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Christmas at Willow Creek Community Church
"Light" combined dance, song and multimedia, and featured a huge custom-built 96-ft by 23-ft curved projection screen
Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., is known for its productions that are often original works with high production values. This Christmas they presented Light, which combined dance, song and multimedia, and featured a huge custom-built 96-foot by 23-foot curved projection screen, to tell the story of Jesus coming to earth and how he continues to illuminate our world today.
“We used light as a symbol of Jesus,” says Chris Thomas, lighting designer and media server programmer for Light. “The script speaks about spreading the light around the world and takes us on a tour of three different countries—India, China and Mexico. For each location we created a video package with real stories of people from those countries and then we had authentic music and witnessed some of their traditions re-enacted onstage.”
In June, the design team started to conceptualize and bring ideas to the table. Dan Larson, the lighting and scenic director, came up with the idea of having one big video screen. “We went from there to an IMAX-like experience where it feels like you are there,” says Andrew Schuurmann, executive video producer for Light. “It is so large and overwhelming that you are kind of inside it.” The 96-foot-long screen was made of 16 six-foot by 23-foot flats that were covered with muslin and painted white—constructed just like scenic flats out of wood and muslin with four doors built in for entrances. After doing multiple paint tests for the projection surface, Thomas and his team decided to use a primer coat and a standard white paint by Behr. “It worked out the best,” says Thomas. “This was quite the money saver.”
Once the construction of the screen was finalized they turned to the technical needs of the imagery itself. “We decided early on that because of the curvature of the screen we wanted to go with Pandoras Box media servers from Coolux,” explains Thomas. “The Pandoras Box handled the edge blending and matches the curve so well; it does it all,” says Schuurmann. “If it was a flat screen, we probably could have gone with a pro-video player solution, but matching to the curve, it’s phenomenal. The final pixel size that we used was 3,142x720. That was split into three 1280x720P HD images with about a 20% edge blend. We could not have done this without Pandoras Box.” Schuurmann used four Pandoras Box units and six double-stacked Christie Roadster HD18K DLP projectors.
The Right Camera
Everyone involved believed that with a screen aspect ratio of 5:1 they would need high-definition images. The camera that could capture that kind of high resolution footage would be the new RED Digital Cinema Camera. “When we finally nailed down the screen size, we realized that we needed a video image that was roughly 3,200 pixels wide,” says Schuurmann. “Standard-definition video is about 700 pixels wide. The RED camera is the equivalent of a film camera, except that it is all digital with no film involved. It records at 4K resolution, which is roughly 4,000x4,000 pixels. In a confluence of events, we had someone who belongs to our church who had a RED camera and called us out of the blue and said, ‘I have this camera if you would like to borrow it.’”
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Michael S. Eddy writes about design and technology. He can be reached at mseddy2900@hotmail.com. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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