Stage Designs

LED Geometry

James Tucker from Christ’s Church in Jacksonville, Florida brings us this great use of LED tape. (originally posted September 2015)

Their summer series was approaching, and James wanted something cool and geometric on stage to get away from the lines and eventual “warm” looks they typically do after easter.

The current set on stage at the time was the light boxes they built for summer. The LED tape was a great hit, so he wanted to use that again. The summer series graphic incorporated some triangles, so he wanted to reflect that in the stage design. He remembered Church On the Move had installed some killer triangles with pixel tape. He wanted to do that on a cheaper scale for their ministry.

Their (at the time) current set already had 8′ sections of LED tape attached to 1×2 wood with 25′ whips, so their scenic team took the set apart and “fashioned” triangles using some 1×2 keystones, wood glue, and staples. The design called for 11 triangles, so they built some “fresh” triangles as well to augment their current inventory. To hang, their audio director meticulously hung and leveled each triangle with black tie line. The alarm cable used to wire each tape section was grey, so they simply wrapped the alarm cable in black gaff.

To give them some more look options, each side of the triangles were individualized. They had 33 “regions” of RGB control for the whole set. They could color whole triangles or each side. The more interesting looks involved using just one or two sides of the triangles. For intimate moments, they could literally turn the whole set “off” and make it disappear.

For their other campus, they built 7 triangles 5′ wide each. Each triangle was wired to a decoder.

When the summer series was over, they “remixed” the look by taking down the 6 triangles flanking the screens and layering them over the 5 under the screens. It looked like The Maxx from Saved By the Bell.

The icing on the cake was the $12 steel gobos that seemed to match the set perfectly and extend the stage look into the house.

Each triangle cost $30 in wood/cable/LED tape to make and they used 5 decoders/power supplies to give them control. In all there was $700 invested in the set at the main campus.

Links:

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Rope and Rope Hole Punches

15 responses to “LED Geometry”

  1. Great job James. Nice use of CMG motion backgrounds too.

  2. Peter Hanratty says:

    Great look! did you use any diffusion? The color looks pretty even.

  3. Taylor says:

    How did you guys do the cross?

  4. Love the look of the triangles. I have used all these materials for a stage design and they look great at full brightness. However did you have any problems with flicker on your video cameras?

  5. Philip Dees says:

    Hi,
    We are trying to patch the decoder that you used into Jands Vista Byron but are not having any luck. We have patched it as a generic R G B fixture but it does not respond. Is there something that we are missing? Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

    Philip

  6. Gerson Rodrigues says:

    How can I contact you?
    Thanks

  7. Ben Aguilar says:

    Hey there! Love this design! Would love to incorporate this at our church. Is there a way I can get in contact with you to get more details?

  8. JANET KOLB says:

    Could this be done with flag tape?

  9. hola amigos, soy dj de santiago de chile, quisiera copiar esos triangulos de luz, algun tutorial donde poder ver como hacerlo? muchas gracias

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