Looking for some lighting ideas for this space on a very tight budget

[passmaster16]

We're a new church plant launching this fall. I have attached some images of the gym area in which we're going to hold our services. Kids and beauty & the beast set aside lol, what suggestions do you have for this space? Budget is very limited, 1-2k max which I know isn't much at all. We have access to laptops so probably go with PC based dmx controller/MagicQ and also use conventional fixtures since quality LEDs are out of our price range. We're planning to use the stage area for the worship band/pastor sermon. Our style is edgy contemporary worship so we'd like more of a concert like atmosphere. The idea would be to project the slides on the middle of the wall at the back of the stage. I was wondering if there might be some opportunities to use some uplighting on either side of the stage where it's angled? Regardless of what we end up doing, we're going to have to cut off some of those HMIs to take the edge off a bit and make it darker. Just looking for some creative ideas for this space on a very tight budget. Any input is greatly appreciated!

Thx

Josh

[Paris MkVI]

Here's some inexpensive ideas we used, although our stage setup doesn't match.

The wall washes are Elation Design LED 36 Tri-Bricks. These sell for $550-$600 new, but we found good quality used units for about half that. They will work well with video - no "flicker". They have multiple DMX channel control options. We have four units all working in tandem in six-channel mode. We're planning on adding a couple more.

The wall treatment is simply PVC pipe, cleaned, cut to mixed lengths and mounted with double-stick adhesive. You could also use lightweight lathe wood stock, painted gloss white. The background wall is painted a deep grey. The banner covers the window for the baptismal.

[james tucker]

Cheap porta-church lighting system for under $2500

Front light $550 (sell the Ibeam truss on craigslist). Basic 8 can setup, I would buy wide flood lamps and put the trees on each side of the stage side lighting everyone so there isn't so much spill on your screen.

House light $550 2 more trees farther in the house pointed up at the ceiling for fake, indirect house lighting.... I would even trade the 500 watt lamps for 600 watt dys kits to give you more punch. You would have enough dimmable house lights to see and (mostly) read your Bible....Also, first walking through the doors, you won't feel like you are walking into a harsh looking gym, rather a softly lit worship environment.

Dmx Cables - MAKE YOUR OWN $200 with american DJ cable and Neutrik ends. You can get daring and try to make some DMX with Cat 5 cable

LEDs - $800 4 LEDs to get you started... use them on the stage floor to back light the band (and other useful LED things)

DMX splitter - $130 With that much dmx tossed about the place, you will need this to make sure your signal is happy.... run one line to this thing, then take 2 outs to your L/R trees and another for on stage led lighting

Control - $75 Chamsys Magic Q and a reliable free laptop

Finally (going over budget here) Accent lights - $180 - 12 of these on home made bases around the room... put a few on those angled walls, toss a pair near the room entrance, toss some to light up props.... most of life's problems can be solved with a set of par 38s and a good gel package. No control needed, plug into nearest outlet.

$2485 - you will still need some good extension cords and have a guy in the church build you come cases with wheels.

Hope this helps.

[Esoteric]

We sell a small lighting package similar to what James outlined. Usually we go at $3000-$3500.

Also, I don't like the DYS kits. They are very fragile and of course they are ACL. But that is just me.

I would also skip the accent lights. Again, just me.

Mike

[james tucker]

well, crud.... the forum ate my post about DYS kits...

long story short.

They are not the prettiest things in the world for front light.

Works great for stuff like this, when you need a ton of light and don't have power or dimming for 1ks.

Lamp replacement is $3 per lamp. I owned 24 pars at one point for rock and roll stuff, I didn't find myself replacing lamps THAT much.

I lit a gym for a church with 8 dys kits on top of bleachers. There was enough light to read your Bible and not use the gym lights.

For me, creating a nice look without feeling like a gym and having control of house lights is super important.


As far as accent lights.... You will find a use for them... whether its uplighting pipe and drape, scenery, or more lighting in your lobby area.

For just about every show I've done, I would bring a case containing a 8 pack of par 38 with uplight kits, some green extension cords, and a small file folder with a hand full of colors. Those things found a use at every gig. Its that icing on the cake at the church setup.

[Esoteric]

Oh yeah, we use accent lights at events from time to time as called for (we have ultra small LED pinspots we use) I just feel that as part of a first lighting kit, that money could better be focused elsewhere.

Glad to hear that you have had far better luck with DYS kits than I ever did. I was constantly replacing broken or burnt out lamps, broken reflectors, even had a couple catch on fire from the plug conversion. Now I just take the extra $15 and buy 500W lamps in a spot beam.

However as with all things lighting ymmv.

[passmaster16]

Originally Posted by james tucker

For me, creating a nice look without feeling like a gym and having control of house lights is super important.

James, thanks for your reply. Do you happen to have any photos of gyms that you've lit? You're right about creating a nice look without feeling like a gym. Our difficulty is two things, we're dealing with HMIs that are not really condusive to a nice looking atmosphere and we're not certain how much power we're going to have. Then of course to add to these limitations is a very lean budget.

Outside of LEDs, do you have any other recommendations for providing ambient house light that is more power friendly? Not sure a bunch of 600w DYS lights will work if we have a power situation. I'm trying to find out how many circuits we have to work with but may not get that information for a few weeks.

One last thing, you mentioned custom bases for par 38s. Any recommendations on how to do that?

Thanks!
Josh

[james tucker]

Cool...

