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Images courtesy of Bob Sullivan.
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With 12 campuses, Woodside Bible Church is well known to Southeastern Michigan's Contemporary Christian population. Woodside's unique Lake Orion campus recently made a huge leap from five years of being hosted in a middle school “cafetorium” to a repurposed, 85,000-square-foot retail space. The shopping complex, themed with an old world grey stone exterior, stands in sharp contrast to Woodside's modern worship style, but it turned out to be an ideal location. “We are like a church in a castle,” says Lake Orion's technical director, Mike Hutson, ‘'and people seem to like that, but the new location presented some significant challenges.”
The Back-story
Hutson was there when the Lake Orion campus was originally founded, in 2009. “We were a church on wheels,” he recalls, “operating out of a middle school ‘cafetorium.'” Though the school location was just “a glass and concrete room,” Hutson's technical experience helped him transform it for worship. “I've always had a heart for music,” he says, “even as a child.”
His love of music coupled with a career in information technology and project management for Detroit-based automotive giant General Motors has made his approach to church technical direction unique. “I'd managed projects of all sizes,” Hutson notes, “including major renovations of call centers and entire offices, but had to learn about production.” Even with little experience in church production, Hutson was able to help when a small church wanted to present cantata events. He designed lighting and sound, and built out their small stage to support larger productions. “I was learning as I went,” he recalls, “mostly from textbooks, articles and whatever else I could find.” In addition, Hutson recalls that his experience in a smaller worship environment taught him many of the important skills needed to work well with vocalists and a band.
Applying the experience he gained at the smaller church, Hutson was able to make the limited technology at Lake Orion's middle school location work well for them for more than five years. Even with the limitations of a temporary location, the campus showed continuous growth and, with the support of Woodside's main campus in Troy, Mich., church leaders found the retail space that would become Lake Orion's new, permanent home.
New Purpose
Hutson and church leaders decided on a Birmingham, Mich., architectural firm, Douglas Johnson and Associates, to handle the structural renovation and adapt the space to include a 750-seat sanctuary. The age and design of the building for retail, along with budget constraints, challenged Hutson's project management skills and the team's resourcefulness. For AVL systems, the church turned to Bob Sullivan, principal of Advanced Lighting and Sound in Troy, Mich.
“The former retail store was an unusual and challenging space,” Sullivan recalls. “Not only were there significant changes that needed to be made to the structure and power to bring the building up to code, but the sanctuary space had supporting columns on stage and in the worship seating that would impact sightlines.” One of Sullivan's most significant challenges was providing solid audio that could [work] with the shape of the room. An escalator that had adorned the retail space would cost too much to relocate or remove. As a result, the room had to be designed in a dramatically asymmetrical way.
Sullivan and Hutson share the opinion that involving AVL integrators early in any remodeling process can be key to reducing costs and preventing marginal designs that have to be redone or worked around. As an example, Hutson had looked at other church renovations in the area and had taken note of rooms where air return ductwork was inappropriately located over the stage area. “We were able to catch this and correct it before it became a problem,” he says. “We don't use haze effects very much, but when we do, we'd like the effect to stay in the stage area.” As a result, air return ducts at Lake Orion were more appropriately relocated toward the rear of the room.
Similarly, Sullivan, who had years of experience working in churches and with electrical contractors, pointed out that house lighting need not extend over the stage area. The observation saved the church significantly on materials and costs to run additional circuits to support the unnecessary lighting.
"Not only were there significant changes that needed to be made to the structure and power to bring the building up to code, but the sanctuary space had supporting columns on stage and in the worship seating that would impact sightlines."
Bob Sullivan
Principal, Advanced Lighting and Sound, Troy, MI.
Major design criteria for the Lake Orion campus included the ability for the campus to have a similar look and feel as other Woodside churches. Each of Woodside's 12 campuses (most are 200-400 members) follows the lead of the main campus in Troy, Mich. Central creative and technical teams at Troy aid in production design and technology for all the campuses. Productions are revised three or four times a year, to reshape stage design, coordinating lighting and color schemes. On Sunday mornings, teaching pastors preach live, and share an outline with the other pastors, but the teaching at each campus is separate.
A Working Relationship
Sullivan's relationship with Woodside goes back over 10 years and includes work on building the main campus in Troy. With a long history of working with churches, Sullivan is proud to say that he has been an integrator from the start. His introduction to production technology goes back to high school where he inquisitively “followed an AV installer around.” He quickly learned how to operate the new AV equipment and was awarded the keys to the technical booth.
