Looking at updating stage lighting and design

[theeggman]

Alright, so we are looking at ways to update and add a little color to our stage. What the music minister has suggested so far is to paint the wood white and grey and paint the ceiling black. As well as to add a few (4 or 5) RGB color strips or something to be able to change the color on the stage. We would like to do something about the cavernous feel of the choir loft (we don't use the back couple of levels). We have also considered moving our 2 projection screens, currently hanging a few feet from each side of the stage, to hang over the walls behind the drums and piano. I wanted to post a picture of our stage and see if yall have any suggestions on how we might be best served with a budget of around 3K.

[Steve Vanciel]

Proof once again that architechs are far too clever for any one's good.

Is that really a full length Austrian Drape or just a look-alike valance?

[theeggman]

What you can see right there is all there is to it, thank goodness.

[Steve Vanciel]

Is that FOH truss your only lighting position or is there something hidden behind the curtain?

Is there a baptistry in that up center alcove?

[theeggman]

That is a baptistery, there's a removable floor over it when not in use though. There are 2 other truss out over the seats, one on each side. There's also a couple of lighting mounts over the stage just behind that curtain thing with 3 source fours on each side. There's also a couple of removable pipe mounts further back from the stage and a spotlight loft in the far back corner.

[Esoteric]

That is a lot of stage to do something with for $3k.

[Steve Vanciel]

That brown wood slash across the top of the platform is certainly a dominate visual element that creates the "cave" illusion. Painting it white would essentially make it invisible with the ceilings. Not sure that black on the ceiling would open things up visually. Could you also get rid of the drape?
That, plus bringing you screens down as you suggested, would help to move the visual focal point to the platform. The white walls to the back of the loft could easily be made dynamic with a few LED color changing fixtures.

Do you have much in the way of existing circuits/dimmers/console capacity?

SteveV

[theeggman]

We definitely want to get rid of that drape. What we have right now is 23 or so sourcefours with 19 and 26 degree lenses on them. and 5 NSI 9800 dimmers, one of which i think has a blown fuse, but isn't used anyways. Everything is run from a computer with an old horizon dmx controller and the software for it.

[Steve Vanciel]

40 dimmers @ 2400 watts each gives you some growth capacity. Are there permanent wires & outlets for all of these or do you use portable cords?

If your whole lighting inventory is S4 Spot lights, you might consider adding a number of Fresnels to provide an even base of light to smooth out the hot spots, some could have colors to provide variety. Would be cheaper than decent LEDs.

There are some reasonably priced LED strip lights that could give nice up-lighting color effects on those back walls.

SteveV

[Esoteric]

Yeah, we have LED strip lights in the $600 per unit range that would look nice on that wall. We also have 3W RGBAW PARs that would provide very nice color to that space for under $500 per unit.

[theeggman]

Well after the music minister and I spent a couple days this last weekend hanging projectors and screens here's a picture I took. It's still far from done, but I don't live there (I'm a student at Texas A&M) and can't help out much more.

What we've got are 5 chauvet colorband tri units set up in the back shining on some fabric. We moved the screens in and went widescreen (1280x720 for now). We used one of our old 4:3 screens and rolled it up a bit, which i don't like the look of, but for budget reasons it's going to be that way for at least a little while. We also ordered a new screen from monoprice (PID: 7933), I'm actually thoroughly impressed with the monoprice screen, I think it's better quality than most of the ones we have around the church, for much cheaper.

Oh, and earlier in the week other people went in and painted the ceiling and walls, as well as ripped out those old railings and replaced them with metal ones that look so much better

[Chkurgrnd]

Massive improvement thus far! Looks better! Is the glare on the ceiling from the projectors only there when there is white projected or is it there when any other slide is shown? Was flat paint used there?