Easter 2015  -  It is Finished

Lighting & Plot The Lighting was just as key to the set element as the LED Wall. We rented 12 Ayrton MagicPanel601 lighting fixtures, 10 Ayrton MagicBlades as well as our usual complement of fixtures.

Each of the MagicPanels were laid out in a 3x3 grid spread across five verticle pipes connected to the upstage batten.

We also placed 5 Magic blades on the floor just in front of the aforementioned pipes. The other three were hung on the downstage batten as back-lighting.

LED Wall Early on we decided we wanted to use an LED wall to implement a creative moment that we had seen used by Church on the Move. They were kind enough to make available the creative content via their seeds website. (seeds.churchonthemove.com)

We used floor supports to mount the main truss supporting the LED Wall due to weight limitations. We then hung two 1-ton chain motors controlled by a motion labs multi-controller in order to move the screen up and down during the service..

The original design specified an LED Curtain from a provider who had high resolution 7mm to 9mm pitch LED surface. The main reason for the spec was the weight limitation we had. These curtains only weighed about 20lbs per curtain...only giving us a total of 200lbs. We learned those curtains had become unavailable for rent due to some repairs that were needed so as such we researched a couple of different products. After three more iterations of the design we ended up with an LED Wall comprising of 28 WinVision 9mm panels. There were a couple of selling points. Each panel was almost 2'x2' and only weighed 19lbs. This kept the screen weight at less than 1/4ton.

The WinVision product we rented from VER had optional blackout panels. We removed all the blackout panels so that we'd be able to shine light through the back side both before our main usage and during the special element after the message.

For the first part of the service we kept the wall at it's up position with only a 3' strip at the bottom showing. We used that 3' strip to display lyrics and message slides.

When it was time for that special element we lowered the Wall just after the painters walked under it for effect. Most of the crowd couldn't even see the screen until the painters followed the strokes on the screen. We tied two pieces of mono-filament with brightly colored washers on the bottom to know when we were in the proper up position and the proper down position. When each sat just properly on the ground it was in the correct position.

We taped off three feet on each side of the wall as a means to ensure marking a safe-zone. We wanted to make sure musicians and actors didn't have any chance of being hurt. When the element began we employed three painters who had paint brushes to follow the paint strokes on the screen. The paint strokes were actually sourced from the video content provided by COTM.

We fed the LED wall with a computer running ProPresenter and during the last song we switched to live video via SDI feed.

Rehearsals The rehearsal process was probably the most in-depth we had experienced to date. Specifically for that special moment we started a month ahead of time. We couldn't afford the LED Wall for that time period so we setup a projector at the upstage wall with the curtains open and projected onto a screen made of plastic sheeting that was frosted & sized perfectly to be the same as the LED Wall to be rented. The first two weekends we rehearsed it 20 times each. The weekend before we rehearsed it for the first time with the LED Wall roughly 30 times. That evening the tech team began practicing raising and lowering the screen at the appropriate times.

Our initial rehearsal Tuesday evening saw us going through it about 18 times with the full band making tweaks along the way. The tech team then rehearsed it 35 more times.

All told we ran the thing a total of 133 logged times in order to complete the brushing, the raising and lowering etc.

It's worth noting that In terms of the brush work we used blue spike tape to make small dots for the painters to know where to start and end each stroke without the audience knowing.