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Images courtesy Acoustic Dimensions
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Images courtesy Acoustic Dimensions
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Images courtesy Acoustic Dimensions
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A 145-foot wide curved, seamless video screen serves as the sanctuary’s centerpiece. Images come from seven edge-blended Barco projectors, with the back-end image processing from a Coolux Pandora’s Box show control and media system.
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For 145 years FBC Dallas has occupied this downtown site. It was clear the eight building hodge-podge did not accomplish what the church resolved to achieve.
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Images courtesy Acoustic Dimensions
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Images courtesy Acoustic Dimensions
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A Digico SD-7 digital audio console sits at front-of-house (FOH), bringing together all of the inputs for the worship center, the rehearsal rooms for the choir and the orchestra, as well as the production studio.
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As extensive as the technology at FBC Dallas may be, the church manages to pull off some impressive productions with a considerably small technical team. Of its 35 production team members, 33 are volunteers.
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The technical team can treat the sidewalls as a sort of canvas—to create different moods and feels in accordance with what’s taking place on the platform. All images courtesy Acoustic Dimensions.
It was in July 2010 that the First Baptist Church of Dallas broke ground for its new facility, which is housed on the downtown site the church has occupied for most of its 145-year history. As it grew over the years, the church's facilities expanded to encompass six city blocks and eight buildings, including its sanctuary. Some of the buildings were constructed by FBC Dallas, while others were purchased––and eventually, it was clear that they were hodge-podge to accommodate what the church is striving to achieve.
Recognizing this, and the fact that Dallas itself is experiencing considerable growth and a facelift to go along with it, Dr. Robert Jeffress, the church's senior pastor, envisioned the creation of a “spiritual oasis”––FBC Dallas's new home would not only better serve its existing members, but it would also invite the community in. His deadline was tight: the first service in the new facility was to take place on Easter Sunday of this year. And it did.
Demolition & renewal
This was no small feat, since it involved the implosion of four buildings and the dismantling of two others, in addition to all of the new construction that needed to take place. The Beck Group, a local architectural firm, oversaw the design of the new 500,000-square-foot
campus that boasts parking space, classrooms, multiple theaters, indoor playgrounds for the children’s ministry, a gymnasium, auditorium and break-out spaces for student ministry, a new parking garage, and, of course a new worship center that is capable of seating 3,000.
Out front, a fountain that features a cross tower and a separate baptism pool, and a pedestal that stands 68-feet high to the top of the cross, has already become a downtown landmark and popular meeting place. Every 15 minutes, passersby are treated to a water show, complete with original music.
Located on the second level, the new worship center at FBC Dallas is configured in a fan shape with sloped floor seating and a balcony. The technology package for the space addressed two main goals: not only does it support weekly services for “live” congregants, it is also the set for Pathway to Victory, which is broadcast to over 1,200 television stations and several dozen radio stations across the United States. Acoustic Dimensions based in nearby Addison, Texas, provided the design for the acoustics and audio, video and lighting systems for the worship center, as well as for many of the other spaces throughout the campus.
“What we started with was an expression of the core strategies for the church,” recounts John Grable, minister of communications at FBC Dallas. In his role, Grable is tasked with overseeing internal and external communications as well as the church’s broadcast ministry. And, because of his background in television, he was a lead participant in the design of the broadcast systems––which, he explains, had to support the goals of the church’s worship services; equip (as in how FBC Dallas equips its people); serve (how the church leads its people into service); and influence. “It was important that the capabilities of our facility match up against those core strategies,” he adds.
Visual expression
A 145-foot-wide curved, seamless video screen serves as the sanctuary’s centerpiece, with seven edge-blended Barco projectors projecting images onto it from behind the choir space. Because the screen is curved, the projection processing is charged with geometrically correcting these images, as well as blending them together. A Coolux Pandora’s Box show control and media system supplies the back-end processing for the projection technology.
