Stage Lighting

Light Symmetry

Stephen and Christopher Ellis from Arlington Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Arlington, Texas brings us this lighting design from a Kristian Stanfill concert.

The primary color sets were created using 4 MAC 250s, 2 Elations, 2 Studio Color 575s, 8 par 36 cans shooting up from planter boxes, 4 Studio Colors mounted on an over head truss, and 2 rented led baton bars. Check out the video to get an idea of what it looked like.

[tentblogger-youtube H0-sttnAlRI#!]

Bow Down Tetris Pieces Falling

16 responses to “Light Symmetry”

  1. Duane dodge says:

    Some nice looks here

  2. Matt says:

    Hey guys my church has a real small budget and have a lot of repairs to be made however I am trying to enhance the worship experience with lighting. How can I do this with low cost but big return?

    • Cole says:

      Lighting is one of the most expensive parts of any worship experience. If I were you, I would definatly buy LED lights if anything. They will be a little more expensive, but once you have them, there is really no maintenance and they will last a very, very long time. Hope this helps!

    • Hey Matt, if your limited to working with non intelligent lighting there are quite a few options that fall inside of $200 and under budgets. If you send me some pictures of your stage setup I could make some specific recommendations. My email is S.paulellis@gmail.com.

      • Justin says:

        Stephen,

        Would you be willing to make some recommendations for me? We are about to move into a new building, and I want to make our student worship center as exciting as I can make it.

    • Robert James says:

      Lots of companies are going led and flooding the used market with pars and boards like Smartfade 1248. You can also pick up the dimmers pretty cheap and gels are only a couple dollars. Have the praise team put on a couple car washes or dinners (praise team provide entertainment) and raise money outside the church budget to pick up the extra parts. Also talk to your local lighting supply store. if you have a Barbizon nearby I would use them. I am in Phoenix and ours is priceless. They may be able to help you with used gear and repairs.

  3. Tom Holloway says:

    If I get those LED Par 64 – 36 lights, does it create the washed effect, or would I need haze?

  4. Tom Holloway says:

    Thanks, that does help. Our sanctuary seats 300. So any ideas on a hazer? How much money are we talking? Sorry to bother you, but thanks. We’ve used one once and it went over well, but we didn’t use enough. We’d still have to play with it.

    • The prizes and sizes of hazers varies a lot I would recommend calling your local theater supply shop and getting a quote or asking Jonathan he might have written a post on the best hazers.

  5. Randy Shetler says:

    Hello,
    Does anybody have any good advice on continuous stage lighting for our small church. I would say we could seat maybe 200 at the most, so it’s a pretty small church. We are planning to start live video streaming and the lighting is just horrible. We have fluorescent lights over the congregation and then small can lights over the stage. We need something that really brightens up the speakers face for the video camera. Our budget is not very big but I am interested in that LED idea. But I get frustrated when I try to do any research online because all I get in the results is how to do this fantastic multiple color display that seems like every church in the country is doing but obviously their budget is way bigger than ours :-) Basically what I’m looking for is two lights mounted on the ceiling, one to the left of the preacher one to the right. Something that removes all shadows especially from the face and really lightens it up but I am not looking for spotlights that blind the preacher. Friends, any ideas?

    • Levi Curd says:

      Hello,
      I am the lighting guy at Calvary Chapel Carson City our sanctuary seats roughly 300 people. We started to incorporate LED lighting about two years ago. Like you we do not have a very large budget. I don’t know what your specific needs are but I would NOT advise using led fixtures to light preachers or musicians. I have tried before with RGB and RGBA leds, RGB LED’s produce a very very cool blueish white. this i have found is not ideal for lighting. if you are looking to light a preacher or worship leader i would advise using Ellipsoidal fixtures. The color temperature is much lower and natural appearing. Where i like to use my Leds is on targets like hanging stage decor or the back wall. Also note that you do get what you pay for. Many cheaper fixtures tend to flicker, and do not dim smoothly which can be a big issue for video. Currently I have a total of 8 LED fixtures all Chauvet or ADJ, and so far i have been extremely pleased. Just make sure the fixtures have “TRI” LEDS. Also as far as blinding the teacher you may want to consider changing the angle at which the lights are aimed, and mounted.

  6. Kenneth Riley says:

    Hey looking for some ideas for my church, Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, a 10,800 seat facility, we haven’t done very much with the lighting, we recently purchased some spandex forms and some led movers, ultimately I would like to change the stage design every 4 months with a fresh new look that adds to the service without being a distraction, and do it at a low cost. What do you suggest?

    • Cole Pierce says:

      Hey Kenneth, I don’t know how big your stage is as an 11,000 seat facility could have a massive stage but the church I work for got some metal mesh screen from Lowes and crinkled it up in five sheets along the back of the stage going from the floor to the ceiling. Once you add some LED batten lights under it, they really look nice! Great idea if the stage is not huge.

Leave a Reply to Kenneth Riley 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.