Lyman Easter Site 2011

The past few Easters at Northland, we have experienced overflow crowds for our Easter services.  To help with this we decided to setup a temporary site as a direct extension of Northland.  We did simultaneous services with broadcast feeds running in both directions.  There were solos at Lyman (our site) and our full band at our main site (Longwood).  It was a quite impressive.  This is something we have done in the past, but lighting has never been a large part of it.  This year we changed that.  We really wanted to create an atmosphere similar to our main sanctuary.  Below is how we were able to accomplish this.

Lyman High School (our temp site) has a 700 seat auditorium.  As you can see in the pictures, there are some nice reflective panels on the ceiling.  It is a good room with a lot of possibilities.

Our normal Easter services are a large production.  So with our limited staff and limited room availability, we were forced to load-in the day before.  The 4 days before were focused on building and programming our lighting in the main sanctuary. (Below)

So with the limited time and limited crew, we decided to go with a soft set and a 90% moving light rig.  Using the moving lights enabled us to spend less time setting up less lights, and more time getting dynamic and fitting looks through programming.

The theme of our Easter service was a story of redemption.  We used picture frames to show how each of our lives is a picture of a story of redemption.  You can see the full service at http://www.northlandchurch.net/media/easter2011/ .  Below are a few more pictures of the service at Lyman.

To help tie in with our service we built a Cross of picture frames in both buildings.  Below is a picture of the one we built for Lyman.  We spent $35 for all the frames at area thrift stores and attached them to a 2x2 frame that we painted black.

Since Easter is a celebration of Christ's resurrection, we wanted the "set to have a warm feel".  To do this we covered the existing Black drape with a layer of sheer fabric from Rose Brand.  We used the red gold Shimmer Organza, which is an amber sheer with flakes of metallic sparkle in it.  It disappeared when not lit, but took light very well too.  It gave a nice texture to the nearly empty stage.  You can really tell how dynamic the fabric could be used (or not used) in the next few photos.

Almost all of the designs I do rely heavily on lighting (like any good, self-respecting set should).  However, this one did particularly heavily.  We used an assortment of Mac 2000 Profiles, VL2500 Washes, and Mac 101s.  The VL 2500s gave us a good solid color wash for video backlight, the Mac 2ks gave us a lot of great texture and cyc lighting, and the Mac 101s gave us some really great beam looks.

I think it was a pretty amazing feet to setup and program such a versatile rig in 2 days, especially with the previous 3 days being 55 hours of loading-in, setting up, and programming in the main sanctuary.  I will leave you with my 2 favorite pictures.  The start of the load-in and one of my favorite looks.  It is amazing what the Lord can do with your skills if you submit to him.  

You did WHAT! with the front light?

This design is all about front light.  I know for me, this is a game changer.  We used only Par 16's (Birdies) for front light.

We were doing an acoustic service.  The birdie front light gave a real intimate atmosphere.  They were place on DSR and DSL and crossed.  The shadows on the wall made for a feeling like you were in a small room with candle light (with less fire hazard).  We also added some Ikea lamps to give it some thing  in the back.

Screens a-la truss

So, this is a pretty cut and dry set.  We built a box of 12" truss with 2- 10' sticks, 2- 4' sticks and 4 corner blocks per side.  To line the center we hung two layers of Viole Sheer cut to size.  We then lit them with 2 American DJ pars and during certain songs our moving lights.  We also lined the trusses with some Par 56's we have.  A lot of time we used them more as a surface to reflect, than to light anything up.  Simple set that only took about 2 hours to build and looked pretty good.

Christmas Camp '08

These pictures are form Christmas Camp '08.  We brought a small lighting package to light a rustic camp in north  Georiga.  We used the lighting during the worship sessions, a talent show, and also a party on New Years eve.  We used 5 techno beams and 18 Versa Bar LEDs.

We found a creative diffuser for our Versa bars.  A bent piece of white computer paper and some gaff tape.  It worked amazing and gave us a Versa tube type look.  We have since tried it with Colorblasts too, and it has worked ok.

