Stage Designs

I Beams

Robby Schlegel from Discovery Church in Orlando, FL brings us this cool constructed-looking set. 

For this set, they wanted to create dimensionality behind the band risers to help create as much natural depth on camera as possible. The idea came from attending a concert at an old theater and wanting to create a stage look with an industrial, brick and mortar feel.

Robby found a blog post on creating faux I-Beams out of pink foam board insulation and stopped at the gray paint step, as he didn’t need the “grunge” look for this design. They constructed 12’ x 12’ frames out of 2” x 6” board, bolting them directly to their stage and rigging them with aircraft cable to their lighting grid. This eliminated the need for large legs to prop up the set from behind and saved valuable stage space.

They screwed the foam I-Beams to the wooden frames and then covered the screw holes with fake bolt heads made from slicing square and round dowel rods to ¼” pieces that were glued and spray painted a dark metallic gray. They used 1” x 4” boards to make an “X” in the center of the I-Beam frames (painted the same gray as the foam) and glued RGB-LED strip lights to the “X’ and surrounding frames. Their LD even found he could rig some of their smaller LED wash fixtures to the top frame of the set, which helped him with his lighting design.

For the center backdrop, they used 4’ x 8’ sections of faux brick paneling (available at Lowes) and foam I-Beams to cover the seams between the panels. Cutting 9” holes in the brick paneling with a router and circle-jig, they fastened aluminum reflector work-lights in place to make the backdrop “pop” on video. (idea taken from Deer in the Headlights). They were surprised to see how well the reflectors caught color from the LED Cyc lights used to light the set.

By scaling down the size of the beams and eliminating some of the more technical elements (LED strips and reflector lights) from the design, they were able to copy the design at one of their satellite campuses with ease.

Materials List:
• Pink ¾” rigid insulation foam (5 sheets)
• Aluminum reflector work-lights (20)
• Brick Paneling (9 sheets)
• RGB-LED Strips (10 strips)
• 1 and 1/4” square dowel rod (2)
• ¾” round dowel rod (2)
• 2” x 6” (14 – 12’ long boards)
• 1” x 4” (12 – 8’ long boards)

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Screenshot 2014-09-29 13.58.14

Screenshot 2014-09-29 13.58.48

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11 responses to “I Beams”

  1. Hey Robby! Thanks for sharing this with us. I’ve seen it in person and it looks great!

  2. I love the use of the CMG motion you are using that is part of the CMG Carbon Bundle. It is a unique motion background and the design fits your stage setup beautifully. Great job. http://www.churchmotiongraphics.com/products/carbon-bundle/

  3. Kyle says:

    Wondering what is your stage floor made of?

  4. Rene solis says:

    What kind of light bulbs did you use?

    • Robby says:

      The lights were cheap work lights from Home Depot with chrome reflector bulbs so you didn’t see the filament on camera. This softened it and made the work light itself pop instead of the bulb.

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