After school, he managed a theater and learned more about the professional aspects of the business. “Productions were always competing with my goals for a formal education,” observes Sullivan, “and eventually technology won out.” As more side work presented itself, Sullivan took on additional projects and had to find help. “What started as part time grew rapidly,” he recalls. Today, Sullivan and ALS principal Bob Minchella have 15 employees, and 65%-70% of their business is churches. “With most of our clients, we have a long history,” he adds.
Sullivan's goals for the Lake Orion campus reflected his approach to technology in general. “Let me provide you with tools that are best for what you need to do,” he says, “and help you find the solution that will last.” Sullivan worked closely with Hutson and his team to provide the best choices for lighting, sound and media that would meet the budget and provide the best solutions for the room.
Gear Selection
To meet the objective of keeping the Lake Orion campus in sync with the high production values of Woodside's main campus, Sullivan specified 12 ETC 426-A Source Four 26-degree fixtures to provide basic color wash, equipped with Ushio HPL750/X 750-watt halogen bulbs and two Elation Platinum Spot 5R Pro spotlights. “The 5Rs employ a pre-aligned reflector and are always focused. They just look beautiful every time,” says Sullivan. In addition, the installation called for eight Martin Rush PAR 2 12x10watt RGBW fixtures that boast a 10-degree to 60-degree zoom. Sullivan reports, “Rush Par zooms help us to get different looks with minimal effort.” Fifteen Universal 12x12x10 box trusses provide the mounting structure for the installation.
Lighting control employs an ETC DRd system with Paradigm control along with an Elation Opto Branch 8 single rack space, eight-way DMX distributor/booster. This unit takes an incoming DMX control signal splitting eight ways to separate outputs. Each output provides a total electrical isolation of up to 1000V between branches. Sullivan also installed and provisioned a Jands Vista S1 Lighting Control Package that provides Hutson and his team with a small, portable lighting control surface that's easy to use. While compact, the S1 presents five playbacks, including faders and flash buttons, a complete programming section with three encoder wheels, a rotary master fader and two clear LCD displays. According to Hutson, “The Jands Vista system is easy to learn and operate so just about anyone can jump right in. I'm very happy with it, as are the volunteers.”
Sound design for the asymmetrical room presented Sullivan with his biggest challenge. “We had to live with certain elements including an escalator between floors, an oddly shaped room and a budget,” he recalls. Sullivan looked at all available speaker options modeling several promising products with Enhanced Acoustic Simulator for Engineers (EASE) software to find the best solution to meet the challenges of both control for room coverage and budget, Sullivan landed on a combination of Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers, JBL subs and Crown power amplifiers. In addition, in order to gain better control of the sound in the room, he recommended an application of HEC Technologies K-13 cellulose insulation spray at a thickness of two inches to specific areas of the exposed metal ceiling including over the stage. At the back of the room, Sullivan devised a pattern of MBI Colorsonix two-inch acoustic panels to be mounted to the back walls. “The panels pick up any direct energy from the audio system aimed at the back row,” he says, “as well as helping to minimize direct reflections in the room.”
Sullivan configured a monaural system with left and right clusters of Renkus-Heinz loudspeakers. Each side has a pair of VAX101i-15/12 loudspeakers and pair of VAX101i-22/12 loudspeakers. The VAX101i-15/12 employs a 10-inch low-frequency woofer and two 1-inch high-frequency compression drivers. They are ordered to deliver a 15° vertical coverage angle and with wide, 120-degree WaveGuide for the box's optimal horizontal coverage angle. VAX101i-22/12 loudspeakers also employ a 10-inch low frequency woofer, but have a single one-inch high frequency compression driver. Those were ordered for a 22.5-degree vertical coverage angle and with a similar 120-degree WaveGuide.
This configuration provided the best low and wide coverage.
To accommodate a short stage height, two JBL ASB6125 dual 15-inch high-power subwoofers were flown at the center and powered by a single Crown Audio XTi6002 presenting 1200 watts/channel at 8 ohms. Sullivan took advantage of an efficiency feature of the passive VAX series loudspeaker that allows them to be biamped. He selected two Crown XTi4002s at 650 watts/channel at eight ohms to amplify low frequencies and two Crown XTi2002s at 475 watts/channel at eight ohms for the highs. Sullivan remarks, “Using a combination of these quality products gave us the most bang for the buck—clean power, great sound quality and superior system reliability.” For signal processing, Sullivan specified and installed a BSS A BLU-100 signal processor.
