This weekend we celebrated Christmas in music. There was an amazing diversity in worship as our traditional services featured the annual choir cantata with an orchestra and the modern services featured our praise band, the story of Christmas told through Isaiah in video, lighting and architectural projection.
I'm incredibly impressed with how well all of the teams worked to accomplish such a great weekend of worship. The transition between our 8:20 traditional service (the top photo) and the modern service at 9:45 was seamless. The orchestra/choir moved quickly and were very helpful in making things run smoothly. Once the band set up and we powered up the lights/projectors, and were ready for worship. The experience in our two modern services was very different (lower photo from Saturday night). The transition back for the cantata at 11:00 was just as smooth.
More info about the modern worship:
We've done lights and projection in our sanctuary for special services in the past (Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, etc) but never a setup this elaborate for the weekend. You can see in the photos a truss on each side of the platform holding three LED par cans, a projector, and an LED moving wash fixture; at the back of the room we mounted a second set of moving heads. This is the closest setup to what we do at Green Room on the MSU campus we've ever had in the main sanctuary.
The total visual setup involved 10 LED light fixtures, five projectors, three Macs, ProPresenter, a TripleHead2Go, and our Chamsys MagicQ light rig. All of the imagery on the walls/screens came from either Awake Images or Shift Worship. Most of it was still, but we did throw in one snowy loop background with no front light for one of the songs.
All of this was possible because of an amazing group of people, most of whom choose to serve on the tech/worship teams. Zak posted info about the modern worship music (the Isaiah videos should be posted soon too).
I dig the transformation. You and your teams did a good job.
Have you ever considered sharing your thoughts on how to do some of this stuff on little to no budget? I'd like to play around with lighting like this at my charge, but it'd be mostly out of (my) pocket.
Posted by: Kurt Boemler | December 22, 2009 at 09:21 AM
This type of setup can be done easily on a low budget, but low budget is fairly relative. The most expensive parts of the system are going to be the projectors for the walls, the computer/software, and the lighting controller. Ill write up a series about all of the tools were using over the next few weeks as well as some options at various budget levels.
Excluding installed stuff, computers, and light control the setup for this weekend involved:
2 - Optoma EP1691 Projectors - $719 (we LOVE this projector, have 3 of them)
6 - LED Par Cans - $140/each
4 - Chauvet Q-Wash 36 LED - $625
1 - DMX Dimmer pack (for the tree) - $120
1 - TripleHead2Go - $260
If you set out to buy everything we used for special lighting youd be looking at roughly $5k. This is the most elaborate setup weve done in the sanctuary.
In the past weve done one or two projectors with a computer just washing the walls and it looks really good. Its possible to do some really effective stuff without a huge investment. We started using equipment we already had or could borrow. If you look at the Visual Worship PSU Edition post you can see this is just 3 projectors and a single laptop with the triplehead2go - no lights.
Posted by: Kerner | December 22, 2009 at 09:51 AM
Cool. Thanks, Matt.
Bob Farr said he might be sending me your way to learn some of this stuff from you sometime during my internship next year. It'll be good to be home.
Posted by: Kurt Boemler | December 30, 2009 at 09:17 PM
Internship? Are you working in the conference office next year?
Posted by: Kerner | December 31, 2009 at 07:47 AM