FRESNO, CA – Peoples Church allocates a small portion of its overall budget each year to upgrading its stage lighting. This year, Chadwell D. Hopper of CDH Productions made use of LED fixtures from ADJ Products to add visual dazzle to services within the church’s 2,000-capacity auditorium while staying comfortably within the church’s lighting budget.
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“Peoples Church was looking to transition from a traditional stage lighting look to something a little more contemporary,” explained Hopper, who does production, stage and scenic design for the church’s seasonal shows. “Also, their holiday productions are taking on more of a concert feel, and they wanted their auditorium to be able to accommodate that, yet at the same time remain a suitable environment for Sunday worship services.”
Adding to this challenge, Peoples Church holds three different Sunday services in its 2,000-seat auditorium at different times – an early traditional service, a service that features more contemporary music, and a more progressive “experience” aimed at the younger set.
To meet these multiple objectives, Hopper devised a flexible stage design that uses a large projection screen, a backdrop of black draperies, and new LED lighting – most notably ADJ’s Inno Color Beam LED, a high-performance RGBW color-mixing LED moving head fixture. “I installed some drop pipes (behind the stage), and the church purchased some black draperies so they can black out the stage area for concerts and theatrical productions. Then for regular worship services, they can remove the black drapes and return to a more traditional look,” said Hopper.
Between the black drape segments on each side of the stage, Hopper installed a mesh screen material to serve as a background for the ADJ Inno Color Beam LEDs. The Inno Beams are mounted on six wire ladders in front of the mesh panels, giving the appearance they are suspended in mid-air. There are nine Inno Beams on each side of the stage, evenly spaced in rows of three, for a total of 18 fixtures. “They wanted to do something more edgy this year, so I came up with the idea of having the lights literally floating in the air and they really liked it,” said Hopper.
Church officials also like the versatility and performance of the Inno Color Beam LED. The energy-efficient 108-watt fixture is equipped with 36 x 3-watt high-quality Cree LEDs (8 red, 10 green, 10 blue and 8 white) for bright, smooth RGBW-blended colors. It produces the intense beam that’s popular in today’s lighting designs, along with a full range of movement (630° pan, 220° tilt), exciting built-in programs, 0-100% dimming, and a strobe/pulse effect. It also offers plenty of pro features and user options such as three operational modes (DMX, Sound-Active, Master-Slave), a four-button DMX menu system, and maintenance-free 50,000-hour LEDs.
“The church is very happy with the bright light output of the Inno Color Beams, and the fact that you can see these lights anywhere in the room with a minimal amount of haze,” said Hopper. “They also like the concept that you can use them to wash the stage or create effects with them. During their traditional Sunday service, they use the lights to color the stage, keeping it very subdued. Then as each service progresses, they build up into more of an ‘experience’ feel.”
Perhaps most of all, Peoples Church officials were thrilled with the lighting value they received for their dollar. “In the past, the church often favored purchasing used lighting so that they could stretch their limited budget as far as possible,” said Hopper.
“For the cost of two used (moving lights from a large manufacturer), they were able to afford these 18 new ADJ Inno Color Beam LEDs. We also looked at purchasing (another manufacture’s lights) used, and for the same cost, we could have gotten a dozen with no warranty. Here we got basically the same performance with high-quality Cree LEDs – I was very impressed with that and with ADJ’s three-year warranty. You’re getting a product that’s brand-new and is covered by a warranty, and in the designer’s eye it’s the same light.”
For more details on CDH Productions, go to www.cdhproductions.com.
