You don’t have to have giant white walls to surround your vision with appropriate imagery for visual worship. Every room is different; but I wanted you to see how Environmental Projection can even work in here.

FUMC Mansfield just completed installing their Environmental Projection system in their room (called the Chapel), and I wanted this to hopefully be an encouragement to you if your church happens to have a room like this, or if this is your main worship space.  The room has a 4000 lumen projector hitting the entire back wall behind the band.  The effect is beautiful!  There were a few challenges to overcome – such as making sure the audio and lighting did not shadows.  There is a center rear-projection screen for lyrics that is flush with the stone wall.  The stone wall is also a feature of the room that does dictate imagery that can be used.  But, it’s part of the room – and I like that. Brian Certain and his team at the church are a FANTASTIC group of people who get it, and it was a blessing to work with them.

I won’t tell you that you have to have a flat blank white wall.  But I will guide you through what imagery will look great, and what imagery might not look the way supposed to.

Pinedale Christian Church has a room that is almost identical, and this week while I was out sharing my heart and designing the system for their campus, I referred back to FUMC Mansfield and how the same look could be achieved.  The pictures were taken just during the demo; but the final result will be near exact to this.  The lighting and audio needs to be moved up, but that is a small task.

I love how this Awake Image fit perfect into the curved wood beams on the back wall.

In both rooms; that look is achieved with one projector.  I hope that’s an encouragement to you if your sanctuary looks similar. Now remember – it’s much more than simply shining a projector on a wall. There is a specific way to approach what type and how bright of a projector you need, as well as how to mask it and where.  The reason why these images look so cool is because we chose appropriate imagery that fit the room, the vibe of the church community, and style of worship that will be taking place.

]]> http://visualworshiper.com/blog/2009/12/environmental-projection-in-traditional-worship-spaces/feed/ 4 http://visualworshiper.com/blog/2009/12/planet-wisdom-concept-to-stage/ http://visualworshiper.com/blog/2009/12/planet-wisdom-concept-to-stage/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:37:12 +0000 Camron Ware - Visual Worshiper http://visualworshiper.com/blog/?p=589 The Planet Wisdom tour just kicked back in full-swing in Minnesota this past weekend; and wow!  What a fun, engaging, and powerful weekend.  Mark Matlock, The Skit Guys, Dutton, and special guest Dawson McAllister were there to teach, engage, and lead worship for a couple thousand students. (Fun back story:  Dawson McAllister was the founder of this conference back in the day, before it was called Planet Wisdom.  Mark met Dawson while doing illusions for the conference, and when Dawson stepped down, Mark took over.  I remember going to the conferences when Dawson was the speaker, Mark did illusions, and MercyMe was the band.)

I have the privilege of being the lighting designer, VJ, and semi-art/cohesiveness director for the tour and just wanted to take you through my process and journey of seeing the first themed image, to final result on stage and screen.

This year’s theme is “A walk with Christ to the cross.” It’s intense. Both Mark and Dawson paint a beautifully sad and loving picture of Christ’s journey to the cross, and the Skit Guys and Dutton reinforce the message through illustrations and worship.  My kind of theme!  As always, the conference has a journal that the students get and large banners and signs that match the theme and style of the journal and vice versa.  I wanted to take that same style, and translate that to on the stage, and on the screens. We also have stage pieces this year, to illustrate each scene in the journey of Christ to the cross.  (Last Supper, Garden, Cross…)  So, I wanted to integrate those as well.

Production gear was provided by B&L Sound and Lighting. Brian, the owner, has a great heart and passion for these kind of events.  B&L is much  more than a rental house – but also invests some thought into what you actually want to see in your event.  We have a great crew this year again – David Perkins on video director, Tim Pike on main screen graphics and content creation, Cody Clements on camera, Amy Work as stage manager, and Daniel Ellis on FOH audio. – and of course our fearless conference director – Mike Work.

