lined and lit with LED strips). It was constructed out of 2×4 (outermost frame) 2×2 (all the inside framing) and 1×4 (used as a face board across the entire front). They were able to rip 2×4 down the middle to create 2×2, in order to save some money. They also found 1x4x14 “strips” from Home Depot, which was much cheaper than buying 1x4x12 standard grade lumber. The total size of the wall was 30 feet wide and 12 feet tall, with each square being 22.5”x22.5”.

The event was actually in a different state, so the entire set was constructed in a warehouse, then transported 300 miles to the event venue. Because of this, they made the wall in 5 identical panels, each 3 squares wide, and 6 squares tall, and then tied the panels together using eye bolts once they got to their venue. This design also allowed them to use the set again in different, smaller venues, where maybe only 2 or 3 panels would fit.

They currently have 2 panels laid on their side in our middle school room, which is much smaller and has little vertical space.

The 45 lit squares were lined all the way around with RGB led strips, and then carefully dressed with 18G wire, running to DMX encoders. Each DMX encoder could only run 8 squares, and since each panel had 9 lit squares, they decided to connect all the lit squares on the bottom row to their own decoder. The lit squares were then backed with white Coroplast squares cut to 24”x24”. When it was all complete, each of the 5 panels weighed around 175 pounds, but held up very nicely in transit.

Since they had already run the electrical, it only took about 2 hours once at the venue to piece the wall together and get it in place. The entire wall was set on 6 large black road cases, and tied to a hanging truss for stability.

In total, the set took around 150 man hours to complete, which was mostly Saturdays in a warehouse with half a dozen volunteers.

[tentblogger-vimeo 88672226]

episode_previews03

episode_previews04

episode_previews16

episode_previews17

episode_previews20

photo 2

photo 3

photo 4

photo 1

photo 5

photo

Lined Dots Shipgap

14 responses to “Throwback: Discochecks”

  1. Taylor says:

    Was this LED tape or DMX run LED bars? If it was LED tape strips… How did you control these from your lighting board? Thanks.

    • Paul says:

      Hey Taylor,

      It was RGB LED strips with sticky tape on the back, bought from LED Wholesalers. They sell plastic connectors that connect to the strip at whatever point you cut it. The connect converts the strip to 4 18 Gauge wires, which we ran to DMX Decoders bought from Environmental Lights. From there, we ran the DMX to our lighting system. I can send you the direct links if you’re interested! Both companies were extremely helpful and fairly priced.

  2. Steven Hall says:

    Great job guys! This is an outstanding set. Way to serve the church radically well! You should be super proud of yourselves and your team!

    ,Steven

  3. Alex Shepler says:

    Paul, Could you also email me the links?

  4. Vaughn VanSkiver says:

    Awesome job! Thanks for including the video as well – passed it along to our Student Ministry pastors to glean ideas. I need to check out the LED strips…..I think they will become the “pallets” of last year.

  5. TJ says:

    This looks amazing. Was wondering what the total cost to make it was? We are a portable church and would love to do a set design like this.

    • Paul says:

      TJ — The bulk of the cost was the lights, DMX decoders, and power supplies. We spent about $700 on lumber to construct the frame, and about $3500 on the lights, decoders and power supplies. Obviously, the cost is all dependent on how large you want to make it. We had a pretty large stage for this event so we wanted to make sure it was big enough to fill it out.

  6. james tucker says:

    That looks great!

  7. mataio aumoeualogo says:

    in the video, it showed some games that yall played. there was a huge beach ball that yall used. do you remember where you got it from, would love to have something like that for our camp this year

  8. Jonathan says:

    Hi Paul,
    I’d love to do this for my church’s youth conference. Would like to know where to get the LED strips from and other questions…cheers!

  9. Trina says:

    I read a lot of interesting posts here. Probably you spend
    a lot of time writing, i know how to save you a lot of time, there
    is an online tool that creates high quality,
    SEO friendly articles in seconds, just search in google
    – laranitas free content source

Leave a Reply to Trina Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.