Truss Proscenium

As a true lighting guy, I love to use lighting as a set!  Below are is a set I did based around lighting as a set.  A little creative light placement and a small amount of time (2 people and 4 hours).  This set is compromise of 4- 14' silver trusses and 24 par cans.  We also added 2 16' towers in the back and moved our 2k washes onto them.  The par trusses made a cool layer of depth and matched our proscenium.  The boundaries the truss created changed the whole atmosphere of the room.  It reflected light well and looked really cool.  The amazing lighting in the pictures below was done by Bradley Nolff, our resident 17 year old lighting genius.  Enjoy!

,Steven

Projection and Set Masking

We have been exploring ideas of cool things we can do with the new scaffolding set.  One of those ideas was using an custom architectural type mask.  Below is how we did it.  Just a warning, this is not super precise and is a pain to setup, however once it is done, it works amazing.

It took awhile to get a system down, but once that was established it went pretty well.  We have 2 DL-1s hung in our FOH that are normally driven by a catalyst.  Our set (same as the Battle of the Bands Encore) has 5 towers of scaffolding with big gaps between them, so rather than make a blended image across the set we decided to use two separate sources with 2 separate masks for each side.

Honestly, I came up with an approach that worked for me, but is certainly not the easiest or most fool proof way.  I used a few sources to come up with ideas on how to do this.  The Resolume Blog seemed the most useful for me.  Here is the awesome video on a quick way to do a basic mask.

Essentially in the video these steps are taken:
1.  "Set Piece" is built
2.  The projector is set in its location (Must not move, or the mask with have to be re-done)
3.  Using a computer with dual outputs, set your outputs to be the same (you can also use a VGA DA if you have only 1 output)
4.  Next it says to use Photoshop in full screen mode to trace out the set.  I did this a different way, see next section
5.  Import mask into your playback controller and test it

I tried this way and found that, at the resolution I was using, I could not see the cursor in Photoshop.  I changed the type of cursor, messed with it for quite awhile, and finally decided to go a different route. Paint.net (FREE PROGRAM!)  is essentially a mix of Photoshop and MS paint.  I am not a media designing genius, so Paint.net made it much easier for me to navigate and use.

The first to steps should be pretty self explanatory.  On the third step, setting up the dual outputs, you need to set both outputs up to the resolution of the projector.  Next, open up Paint.net.  You need to start a new drawing at about 20% smaller than your resolution.  So for my 1024 x 760, I used 960 X 700.  This is done so there are no areas to scroll to.  It is very important that you keep your mask stationary while building it.  Next I used the fill tool and turned the entire surface black.  Following that you need to view your drawing as actual pixels (View> Actual Size), then set your view to Full Screen mode, and then create a 2nd layer and name it mask.  Make sure your tool set is set so that white is your primary color (in the color box at the bottom right hand corner).  Now you can close some of the windows to help building the mask easier.  I closed history, layer, and color.  You can always bring them back from the window tab.

Now the fun part!  Use the correct tool to cover your set piece.  I used the line tool set to a width of 8 to cover the scaffolding legs.

Once you have covered your entire set save the file.  I created multiple masks.  One had the scaffolding, another had the truss too, and one had the truss only.  That way I can vary between songs.  I saved all of these files as a Jpeg and loaded them into the Catalyst.  I put the mask on the 3rd layer and used the Inverted Mask color setting.  It made the white invisible and the black stayed.  On layers 1 and 2 I put media.

Once I loaded the mask into my media server, I had to make tweaks.  Essentially some of the scaling and positioning was a little off.  I cut and pasted one tower and made the necessary adjustments.  This did, however, take about 6 tries to get it pseudo-close.  Below are a few pictures of what we did with the mask.  It is pretty awesome being able to make the scaffolding look like a structure of video.  We were able to make some looks that evoked thoughts of Tron.  Much fun was had!

Check out this cool blog discussing Architectual Projection too.

Fabric Truss Decorations

 This set was used for a conference we did a few years back.  The conference was about the life and writing of CS Lewis and was a lot of dialogue and video playback.

It was a very simple set.  I was trying to make a look of eloquence.  Not exactly sure if that's how it came out, but that was the thought none the less.  The 4 pieces consisted of a 10' truss tower, a 6' pipe attached at the top, and a 6 wide piece of Sheer fabric.

I lite the scenic with 2 Mac 2k Perf. each.  A simple set, but I think it worked well.