Shaded

Travis Scharn from FCC Santa Maria in Santa Maria, CA brings us this stage design filled with lamp shades. (originally posted February 2016)
Here’s the info from Travis:

In July 2015 I took another step in my career and began my ministry at FCC as the Creative Arts Pastor. FCC is a 100+ year old non-denominational church on the Central Coast of California. Over the past 4 years, this church has seen a ton of changes and growth has followed these changes. The new lead pastor here has changed the culture, much of the staff and breathed new life into a church that was going through some challenging times. One of the major changes the lead pastor made was to help the previous worship pastor transition out of this role and to hire me as the Creative Arts Pastor.

As the new Creative Arts Pastor I knew that there would be many challenges in coming into a place where a lot of changes were being made. But I was also excited about the possibilities associated with change. One of the major areas that I knew needed a lot of growth at FCC was in the worship center environment. Previously, the stage mirrored much of the rest of the 25 year old facility. More than a major facelift was needed. We also needed to adopt new technology and replace aging and failing equipment.

After a few weeks of being on campus, getting a realistic feel for the current culture as well as working with the lead pastor to create a vision for where we want to go as a church, I began designing a new stage that would fit who I am a the Creative Arts Pastor, the current church culture (amidst all of the changes) and take us in the a positive and major step forward toward our vision.

As the summer was coming to a close and the Fall was upon us, I wanted to design a stage that would take us through the Fall season with a warm and inviting look. Shock and awe was not the goal with this design, but because of the lack of stage design in the past, I know I got a bit of that. I was inspired by another ChurchStageDesignIdea – This Aint No Starbucks.

I designed flats to span the 38’ of the back stage walls. These flats were created simply by building 2×4 frames and attaching 1×3, 1×4 and 1×6 wood board to the faces. The two center frames were 12’ tall by 10’ wide so that we could use standard board lengths without having to cut each board. This saved a ton of time in the build stage. The two outside frames were 10’ by 10’. The frames were painted flat black to blend in with the back wall. The faces of the flats were stained using 4 different colored stains to create texture and a simple rustic look.

At the top of each flat we placed an ADJ UltraBar 12 as a colored wash. Each flat also had two Chauvet Slim Par 64 LEDs uplighting. We finished the rear wash off with some washes that filled in from lighting poles we installed on the side of the stage.

Faux barrel lamps were built using concrete form tubes. These tubes ranged in size from 12”-32”. I purchased these tubes from a local lumberyard and had them cut each tube down to the sizes that I specified. We painted the inside of each tube with a soft cream color to capture warm light and installed a 2×2 across the top in order to hang them from. The tubes were covered in various fabrics that we purchased on sale at our local craft store. To install the faux barrel lamps, we purchased braided rope from a hardware store and attached it to the 2×2 cross piece that we installed in each barrel. These lamps did not have bulbs in them. We lit them from above with frenells. This gave the appearance of lamp shades with lights in them, which was a warm and inviting feel for Fall.

We also utilized some risers that the church had in storage. After painting them flat black so that they would blend in with the back of the stage, we arranged them on the back line in staggered heights in order to create depth and texture.

The stage design was accepted better than I could have imagined. We heard comments from the youth, the seniors and most every demographic in between. Though it wasn’t a shock and awe style stage design, it was a big step forward for FCC.