The last few batches of uplight bases I made were simply 2x6 ripped every 6". Once cut, I took a belt sander to them to soften up the edges and take away random shards of wood. Then I drilled a counter sunk hole for the bolt.... then painted black. Once dry, insert bolt, attach light with washers and a wingnut, then you are ready to party.

As far as something that will be as bright, and portable? I don't know man. Just throwing this out there.... you can always run pairs of the DYS house lights on separate local outlets, not dimmed and still leave some breathing room for PA stuff.

Otherwise... its not as bright, but you can build a pair of stringer boxes and toss 90 watt par 38s along the walls and just do uplights.... but that won't provide enough light to read your Bibles. The important thing if you decide not to use the installed gym lights is to make it look lively and inviting, not a dark scary gym with just some stage lights.

Here are some pics of the portable gym house lighting. Here I placed the pars with DYS kits on top of the bleachers in the "up" position. This kept all the cables off the ground... for strike, I rolled a case around and tossed the lights in one rolling trunk.

I am sorry I do not have pictures of the wooden uplight bases... I do have a pic of using a mic stand base as an uplight stand.

You will also see random Par38's on the ground for accent lights.

Hope this helps.

[james tucker]

Originally Posted by Esoteric

I just feel that as part of a first lighting kit, that money could better be focused elsewhere.

What other items can you spend $180 on and have the same bang for your buck as 12 accent lights? You can maybe get 2 cheap led pars from ebay, but then again, that is 2 lights compared to a dozen uplights.

Par 38s are a Tony the Tiger Grreeaattt choice for a first light kit.

You give a pack of Par 38s, some extension cords and a folder with useful gel to a 15 year old home schooler and see what awesomeness happens.

You can use these 38's as uplights along the side wall, prop/scenic lighting, lobby lighting (IE banners), toss them on corners of the stage for super simple lighting for your portable kids ministry stage, use them on the big stage to highlight musicians, put them in packs of 3 and make cool tri-arrays on the walls - anywhere where you you need a dash of color.

[Esoteric]

My thought was that money might be the difference between using cheapo PAR64 LEDs or getting nice 1W or 3W PARs. Or perhaps you could add a couple of LED strips (far more useful to me than even a dozen undimmable PAR38s forced into static colors). Both those things would be better use of the funds to me. I have lit shows with clip lights from Lowes and garden work lights and had some beautiful shows. Doesn't mean it was the best use of the money.

[passmaster16]

Thanks for your responses guys. They're very insightful! I've done a little bit of lighting stuff at a former church but it was all fixed installation. The whole idea of a portable setup is new to me. Maybe some day LED will become as affordable as conventional, and I definitely like the LED more for flexibility, colors, no dimmer packs, power efficiency, less heat, etc, but tight budgets mean tradeoffs and conventionals are probably our best bet right now.

James - Thanks for those pics. Like you recommended, for front light, I was considering placing two trees of Par56 or Par64 with dimmers on either side facing the stage. We'll most likely be projecting our slides on the middle wall towards the back of the stage so I was considering using some sort of uplighting to throw some color on the angled walls on either side of the "screen area". Do you think Par38s would be enough here or do I need a stronger light? I also have two cheap ADJ cyc lights like these http://www.planetdj.com/i--BL-CYC that I was considering using for this purpose. Another idea I was thinking of adding was using a bunch of par36 pinspots with some haze to create a beam effect. This guy did a writeup on it here http://joshcollesano.com/post/205042...s-on-the-cheap or I could use the pinspots to create a chase effect or use a combination of both. One thing we can't really do is rig or hang anything from the ceiling, and I'd like to limit the amount of stuff we have to hang on trees.

As far as ambient light, I think we just need enough for people to see each other during the sermon, greating, etc. We're a new church plant so we have a little more latitude to push the limits a bit. Our vision is concert-style worship so on the spectrum of ambient lighting, we probably want to be on the dimmer side. One idea I saw in a previous post was to use a few 500w work lights on dimmers pointed at the ceiling but the power issue would still be the same as using the Pars.

Overall we're just trying to put something together that will create a little bit of wow factor because we feel that atmosphere is a critical component of worship. I'd love to have a larger budget and to be able to purchase some LEDS and movers but the reality is our funding will probably not be coming through for a few months. And even at that we probably won't get a whole lot to put towards lighting. We don't want to use this as an excuse though. We really are looking for ways to think outside the box and be creative to make the space more inviting. We know the limitations and drawbacks of using cheap dj grade equipment and that it probably won't last long. One thing we have going for us is we should able able to store our stuff at the school so no need to tote it around everywhere but if the stuff can last long enough until we get some real funding, we'd be ok with that. Anyway sorry for the rambling on and thanks in advance for your insights.

[Esoteric]

It all becomes about what you can live with. I have lit entire theater shows for $500 total. But it depends on issues such as how much power is available, how close people are to the performers, how close you can get lights, where you can place lights, do you have to have dimming, what kind of control are you looking for, etc?

We set up Revive Church with a pretty good portable LED/Conventional rig for $4000. I have pics of it on our website. Lots of color, lots of control possibilities, pretty big rig for the space.

ENTTEC USB to DMX Pro
4 PAR64 with 500W WFL Lamps
2 Shoebox dimmers 20A
12 Visioneer Illumination 252 LED Strip Lights
4 Visioneer Radiance RGBAW LED PARs
2 American DJ 12' light stands
All cables

Now they did have their own houselights.