Here is basically the  image I first saw a few months ago:  Jonathan Matlock and Mike Ellis did a great job on this.  I don’t think I have ever met Mike, but I was told he created the look and feel for the marketing material and the journal for the tour – so mad props!!!

Grungy, organic, rough…etc.  The font that was used in print was 28 Days Later – which I thought worked well.  (Not the Planet Wisdom font.)

So, from that image, I wanted to create a backdrop and truss coverings to match the organic and textured theme.

To Home Depot we go!  Weed Block.  $13 a roll.  3′ x 36′. Perfect size to hang from the upstage truss.  It’s a little porous, but it’s lightweight and can roll up and go in a road case.

I bought some basic semi-gloss white paint and a couple of very large brooms, along with 7 rolls of Weed Block.

Laid them all out on some grass behind the production warehouse; and went to town.  Some of the frames from last year’s set pitched in to help them not blow away.  I grabbed a giant broom and a bucket of paint and started painting. After they were dry, I put grommets and tie-line on the top of each panel so they could hang easily on the truss.

Setting up the upstage truss in the MercyMe warehouse – thanks to Stephen and John for helping!

Final result on the upstage truss.  Each strip of WeedBlock gets lit from the top and bottom with LED.

They took color REALLY well – especially when both sets of LEDs are on – top and bottom.

Next, I wanted to create something to put around the 6 free-standing truss towers we have.  Last year we used them with no coverings, and put LED’s in them to color the aluminum truss.  I didn’t want to do that exact thing, so I figured we could cover the towers, and grunge up the fabric.  So I went to Walmart and bought a few Twin-sized bedsheets, and a can of cheap flat black paint; and another big broom to use as my paintbrush.  Result:

Sorry I don’t any closeups…but you can see how the LED colored the un-painted portions of the fabrics and let the black create some negative texture.  Sweet!

Ok – set pieces done; at least as done as they can be with the time allotted.  I wanted to actually cover ALL the truss – upstage and downstage – but there wasn’t time or resources to go that far, so I moved on to the next thing:  Triple screens on stage.

The only way I wanted to even ATTEMPT to do screens on stage was having the projectors on the ground and not flown, and they had to be rear-projected.  That presented a problem because normally, we would need either a really short-throw lens just for the tour ($$$) or use standard lenses and not have a back drop. The solution was the Hitachi CP-A52/100. I bought 3 of the 2000 lumen models.  They are ULTRA-short throw projectors that cost the same as a lens.  This gave us the ability to cover a 7.5′  x 10′ screen from 3 FEET AWAY.  On the ground.  It was a done deal.  Coolest thing is that now you can move your projector and screen ANYWHERE on stage you want.  It’s totally stand-alone to the rig.

Woohoo!!!

3 screens; with a full black cyc backdrop right behind it.

Next – what in the world do we put on the stage screens and main screens? Content is huge.  imago community created some great triple-wide images to use during Mark’s and Dawson’s message – each one communicated a new scene with Christ. 

I then went into Photoshop and made some simple backgrounds for the main screens for lyrics during worship.  I didn’t want to have a lot of imagery behind the worship lyrics, given the fact that we have 3 screens on stage already. I created about 6 versions, each with the white brush strokes in different places.  Looked really great and simple I think.

And that brings us to the 3 screens on stage.  I setup my MacBookPro, running ProVideoPlayer, all hooked up to a TripleHead2Go.  I created playlists for each session, but VJ-ed during the responsive worship. Shift Worship had some PERFECT imagery for this theme of “Walk with Christ to the Cross.”  Jonathan Matlock was a huge player in helping these things come together.  Check out Jonathan’s pictures of the conference HERE.  Shout out to Zach Fonville, Awake Images, Igniter Media!!!

The conference will be at Irving Bible Church in Irving, TX on Feb. 19-20th and April 23-24, and in Washington DC on March 12-13th.  It’s for students, so bring your youth group!

Hitachi has developed a film “that can be added to windows and other light transmitting surfaces that allows light to be transmitted when voltage is applied to the film.”

