Bringing "Glory" To Stage
Cellular Blinds Lend Radiance To Midwest Christmas Production
Church Production Magazine
November/December 2007
By: Alison Istnick
It's a moment that Ozark Missouri's James River Assembly anticipates all year. A hushed audience waits in the darkness. Then, patterns of light and color infuse the 3,500-seat sanctuary with their brilliance. The air resonates with the richness of a full orchestra and the clear voices of performers onstage fill the auditorium to share the spirit that is Christmas.
Sixteen years ago, 42 people came together to create a church that would reach out to young families. Today that common drive continues to be central to James River Assembly (JRA). In fact, that vision has been the impetus behind several annual outreach events, like the Christmas program. JRA's Event Services Director, Nikole Maddox, points to the strength of their music ministry in accomplishing their outreach.
Maddox notes, "I think after you have done a Christmas program for a few years you start to develop a format that will work well. The music is geared towards bringing people through the Christmas story. And we always have a video testimony of a family that has discovered what it means to have accepted Christ into their lives. Our goal, of course, is always to bring people to the point of making a decision [to accept Christ] for themselves."
JRA's welcoming atmosphere is also key in attracting local visitors to Christ. The sanctuary's atmosphere has evolved over the past several years from one of formality to a more casual tone. Several years ago Lead Pastor John Lindell's heart was moved so that anyone who passed through their church doors was to feel comfortable. A defining moment occurred when he learned of a young woman who had saved her money to purchase a dress for Sunday service. Not believing that this was what church was about, Lindell moved towards a more informal look on the platform. Onstage, business suits were replaced by khakis, and choir members adopted seasonal colors rather than choir robes. With everyone looking more relaxed and casual the surrounding traditional sanctuary didn't mesh.
Rather than tackle a project to demolish existing structures, JRA instead turned to Tom McPhillips of Atomic Design located in Lititz, Pennsylvania. McPhillips designed an immense black cyclorama to conceal the voluminous hardwood choir loft, stately columns, and ledges filled with greenery. To further soften the appearance, large cellular blinds were added just behind the new stage area.
The seven towering panels, also by Atomic Design, are known by another name to JRA's staff. "Instead of referring to them as cellular blinds, we call it our wavy wall since that's a more familiar term," says Maddox. Serving as video director for JRA, Jeff Nene comments on the versatility the fabric background offers. "A lot of people are using fabric right now for their backgrounds - you can splash color on them and they become whatever color you want. The wavy walls are that same principal, but the spandex-like fabric adheres to an inside aluminum structure making them three dimensional rather than two dimensional."
The degree of the fabric's 3-D appearance depends upon the angle of throw light. "We both up-light them and down-light them with LED strip lighting. You can also take moving lights and throw patterns on the wavy wall," says Nene. For this year's Christmas outreach entitled "Glory," the production team projected words on each of the panels. The panels were divided up into three quadrants vertically to coordinate a blend of words, scripture, and patterns of light and color. These creative images all originate from one single projector - a Digital Projection dVision 30HD. For sidescreens, Digital Projection Lightning 28sx projectors were utilized.
Standard to JRA's Christmas production are the inclusion of several video roll-ins. Nene points to the church's switcher, an Echolab 5700, as being integral to a unified media presentation. "The nice thing about this switcher is that it has 32 inputs. It's all digital with 18 separate auxs," notes Nene. One video clip of a testimony reveals the story behind a couple coming to know Christ through the ministry of the church. The church's three screens, one center and two side screens, run on different formats. The central screen, manufactured by Stewart, is 16x9 aspect ratio capable, while the two side screens still play in 4x3. "We still haven't made that change yet," explains Nene. "So what we did was play back two versions off the DVR in sync so we could feed the center screen and play a 4x3 version to the side screens. Our switcher really gave us the ability to have a lot of sources going to a lot of different places."
A combination of Hitachi Z 3000W and Z 4000W video cameras are used at JRA. While the church is prewired for the use of up to eight cameras, the "Glory" production used seven cameras. Three on tri-pods, two handheld, and one camera mounted on a jib. Nene notes, "They are 16x9 capable but we are still running them in 4x3 mode until we upgrade our sidescreens."
Video roll-ins for "Glory" included a piece produced by in-house talent using existing church-owned software. A stick animation recreation of the manger scene is played out to a medley of Christmas music including, "Little Drummer Boy." "At first I thought the idea sounded kind of tacky," recalls Nene, "but, I was pleasantly surprised." We had a cartoonist from the church who used Adobe Flash to create a black screen with white stick figure animation that included the manger scene with baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the wise men, stars, and angel choir - it ended up looking awesome."
The church owns two Yamaha PM1D digital mixing consoles, each capable of mixing 96 inputs. One is used for FOH and the other PM1D handles monitors - with up to 35 mixes at one time. The dual Yamahas are essential for JRA's Christmas events. Nene details, "The biggest challenge for audio is achieving a balance between monitors and house. When you have a full orchestra with each piece individually wired - that's a ton of open mics on stage. Our monitoring engineer and FOH engineer have to work hard and work together so that everyone on stage can hear what they need to without a lot of bleed into the house mix."
Up to 14 Sennheiser SKM500G2 handheld wireless mics are onstage at one time. Two bodypack transmitters, fitted with Countryman E6 mics, are used as well. Two stage managers are on hand for productions to assist with mic placements and communication. The 300-person choir is picked up using eight AKG C 480 B-ULS microphones with CK 63-ULS capsules on stands. Only half the choir performs each alternate weekend during worship services.
The lighting effects in combination with the wavy wall help to make "Glory" a true multimedia experience. With 18 High End Systems Studio Color 575 luminaires and 14 Color Kinetics LED ColorBlaze 72s (Color Kinetics' highest-intensity RGB system), the wavy walls are capable of displaying a vast mix of intense colors.
"With the ColorBlaze's flexibility we have opted to divide each fixture into three lighting zones. This gives us the ability to have up to six different colors on each wall. Three on the top half and three on the lower half," remarks Tony Stephens, director of lighting at James River Assembly. Stephens continues, "The Studio Colors do a nice job of throwing light on stage, backlighting the orchestra and the talent. We try to keep the overall feel of the night very intimate with tight front lighting using ETC Source Four Ellipsoidals and then using a combo of ETC Source Four PARs and Ellipsoidals to light our choir."
Asked to recap his most memorable time during the Christmas production, Nene recalls, "I always look at these events in two ways. One is from the technical side and the other is from the spiritual side. From the technical side it's nice to be out of the daily routine to find new and creative approaches of telling the story of Christ. And from the spiritual side, to see the number of people come forward for the alter call [at the end of the service] makes all the extra hours worthwhile."
