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Manufacturers’ Roundtable: Theatrical Lighting for the House of Worship Market
Recently Church Production Magazine (CPM) posed several questions to a roundtable of designers, manufacturers and suppliers who work in the house-of-worship market. We discussed trends affecting lighting, technology they like, using lighting in projection and IMAG situations, and working in this economy.
The participants include Tobin Neis, marketing manager for Barbizon Lighting Company; Tom Stanziano, lighting designer and sales with SeaChanger; Paul Braile, automated lighting specialist and Dennis Size, lighting designer --- two of the partners in Lighting Inspirations; C. Andrew Dunning, lighting designer and consultant who owns Landru Design; and Fred Mikeska, vice president of U.S. sales and marketing with A.C. Lighting.
CPM: Talk about trends you see in the house-of-worship lighting market.
Tobin Neis: Lately with the economy, especially in new construction, we are seeing radical value engineering cuts to budgets and spaces. I think it is shortsighted cutting building infrastructure. It will cost more than double the amount later to retrofit the infrastructure to add more lighting and sound because there's no place to hang or conduit to run the cables. A solid backbone of infrastructure will more than pay itself off in the long run, especially for the inevitable expansion phase.
C. Andrew Dunning: I have seen the trend of either multi-sites or multiple venues on a given campus having the use of scalable control platforms. Whether the reason is financial or simply actual functionality need, this allows different consoles that all talk the same language to be specified for different rooms, but technicians can move from space-to-space without having to rethink things. Volunteers are able to graduate from one space to another with the investment of training not lost.
Tom Stanziano: LEDs. There are positive and negatives about LEDs. They are power-efficient and have long lamp hours. They are great for color washing small areas and the price has come down considerably over the years. The downside is the electrical components usually fail before the LEDs burnout. They usually don't look good on video; many cause a flicker on camera. Using LEDs for front light is getting more efficient but not quite there yet because there is no beam control, the output is not intense enough and color temperature will play a huge role if video is used.
Fred Mikeska: We are seeing a trend towards remote campuses where the message is delivered via video. With video becoming more and more common, it is important to make sure you have a well-designed lighting system in place.
Dennis Size: Trendy lighting. What ends up happening is that vendors sell the latest new toy to clients when it's not in the client's best interest. You really need to have a solid foundation and then work with the tools. Also everyone is hopping on the LED bandwagon now, regardless of their need.
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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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Dennis Size, Vice President of Design Paul Braile, Principal
braile@lightinginspirations.net | 631-791-9710
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