While the technical systems at Northwoods Community Church, located in Peoria, IL, were adequate for most services, there was no room for growth and little flexibility. To improve, the church upgraded or replaced almost all of their technical systems. Matt Hemmele, Northwoods’ Technical Director, walks us through their technical systems along with Graeme Brown, president of Peoria, IL-based Advanced Audio and Lighting Systems, who handled all of the lighting, video, and audio work for the project.
“After 14 years, we needed to upgrade our systems,” comments Hemmele. “Plus, we really wanted to add a huge center screen as feature of our stage that we could fly in and out to create varied stage looks. We wanted to make choices during the renovation so that our technical systems could really also enhance our worship services.
“Infrastructure was the key to everything,” Hemmele continues. “Now we can do so much because we have options and flexibility. It was important that we knew what we wanted to do, and what the problems were that we wanted to solve. Working with Advanced, we asked each other a lot of questions to find the right solutions. Those guys are great. They know what they’re doing and they did their homework to found the best systems that would work in our space.”
Lighting, Video and Rigging
Brown explains, “Northwoods knew they really wanted to update the existing infrastructure. They wanted to be able to have more automated and LED fixtures. We needed to incorporate data distribution everywhere; convert some dimmed channels to relay channels; and relocate a lot of those channels around the space. We were able to easily upgrade the lighting systems; repurposing over 80 percent. We upgraded all three ETC dimmer racks to Sensor+ and converted control to Ethernet-based Streaming ACN.”
For projectors, the church went with six Christie Roadster S+ 14K J 3-chip DLP projectors. The two 24-by-14-foot side screens each have a single projector. Two edge-blended projectors are used for the large center stage screen, a 48-by-16-foot custom-formatted center rear-projection unit. The final two projectors are mounted on Christie YK200 dual arm moving yokes for environmental projection throughout the space. All of the projectors and the center screen are mounted on hoists.
Advanced installed 11 ETC Prodigy Hoist Systems, a mix of fixed and variable speeds. “The ETC Prodigy Hoists were the right fit for Northwoods because they had many different needs,” says Brown. “It was more than just lighting. We were also incorporating a video projection system, and some of the stage monitors are on hoists. The Prodigy hoists smoothly move the projectors and have repeatable positioning to maintain register between the projectors and the screen.” The center screen and its associated projectors can be cued and moved throughout a service for more dynamic presentations.
Hemmele has found the control of the hoists via ETC’s Foundation Rigging Control System to be a great tool for the way they work at Northwoods. “The Foundation control is amazing; ETC really knows their stuff,” the TD states. “They took their console syntax and applied it to the Foundation control. To go from a lighting controller to now controlling motors, is seamless and there’s not a big learning curve. I can take a volunteer, show them a couple of key things on it and they’re up and running within 10-minutes. It is really cool to be able to program a rigging controller the way you would a lighting console.”
For the lighting system, dead hung pipes were replaced with four electrics, again all on Prodigy hoists, over the stage along with three catwalks in the auditorium. “We also added an electric on a hoist in front of our second catwalk,” says Hemmele. “This gave us a truss out in the middle of the room for more flexibility. Now we can quickly change out truss configurations and focus positions.”
Networking and Control
The upgrade also included a Jands Vista L5 console for lighting control, which allowed Northwoods to move their existing ETC Congo console to the church’s student ministry space, where they also do productions and handle overflow for services. Hemmele notes, “We’ve always had ETC consoles and they are in our two other campuses as well; the Congo is a great board. I am also a fan of Jands and I like the Jands’ flow; how you communicate with it; it’s very visual.”
As a part of the renovation, a Streaming ACN network, running 15 DMX universes throughout the auditorium, was installed. The network includes Pathway Connectivity Pathport nodes. “Flexibility is the big thing that we gained in this renovation,” says Hemmele. “In our original system, we only had two DMX universes. We’ve added a universe for each electric and then on the floor we have four floor pockets that have both a 5-pin DMX connection but also an ETC Net port for Streaming ACN so we can access five DMX universes on the floor.”
The Northwoods team uses ETC Source Four ellipsoidals and PARs, all lamped to 750W. They also have Altman 1kW Fresnels. “We use all 19˚ Source Fours for key lighting and Source Four PARs for the stage wash,” Hemmele describes. “For backlight, we use a combination of Source Four PARs and 50˚ Source Fours. We also bought six Elation Design Spot 250 Pros and we recently added two Chauvet R2 washes; those are fantastic.” They also have Blizzard Lighting PixelStorm 240 and American DJ Mega Bar striplights; Chauvet SlimPAR LED and Elation Professional Opti Tri PAR washlights.
Hemmele notes none of it would matter without the great technical team he has at the church, “I’m a big fan of people. I’m fortunate to have Chris Artis, our production director; Jimmy Bridgeman, our FOH audio engineer; and Nathan Stickling, our lighting director; to make my job easy. Also all of the volunteers are fantastic; we couldn’t do it without them. Now we have the technical systems with all the bells and whistles, but at the end of the day if you don’t have a really solid team, it’s kind of pointless.”
Northwoods Community Church Auditorium Upgrade
Crew
- Main Contractor: Advanced Audio and Lighting Systems/Graeme Brown
- Technical Director: Matt Hemmele
- Production Director: Chris Artis
- Lighting Director: Nathan Stickling
- Lead Volunteer: Kevin Wyne
- Lighting Volunteers: Rhonda Davis, Jacob Neuenschwander, David Rogers, David Mahasi Indire, Ben Mannaioni
- FOH Audio Engineer: Jimmy Bridgeman
- Broadcast Audio Volunteers: Geoff Caldwell, Bob Skau, Ben Hamilton
- Stage Management Volunteers: Brad Schmider, Ken Mayo, Jean Demosthenes, Rod Davis
Gear
- 1 Jands Vista L5 Console
- 6 Elation Professional Design Spot 250 Pro
- 2 Chauvet Professional R2 Wash
- 20 Blizzard Lighting PixelStorm 240
- 20 American DJ Mega Bar
- 20 Chauvet Professional SlimPAR LED
- 6 Elation Professional Opti Tri PAR
- 40 ETC Source Four Ellipsoidals
- 65 ETC Source Four PARs
- 8 Altman 1kW Fresnels
- 4 Christie Roadster S+ 14K J 3-Chip DLP projectors (for side and center screens)
- 2 Christie Roadster S+ 14K J 3-Chip DLP projectors w/ 2 Christie YK200 dual arm moving yokes (for environmental projection)
- 3 ETC 96-dimmer Sensor 3 Dimming Racks
- 5 Pathway Connectivity Pathport Nodes
- 1 Streaming ACN Network w/ 15 DMX universes
- 1 ETC Paradigm architectural control system
- 11 ETC Prodigy Hoists
- 1 ETC Foundation rigging control system
