Stage Designs

Named

Bill Collins from Saxe Gotha Presbyterian Church in Lexington, SC brings us this giant backdrop with the names of God on it.

This set started with the idea of just a plain white cyc for the backdrop, but when it was modeled in Google Sketchup, it looked too plain and empty. So they decided that they needed to have something on the backdrop. The idea they decided to go with was a word cloud, but they weren’t sure what to put in the word cloud with the names of Jesus. They contacted a major theatrical supply company (who will remain unnamed) for a quote on the cost to have a backdrop 20’ tall and 40’ wide printed with white text on a black background, and they got back a price of around $10000, which was way out of their budget range. After some more weeks of searching online, they found a company in Wisconsin that made custom scrims for national touring acts called EC Stage Art.

They contacted them to see if they had the capabilities to produce a backdrop as large as they wanted, and also to get a price. They were pleasantly surprised when they replied that they could print it for $3000. They were given permission from their worship ministry to spend this amount on the backdrop so they started working on compiling a list of the names of Jesus. They ended up having a list of over 200 names, but knew that that was too many names. So they started to narrow down the list of names. The first criteria that they used to narrow down the list was to remove names that they were not very familiar with, or were very long, such as Propitiation for Sins of Whole World. From there they had several names that were very similar to one another, such as Son of Abraham, Son of David, Son of God, and Son of Mary. They chose one of those names to go on the final list. Then they took the list of names to their pastoral staff to see if they knew of any they had missed that they wanted to see on the backdrop.

Once they had the final list of 48 names, they input these names into an online word cloud generator and started to have it generate different word clouds for them. They were able to set the font and color and even the size of certain words in the graphic. After many renditions of the word cloud it produced one that they really liked. Then they had a very sizeable problem of size. They downloaded a vector file of the image and increased the size of the image to the actual size of the backdrop (20’ x 40’). They sent the image file to EC Stage Art to print the backdrop. They also added grommets along the top of the backdrop to hang it from, 2” seams on each side, and a chain pocket on the bottom for us to put chain in to weigh down the curtain and eliminate wrinkles when it was hung.

A little over a week later they had the backdrop finished and ready to ship to them. Once it was shipped to them they took a week to remove their old set and upstage curtain and hang the new backdrop and lights. Once the backdrop was up, they had a sermon series during their Sunday services called “Jesus at the Center”, and their middle school and high school youth were doing a series where they were talking about the many names of Jesus.

Lighting Equipment
2 – Chauvet Q Spot 560 LED
4 – Chauvet Colordash Batten Quad 6
5 – Chauvet Colorado 1
2 – Chauvet Colordash Accent
6 – Mega Lite NE ColorPar 38
12 – Elation Opti RBG
20 – Par 56
4 – Altman 360Q 6×12 Ellipsoidals
6 – Altman 65Q Fresnel
7 – ETC Source4 Jr 26°
2 – ETC Source4 36°
6 – ETC Source4 Par MFL
1 – Antari HZ-500
2 – Milos M290 Quatro 10’ Truss
2 – Milos M290 Quatro 5’ Truss
4 – Milos 50lbs Base 24”x24”
1 – LSC Clarity VX20 with 2 Universe License
1 – 40’x20’ Custom Printed Curtain from EC Stage Art

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DSC_0744

DSC_0760

LHA-3D-27a

LHA-3D-27b

Cedar Backed Christmas Lantern Pixels

10 responses to “Named”

  1. Jeremy Hunt says:

    Hey Bill,
    Is there anyway to get the vector files from the first and last image you have on there? Or at least the name of the word cloud generator you used? We would love to create a banner like this for our church

  2. Phil Hastie says:

    We are a church plant located in NW Arkansas. We are building our first building and attempting to do it on a “pay as we go” basis. Needing something inexpensive we can do behind the platform area. Blove the concept you have used. Is it available where we could have a banner made to use as youve done only in a smaller version. Thanks for your response. Blessings!

    • Bill Collins says:

      EC Stage Art made the banner to the size that we wanted. They can make it to any size you want. The graphic we used was twice as wide as it was tall, so it can be made in any size that is that proportion (Ex: 20′ wide by 10′ high).

  3. Would love to get a hold of the file that you used for backdrop. Love it!

  4. jeremy says:

    any way you can you give me a roundabout cost on this backdrop? Planning future series.

  5. I contacted the church, but I couldn’t get anyone to answer their phones. Here’s to hoping they call me back with good news about the file.

  6. Eli says:

    Hi , can someone tell me what material was used, was printed on polyester or vinyl?

  7. Mark Branson says:

    Im interested as well in the file, however I want to project graphic. Can anyone help

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