No voltage; and very little light passes through.  Apply voltage, crazy stuff happens in the ‘film’, and all of the sudden light passes through it.  Awesome!!

Imagine being in a board room meeting – you push a button and the windows fade.  Or a church setting!   Cover your stained glass with this, and have the ability to still see the beauty, but control the amount of lighting coming in.  Can’t wait to see this!  More info HERE.

]]> http://visualworshiper.com/blog/2009/08/dimming-film/feed/ 5 http://visualworshiper.com/blog/2009/06/kingwood-bible-church/ http://visualworshiper.com/blog/2009/06/kingwood-bible-church/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:00:38 +0000 Camron Ware - Visual Worshiper http://visualworshiper.com/blog/?p=364 I recently travelled down again to Kingwood Bible Church just outside Houston, Texas to finalize their Environmental Projection system.  Shepherd Multimedia installed the system, and I came in to provide training on the philosophy and heart behind using the new visual tool, as well as on ProVideoPlayer.  I ran through some sample content I had from  Awake Images to demonstrate what textures, colors, and themes worked well in their room.  We were all very pleased with the result.  I hope you find the pictures encouraging if you have a room similar to Kingwood Bible’s.

They have a great team that dives into the church’s core, learn what the heart is, and implement the church’s vision .  They are so much more than just a design-build company.  There is heart and direction behind each decision, and leadership and training all along the way.  Just wanted to give a shout-out to a company I view as a great asset to the Church!  I’ll be doing more company highlights as time goes on, and wanted to start with them.

Check out the CSG blog HERE.

Technology that tracks a subject and only projects on that subject, without spillover*.  (They put the asterisk on their site, so I figured I should to.)

Woohoo!  So this is visual pixel mapping…live and dynamic.  Think about this for Environmental Projection.

On the final night of the experience; I switched the music from MuteMath and Muse to Phil Whickam, Robbie Seay, Hillsong, Matt Redman, Matt Maher, and just worship VJ-ed to that…it was incredible.  I turned the portable powered Mackies up just a little bit more too…

Start thinking how the Church, starting with your local church community, could start to use this to impact and minister.

From Architectural Projection Party #2:

I’ll be doing the same thing the next two nights, on the front of First Baptist Church of Coppell, TX.  Stop on by…we had about 20 people brave the cold wind and come out to see it the first night, just hearing about it from Twitter, including a couple of good friends from Fellowship Church in Grapevine.

It was quite a visual treat!  I think we almost caused a few wrecks on the main road leading into Coppell as well.  Oops.

Will someone please get the media on this to show everyone how cool it is?!  I mean it’s on First Baptist Church…You see it in Vegas…Europe…blah blah…but I don’t this see ANYWHERE in North Texas, especially not on a church building.  It has so much potential and beauty…

A lot of these pics show Awake Images; if you haven’t seen their content…go check it out.

HD video of night #1 coming soon…

And for those of you wondering the setup…3000 lumens, PVP, TH2GO, lots of VGA.

Bent Tree has a cool sanctuary!  The stage was huge; so we had some options on how to do Environmental Projection behind the Robbie Seay Band for some visual worship. I brought in my (3) 3000 lumen projectors and made a triple-wide image on Bent Tree’s 80′x25′ white cyc.  The back wall wasn’t exactly Environmental Projection, it was more of a video wall, but it was a great visual worship tool and God was glorified through it.  We also rented (2) 5000 lumen projectors for the side walls to complete the environment.  I hooked up my Mac running PVP to my TripleHead2Go for the back wall, and my PC for the side walls, simply mirrored.

VJ-ing  and visual worship leading was incredible.  Not only was I able to worship doing what I do, but I got to discuss with many church and ministry leaders about what Environmental Projection is, and how it’ a tool that can be used for visual worship.

More pics here.

What would happen if we took away/turned off one type of technology that we use during worship, and didn’t use it for a month?

What would we miss?  Would we miss anything at all?

Just curious what would happen…might put things into perspective.