The Porch’s Awaken Conference is a Christian conference aimed at young adults to help them find and deepen their faith. This year, Watermark Church in Dallas, Texas hosted Awaken during the labor day weekend, with over 4,000 attendees. The church’s setup allowed young adults to immerse themselves in the events, which were held in many areas inside and outside of the church, including a large auditorium seating over 4,000 people. Watermark Church's technical team wanted Awaken to be a cutting-edge party atmosphere for young adults. To help create that atmosphere and build excitement, they contacted Keith Allen of KW Allen Productions to set the tone of the event through lighting.
To create the full effect and run the lighting rig during the event, Allen relied on Chroma-Q, Vista by Chroma-Q, and Luminex products, all supplied by A.C. Lighting Inc. Vista was the main focus of this project. Allen says Vista allowed his team to do everything they needed, seamlessly.
“In the atrium, we used Chroma-Q’s Color Force II fixtures to uplight a curved copper wall.,” explains Allen. “Using the Vista 3 software, we had eight full universes running on Vista EX and Vista MV consoles. Vista 3 allowed us to communicate with all facets of the media server, wireless DMX, and networkable nodes, allowing us to operate the lighting both inside and outside from one position. Having eight full universes of communication between moving and static lighting fixtures, as well as the media server in multiple locations at one time was amazing.”
He says all the fixture profiles were available for easy programming. The software was loaded on a laptop allowing them to move from room to room or even outdoors during programming, providing incredible versatility and time savings.
“What I loved about Vista 3 was its flexibility. During programming, I was able to take a networkable node by Luminex and my laptop with Vista 3 on it outside to program the entire lighting rig saving me time. For me, this was a game-changer,” states Allen.
