THIS IMAGE IS COPYRIGHT OF ROBERTO SALINAS
Birthed from the youth ministry of Bethel Church in Redding, California, Jesus Culture has become a global movement that runs huge conferences and records worship music that ministers to Christians around the globe. It is also a local church in Sacramento, which was planted in September 2014 and for many years met in a local high school’s 700-capacity theater. Running three services each Sunday, a dedicated tech team started at 5:30am in the morning to load in high quality audio, video, and lighting production each and every week.
A few years ago, Banning and the church’s other senior leaders felt that God was calling them to move into a dedicated facility, which led to the identification of a suitable building and a giving campaign to raise the finances. This was successful, and the purchase of 625 Coolidge Drive in the city of Folsom in Sacramento County was completed in early 2020. Naturally, the global pandemic slowed progress on renovating the building. Initially a very small portion of the space was setup to allow a limited congregation to gather, in accordance with COVID mandates. This focused on filming worship and teaching to allow the wider congregation to engage online. At the beginning of this year, while pandemic restrictions had been loosened, the church was still in a phase of reconsolidation. It was therefore decided to renovate approximately 1/3 of the building to create a temporary 500-capacity sanctuary while fundraising continues for the money required to complete the renovation of what will be a much larger main sanctuary.
With a date set to launch this temporary facility in early 2022, Jesus Culture’s tech team had a tight window to pull together the audio, video, and lighting systems. Central to Banning’s vision for the space was an LED backdrop that would provide the versatility to retheme the stage set quickly and cost effectively using custom graphics and visuals. The organization had a lot of previous experience of using LED video walls, which they rented for conferences and other special events, but this would be the first time they made an investment in their own wall. Therefore, Jesus Culture’s San Diego Creative Director, Nathan Grubbs, and Production Director, Daniel Blackman, were tasked with researching and costing various options.
The key factors that they had in mind when considering LED wall options were the space they had available and the budget they had to work with. The temporary sanctuary the church is utilizing has a low, drop tile ceiling and the stage is wide but not very deep. They therefore needed a long and thin LED wall that would fill the space behind the wide stage and fit within the limited ceiling height. In addition, a tight pixel pitch was essential, as the front row of the congregation are only located approximately 20’ from the back of the stage.
One of the people Grubbs and Blackman reached out to during this research phase was Justin Lusignan who runs House of God Productions based in Anaheim, California. Lusignan has extensive experience in the church production world, both as a freelance tech and providing production support and integration services to churches of all sizes through his company. Blackman was first introduced to Lusignan when he was preparing for a high-profile one-off event and his Monitor Engineer dropped out at the last moment. Frantic phone calls lead to a recommendation from a mutual friend and Lusignan not only saved the day running monitors flawlessly but hit it off with Daniel so much that the two began to work together on other projects.
Lusignan’s LED wall quote involved an 18 x 5 configuration of ADJ VS2 panels hung from 18 of ADJ’s VSRB1 rigging bars, delivering a video display surface measuring approximately 30’ by 8’. The VS2 is a high-resolution panel utilizing an array of a 3-in-1 RGB SMD2121 LEDs, with a pixel pitch of 2.97mm, generating a brightness of 1000 NITS with a contrast ratio of 5000:1. Each panel comprises four separate LED modules, which allows for easier serviceability, and features an innovative magnetic locating system that helps with simplify installation. As church leaders were preparing to make a final decision, Lusignan arranged for Nathan to accompany him on a visit to ADJ’s showroom in LA. This provided the opportunity for him to see a video wall constructed of VS2 panels in person as well as to experience the quality of their construction firsthand.
“When we reviewed our options, we really felt that Lusignan’s proposal was the best fit for our needs and that it offered the best bang for buck,” confirms Blackman. “We didn’t have a huge budget but really wanted a good quality, reliable wall to fill the back of the stage with a resolution high enough to look good even from the front row of seats. What helped us make the decision was that ADJ is based in LA and that Lusignan knows a lot of the guys at the company and has great relationships with them. So, we knew if we had any questions or problems, there would be someone we could talk to very easily, here in the US. A lot of the larger LED panel companies are based overseas and can be hard to get hold of for local technical support or to get a replacement panel sent. I think personal relationships are really important. I have that connection with Lusignan, and he has that same kind of connection with the guys at ADJ – who he loves doing business with and knows will give him support if he needs it, which gave us a lot of confidence. When I make a purchase, I want to know who I’m doing business with, that’s really important to me.”
