7.28.2012

Stage design: projection panels


New Life purchased 3 ultra short throw projectors for some classrooms. The rooms weren't going to be ready till the summer.leaving the projectors "available" for Easter.

Before we could dream up any freaky projection surfaces, we had to see what the projectiors were capable of. Through the process of trial and error, we determined that the happiest size of surface would be 7.'5 by 10'. We could make a bigger screen, then we would lose too much punch.

We went to our local coroplast supplier and had them cut us 2' and 1' wide strips that were 7.5' long.

We then took the strips and zip tied them to 10' sections of conduit with 6" spacings.

Once the scenery was hung and projectors turned on, we connected them to a Matrox Triple head. My graphics/computer genius opened up Photoshop with a white background and drew a "black" mask between the coroplast. Once completed we saved the mask as a PNG and imported it into Song Show Plus, our projection software.

Song Show Plus has a secondary output with it's own independent cue list. From there we programmed our service, twice - one for the primary output (3 10k projectors off a triple head for lyrics and playback) and a second for the new scenic screens.

We would mix and match backgrounds from the same family/theme/color scheme

Other times we would mirror the top projection with the bottom

Using Song Show Plus remote and improv features, we were able to control all the projection from a computer near the lighting console.

We were able to create some custom graphics to match our sermon series.



Using the "flip" effect in Song Show, we were able to create fake seamless looks using the same background.

7.22.2012

Stage Design - Pickup Sticks


After our spandex phase in youth, we wanted something a bit different. I already had some black antenna truss attached to the floor with various small lights attached.

We struck the random lights and zip tied silver pipe at various angles. We didn't actually have any pipe, we used pipe and drape crossbeams we found in a random closet.When we ran out of pipe... we were done and lit the little set with led pars. We individualized the LEDs to do a bit more complex looks. Add some 90's moving lights and its ready to party.



We put this together really really fast. I do not have a pile of close up pics, sorry. I can see someone doing this same set with 1/2" sticks of conduit from Home Depot. Last time I checked a 10' stick was around $3. Not bad for someone wanting something different than spandex or coroplast.










7.10.2012

Stage Design - Ceiling Tile Grid

Hello blog. I've been wanting to make a cool post about something we did a while back after Christmas


I wanted something with copious amounts of squares that can be easily assembled.


Ceiling tile grid seemed to fit the bill.


So, we basically raided the ceiling grid section of Home depot.


We built 5 "modules" that we can easily hang once we got the grid assembled. Three 10'wide by 12' tall modules and two 4' wide by 10' tall modules.




The vertical pieces are 12' sections of grid. Snapped between the 12' sections are 2' crossbars.

To give the unit some rigidity, we used sections of the right angle wall channel on the top and bottoms with small self tapping screws.

Once the units were assembled, we hung them on rigid pipe with aircraft cables silver side out.




Once hung, we filled random squares "crystal" Mio drop in tiles with double sided tape. The Mio tiles come in packs of 24 for $100, they look great. To fill more squares, we cut up some plexiglass we had lying around and sprayed it with frost in a can. Natural coroplast would look great too. To hold the tiles and plexi onto the grid, we used double sided tape.


We then lit them with 1k cycs and wrote cues to toss our movers in the set to give us a variety of different looks.





The set had some great texture to it, the plexiglass, Mio tiles, and silver grid accepted the light differently.





The icing on the cake was us keeping our Christmas Lights up after December. We would glow the lights at 20% with the scenic lights and on occasion, crank the Christmas lights to full with no front scenery lights.





The whole set cost $400 and looks pretty cool.





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