VBX 2014 - Wild West!

Annually we host an event for kids called VBX.  It's essentially vacation bible school on steroids.  Our 2014 event was called the Wild West Show.  

We "created" a realistic wild west town on our main stage.  A cartoonist wild west town in one of our theater's that was used as a teaching room.  Lastly we rounded out the room with lots of decor in the lobby.

Typically for this event, we pull all the stops out on our set builds.  This year we looked at lots of different builds that we could do and were trying to overcome a shortage of help.  In the process of looking for ideas, we found a scenic company in Dallas that owned pretty much everything we wanted to build.  After some budget finagling and some compromise on both ends, we ended up being able to rent 80% of our set for VBX from shag carpet rentals.

This was great as it allowed our team to focus on lighting and special effects.

Shag Carpet provided all the labor to load in and setup the set that we rented.  They even were kind enough to make some small alterations to a few of the set pieces to add a needed door.  They were awesome.

The set pieces were made to setup quick and all held together with coffin locks and scenic jacks.  They also had great frosted windows that we lit individually.  The entire stage set was setup in less than 4 hours.  It was awesome!  Below are some of the setup pictures.

In the last picture you can probably see a tube clamped to a pipe.  This tube was one of the few confetti cannons we rented for the event.  At the culmination of the drama teaching the villian robbed the back.... with Dynamite.  Strobes, confetti, cannons and some great sound effects made for a very realistic explosion.  Part of the awesome explosion can be seen in the video at the bottom.

Below are some more pictures of the set and how beautifully it took light!

Video Recap of VBX 2014  

The Great Angled Set Truss of 2014

This set was pretty simple.  Our goal was to create angles of truss and lots of beams!  My inspiration was from my time at Northland.  We had and angled proscenium in the Rink.  It lent so amazingly to angled truss that for about a year it was part of our house plot.  So, I tried to re-create something like that.

We hung trusses on angles.  The upstage trusses were on motors and we dead hung the downstage trusses.

We grouped most of our lights in groups of 3.  It helped us to create some cool fan effects that duplicated across the stage.  We used Opti Tri Pars as our back light wash.  Our Colorblast TRXs (w/ narrow lenses) created some nice fanned beams and our Mac 101s gave us some additional flexibility as beams and also a drape wash.  We also flew a truss horizontally at the grid to tie the visual of our downstage angles together.  It also held a few LED pars.  Lastly, we internally lit all the trusses to get that beautiful glow you see.

The largest challenge with this set was hanging and wiring the downstage trusses via a lift (I think its time for more motors...)

Our budget for this set change was $0, so everything in this was re-purposing our gear.  A good chunk of the LEDs in this set came from a campus that we suspended temporarily.

This set stayed up for a good part of the spring and a bit into the summer.

 

You've Got a Friend in Me

In the spring of 2014, our team has been leading the church through a study on biblical friendships.  Our visual themeing stemmed from the awesome Toy Story series of movies.

We themed everything in the building.  It was a great team effort that included tons of our staff and volunteers.

In the lobby we created tons of printed pieces on cardboard and coroplast.

There should really be a Picture of the Buzz Lightyear spaceship here

We had a Buzz Lightyear Photo booth.  This was on printed cardboard.  Our awesome friends at Boss Print Design printed it.  We used 1x4s to frame a box that holds it up and covered the back fabric in black.  There was also a Sticky Pete Box that was made in similar fashion.

Our awesome maintenance guys built a great Al's Toy barn facade on our indoor playground.  We used a frame of 2x4s that was sided with 8" wide strips of red coroplast.  We used brad nails to attach the coroplast to the 2x4s.  The barn was framed with strips of white coroplast and topped with an Al's Toy Barn logo that was printed on coroplast.

Our cafe was turned into Pizza Planet and served pizza.  Most of our graphics including the ones for Pizza Planet were printed on expanded PVC.  We also had a bunch of clouds cut from white coroplast hung in the ceiling to help tie the atmosphere into the entire lobby.  Buzz, Woody, Jessy, and a few others also graced our presence on the walls.

We also used the Iconic Kids Play block everywhere!!!

In our children's worship room, we setup Woody's roundup!  This was printed on expanded PVC with a 2 x 4 frame.

Lastly, in our main auditorium, we made a scene from Andy's room.  We built 8' wide cardboard boxes from 2 x 4 frames and 4x8 cardboard.  One of our outstanding volunteers (Shelly) painted the boxes fabulously to look like buildings from the opening scene of the movie.

We also had Mr. Potatoe head, Slinky Dog, and the pig (porky?) printed on Coroplast.  We had a bit of a time seeming them, but what we came up with worked out pretty well.  We used 1x4s attached to masonite as a backer, then used contact cement to glue them together.  Then we built 1x4 braces to hold up our characters.

We used Par 64s hidden behind the set and some leds to light the backdrop blue.  I used 4 lekos to add texture onto the front of the set pieces.

Sadly, there are a few pictures that I cant find.  Hopefully someday I'll get the chance to update these with more pictures.