THIS IMAGE IS COPYRIGHT OF ROBERTO SALINAS
Having made the decision to go with Lusignan’s proposal, time was of the essence in order to have the wall ready for Jesus Culture’s first Sunday in their new building. Lusignan arranged for ADJ to drop ship the equipment to the church, and it arrived the same week they confirmed the order. Grubbs and Blackman were then able to carry out the installation and commissioning of the wall themselves, which only took a few days. The ease of setup offered by the Vision Series system helped speed up the whole integration project and meant that video, sound, and lighting was all ready to go for the launch Sunday. Having now been in use consistently for the best part of a year, Blackman says the VS2 wall has proved to be both reliable and versatile. Not only is it used on Sundays to display bible readings, song lyrics, custom sermon graphics, abstract visuals, and other video content, but also for midweek teaching sessions at the Jesus Culture School of Leadership. Its versatility allows picture-in-picture technology to display presentation slides and IMAG video footage together, overlaid on custom graphic backgrounds.
“We have been very pleased with our VS2 video wall,” confirms Blackman. “It looks great on camera, and it looks great in the room. We now have this amazing blank canvas background that can be used in all kinds of creative ways. The 2.9mm pixel pitch is low enough for our needs and it is plenty bright enough, in fact we usually run it at 40% brightness, and at times I’ve even toyed at dropping down to 35%. It’s also got a great viewing angle, which was another important factor for us. We’ve got a very wide room, but pretty much anywhere you sit you can see it nice and clearly. We also really appreciate the versatility of the hanging bracket, that you can also use for ground-stacking, which it’s possible we may do in the future.”
THIS IMAGE IS COPYRIGHT OF ROBERTO SALINAS
To drive the wall, Lusignan supplied a NovaPro UHD Jnr, the most advanced LED video controller and processor offered by ADJ. It provides a wide variety of input connections, including HDMI, DVI and 12G-SDI, alongside 16 ethernet outputs and four 10G optical outputs. In total, it is capable of driving up to 8.3 million pixels of LED wall with extremely low latency and a huge level of customization. A full color LCD display on the front panel can be used for basic operation, while a computer can be connected for advanced control over setup and configuration.
“I would highly recommend churches who are in the market for a video wall step up to this processor if they possibly can,” comments Blackman. “We’ve used multiple processors in the past with rented LED walls and this really was the best. Especially if you are filming, and need to tweak the refresh rates and things like that, those extra little settings offered by this top of the range controller really come in. In the past we’ve had problems with cheaper setups where on camera you could see the scaling and there was nothing we could do to prevent it, we just couldn’t quite get it right, but the VS2s running from the NovaPro UHD Jnr look perfect on camera. If you have it in your budget, take the step up, you won’t regret it!”
Blackman, Grubbs, and other members of the Jesus Culture Sacramento team say they’re extremely happy with their video wall investment. It is used extensively in its current home in their temporary sanctuary and will then be redeployed into the new larger space when they move into that in the future. For his part, Lusignan was pleased to be able to help his friends at Jesus Culture achieve their vision for an LED video wall on budget and in a format that they can utilize to its full potential.
“What’s important for churches,” explains Lusignan, “is that they feel like they got the product that they paid for but also that they are comfortable with using that product. That’s what I really like about ADJ; I know that if there is ever any need for after sales support, they will take care of both me and my customers very well. From an integrator’s perspective, ADJ is awesome! The support is fantastic. The LED panels are also so easy to install that it really makes our lives very easy. It’s a very robust product. I’ve used cheap panels in the past and the difference in quality is obvious between those and the Vision Series. I know that everyone at the church is happy with the wall; even people you wouldn’t expect have commented on how good it looks. When I was up there last even Banning said that he feels it really holds the room together, which was fantastic to hear. We often get good feedback from the tech people but to hear that even the lead pastor loves it and feels that it is supporting the message he is preaching, that’s really something special.”