“The idea of putting in this 145-foot-wide screen array was not necessarily to create any sense of eye candy; it was really about how we could visually draw our people into a strong vertical perspective in worship,” Grable explains. “As a downtown church, one of the things we understand is that people come downtown for great sporting events, great concerts at major venues, great museums––be it in arts or sciences––and great restaurants.” The worship experience here should also be, well, great. “We had to have a worship experience that was paramount, and part of that worship experience is the visual expression of worship, and drawing people in to that expression of worship.”
Ben Cating, senior consultant at Acoustic Dimensions, explains that the nine Grass Valley cameras in the worship center are used for image magnification (IMAG) on the screen, as well as for broadcast. He notes that several of these cameras are robotic: “Currently, there is one in the orchestra pit near the piano so that they can pan around and get shots of the different instruments,” he points out. “There is also one on the house right side of the stage in an alcove behind the choir loft––we call it a tower cam. It can raise up to get shots from behind the stage and then [retract] again so that you don’t see it.”
The production suite is located on the first level. “This is where we’ve got all of the equipment to support what goes on in the worship center, as well as what they are streaming to the Internet and recording to tape for editing and playback, and eventually broadcast,” Cating explains. Grass Valley switching systems produce the show.
Audio & lighting
A Digico SD-7 digital audio console sits at front-of-house (FOH), bringing together all of the inputs for the worship center, the rehearsal rooms for the choir and the orchestra, as well as the production studio. “All of those inputs go to Digico SD Stage Racks so that all of the inputs are available on the Optocore network,” explains Casey Sherred, senior consultant at Acoustic Dimensions. “So from FOH, you can actually mix sources from any of those spaces. There is a lot of flexibility in the routing.”
The lighting system for the worship space encompasses theatrical lighting featuring a combination of gobos and moving heads, and house lighting––the latter incorporating ambient lighting as well. “The house lighting for the architectural system was very important to them because of the broadcast and because of what they wanted, theatrically, to do with the house lighting,” relays Jason Foster, senior consultant at Acoustic Dimensions.
The ambient lighting enables the technical team to treat the sidewalls as a sort of canvas to create different moods and feels in accordance with what’s taking place on the platform. To achieve this, Acoustic Dimensions and The Beck Group came up with a design that resulted in the incorporation of five bands of color-changing LEDs that wrap around the space. The lighting systems are controlled by a GrandMA 2 console.
As extensive as the technology at FBC Dallas may be, the church manages to pull off some impressive productions with a considerably small technical team. Of its 35 production team members, 33 are volunteers. So how does Grable get everyone to work together effectively? “We started, in earnest, putting best practices into place almost two years ago in preparing our team in terms of developing our camera crew and our directors, because we had a media facility in our old sanctuary,” he explains. “We even developed production schemes with scripts and how we blocked services in recognition of how we would have to operate when we got into the new facility.”
Technology meets preparation
This same level of preparation applied when the new facility was built: Grable’s team was given access six weeks prior to opening, and was conducting full rehearsals two weeks before. The morning before Easter Sunday, they ran a mock service, one last time. “It was absolutely a complete mock service so that when the 250 people that sang in the choir, the 60 people that were in the orchestra, the camera operators, the directors, the sound engineers and the ushers––when they all showed up at the grand opening on Sunday morning, Easter, we’d done it, and we were ready for it,” he says. “That kind of preparation you rarely see with a church grand opening, and we were blessed to be able to do that.”
For Grable, his primary role is leading people and guiding them into focus, based on the core principles upon which FBC Dallas abides. “It is about leading our members and our guests into worshipping God and having a very horizontal focus,” he says. “Our ability to pull all the kinds of things we do in our media operation is fundamentally executed through that core strategy of ‘serve,’ in terms of the amount of time we invest in training, and in leading these people to grow in their skills sets so that they can serve. My role as a minister is to lead my staff in making them the best they can be in whatever role––be it technical or creative.”
With this in mind, Grable shares that a church doesn’t need the resources of FBC Dallas to successfully achieve this. “A media team at any sized church needs to understand what the felt need is of their membership, and what their role is in meeting that felt need. And then to understand the way those various mediums work,” he says. “You can be in a 200-person church and really try to understand how people need to use the medium in your room.”