Hutson says the attributes of the new audio system exceed all of the church's expectations. “Our new audio system—coupled with acoustic treatment in the new venue—provides us with the ability to create an excellent overall tonal quality that we could not achieve in our previous venue. [In addition], the spoken words in messages, announcements, interviews and the like are far easier to understand in all seating areas of the worship center.”
Audio mixing at Woodside's Lake Orion campus is controlled by a Yamaha QL5 console at front of house. This provides sound engineers with 32 faders, two master faders, 32 onboard mic/line analog inputs, and 16 analog outputs. Connectivity to the console is provided by a RIO1608-D rack unit with 16 mic/line inputs and eight analog outputs connected via a Dante digital I/O unit and a Netgear 24-port, rack mountable gigabit switch. The console package includes Nuendo Live software live recording and virtual soundcheck software.
With as many as 25 volunteers to help with services, Hutson observes that finding people with an “ear” for audio and training them is a major challenge. “Nuendo provides us several advantages,” says Hutson. “Rehearsal at our portable campus was difficult. It was “set up and go.” Now, with a space and the right tools we can rehearse more efficiently. We use the Nuendo software to replay mixes for training audio volunteers and to review the overall sound with church leadership, but also to record the original music produced here at the church.” This allows Hutson and his team to play pre-recorded music from church band members at points during the service.
For monitors, a personal monitor system by Aviom takes advantage Dante connectivity with a D800-Dante A-Net Distributor with A-Net Bridge. Six Aviom A360 personal mixers on stand mounts along with a Aviom 16-channel mic- and line-level output module provide individual control over mixes. Additionally, a Sennheiser GA3 Evolution wireless system with EK300 G3 bodypack receivers, IE4 earbuds, with an SR300 G3 rack-mountable stereo transmitter is used on stage. Two Hosa DTP-802 balanced snakes and a four-channel Whirlwind digital snake complete the picture for the monitor system. A Shure SM58S Cardioid Dynamic microphone and two Audio-Technica AT897 line + gradient condenser microphones were added to Lake Orion's microphone selections. Microphones were just about the only equipment that was redeployed to the new sanctuary. However, the other components from the portable system were put to good use in the children's ministry at the new building.
To compensate for areas of the room where support columns might negatively impact site lines to the stage, three Da-Lite 96391L Cosmopolitan Electrol motorized projection screens (106 x 188 inches) with built-in motors were installed in a three-wide configuration. Screens are illuminated by Panasonic PT-DW740UK 1-DLP 7,000-lumen WXGA projectors ceiling mounted using Chief RPA6500 mounting hardware. A Kramer International VP-729 nine-input scaler/switcher with Ethernet control provides video processing with Ace HDMI splitters, amplifiers and converter/adapter hardware for connectivity. For budgetary considerations, HD cameras were purchased on eBay and supplemented with a Libec RS-350RM professional two stage tripod with PH-6B extendable pan handle and Panasonic's AW-HS50NJ sub-compact HD/SD live switcher with built-in multi-viewer.
Moving Forward
The extensive renovations and AVL installation took place over a nine-month period completing about one year ago. Since then, Hutson reports that the church's regular 9:20 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. services are nearing capacity necessitating the addition of a third service to be added in the fall. “We were thrilled to see 400 to 500 worshipers the Sunday we opened,” he recalls. “Now, we see 1,000 to 1,200 and we've outgrown our children's ministry.” Hutson also reports that the demographics of the campus have changed considerably. “Since our move we have many more younger members,” he says. “As an elder, I get to interview new members and am very pleased to see so many people coming to us in their upper 20s to mid 30s.”
Hutson notes that his corporate project management experience helped him with effectively managing the technical upgrades and logistics at the Lake Orion campus. His IT background also helped with installing the Dante network for audio and the networked video components. Throughout the renovation process, he and Sullivan were intent on finding the best solutions for the church and both feel they were rewarded with a great outcome. “Bob Sullivan and ALS were great to work with,” says Hutson, “and we are very pleased with the tools we now have.” Just as important, the new technology is resonating new worshipers as more become passionate members of Woodside's worship community. As the congregation has grown, so have Hutson's productions and he anticipates that more elaborate productions will demand more new technology. “A sure sign that we are growing,” he says, “is that we're going to need to add more audio mixes very soon.”
