There's nothing quite like Christmas in Scottsdale, Ariz., with that sense of anticipation as the snow flurries swirl around the pines…. Well, perhaps not outside, but inside Scottsdale Bible Church's auditorium, it's a definite possibility through the use of environmental projection.
“Environmental projection gives us the opportunity to change the mood and atmosphere for the different elements in our Christmas production,” states Nicholas Palomo, production and communications director at Scottsdale Bible Church (SBC). Installed to support the 2011 Christmas production, the environmental projection system enabled staff to place a full-sized train on the stage for a medley of songs from The Polar Express, or to flood the front walls of the auditorium with graphics to set a mood.
Back to the Beginning
Planning for Christmas starts in late spring at SBC, with Troy Peterson (the worship and creative arts pastor), Tammy Reimche (assistant producer) and volunteer Julia Hamilton forming the creative team that will decide the content and set the direction for the production. “We have a general ‘formula' we follow,” states Peterson. “The first half of the show is more secular and fun, with the second half being more traditional pageant with a large choir and orchestra.”
Scottsdale Bible Church's history can make it a challenge to produce a program with the reach they desire. In its 50th year as a congregation, the non-denominational church has a long-held reputation of having a large, traditional music program. In assembling its program, staff desired to maintain the church's roots, yet reach out to a contemporary community full of lost people. “With an average weekly attendance of 7,000 people, nine weekend services, three separate venues, with four different worship styles, and a lot of creative and musical variety within the church, this can make it hard to create a program that reaches such a large demographic,” Peterson says.
The nativity story and gospel is presented through costumed performers and music, and each year they look for a fresh and exciting way to tell the story and draw the community in. The planning team spends time listening to music, watching videos, and looking for elements that would work for that year's show. The leadership of the church leaves the content of the show entirely in the creative team's hands. “There's a great deal of trust the pastor extends to our team,” Peterson adds. He also points out that Senior Pastor Jamie Rasmussen is passionate about reaching the community and sees the program as a great way to bring in people who don't normally go to church.
Once the content of the program is set, the various production directors are brought in and the overall program is discussed. The production directors take their elements and work out the details that apply to those segments. As the program is more of a revue than a scripted theatrical event, the details of the transitions from one element to the next are left to the final weeks of preparation.
“It really comes together as a cohesive program in the last two weeks before performances,” Peterson notes.
In addition to the Polar Express medley, another element of note was an iPad band where musicians play virtual instruments live through their iPads (a concept made popular by North Point Church of Atlanta). “We performed ‘Carol of the Bells,' and it turned out pretty amazing,” says Peterson. “We did it completely live—no track or safety net. The five team members did a remarkable job pulling it off.”
"There’s a great deal of trust the pastor extends to our team."
Troy Peterson
Worship and creative arts pastor, Scottsdale Bible Church, Scottsdale, AZ
Technical Preparation
Each year as plans for the Christmas production are made, the creative arts team looks for opportunities to invest in the church's technical infrastructure—to both support the production as well as to provide the team with new tools to make the weekend worship experience more effective.
“With AVL gear we've tried to add capital improvements at that time of the year,” states Peterson. “The environmental projection installation was done right before Christmas to launch with the show. It is now used on a weekly basis.”
The environmental projection system consists of three Christie projectors to completely cover the rear wall of the stage, plus the two side walls with image.
“There's a Christie 10,000-lumen projector in [the] middle,” describes Palomo, “and two 7,000-lumen projectors on the edges. Our room is really wide, so there's quite a lot of wall [to cover] to either side of the stage. We use a Matrox TripleHead2Go unit to split a single image into three sections for the three projectors. We're using Renewed Vision's ProPresenter on a Mac Pro to run the media. And the masking tools in ProPresenter help us keep imagery off the parts of the stage where we don't want it.”
Each projector is run at 800x600 resolution, with the TripleHead2Go unit presenting the three projectors to the Mac as one 2,400x600 video display. This simplifies creating the large backdrops and video clips for the environmental projection.
One of the challenges with environmental projection is that teams are oftentimes not projecting on color-neutral video screens—they're projecting on walls, softgoods, and flooring. “Because of this, you need to pick images and colors that will work on the colors of the surfaces onto which you're projecting,” says Palomo. “We often did our graphic design in the auditorium itself, so we could immediately see how well the imagery would work.”
In support of the audio for the show, the church's Yamaha PM5D digital audio console's scene functionality helps the team control the show and ensure the right mics are on at the right time for each segment. To accommodate the number of inputs needed for the production, they used an additional mixer as a sidecar to sub-mix the choir.
An ETC Ion lighting console controls the theatrical fixtures and eight Vari-Lite moving lights. The church rented six VL500 wash fixtures, four VL2500 and demo'd the new VL880 series for the Christmas show. “We really liked the VL880s—they have a lot of punch,” states Palomo. “These were an amazing purchase for us. The color mixing and light output are excellent. With the intensity of the beam, you need less haze in the room to see the beams.”
“We often did our graphic design in the auditorium itself, so we could immediately see how well the imagery would work.”
Nicholas Palomo
Production and communications director, Scottsdale Bible Church, Scottsdale, AZ
Staging presents a challenge at Christmas, the team reports. With an adult choir of 125, children's choir of 100, supporting cast and crew of 150, and 50 instruments in addition to the worship band, stage real estate is at a premium. Plus, the team needs to leave room for dancers and other performers. This year they chose to split the orchestra, placing five rows of musicians on each side of the stage. “We wanted the orchestra to be a visual part of the production, so we didn't want to pit them,” Peterson says. “Therefore, we placed them on tiered risers, with the top tier being almost three feet off the stage floor.”
For monitoring, the choir and orchestra received monitors flown from above. The conductors use in-ear monitors to hear even the instruments that are furthest from them. An Aviom system provides monitoring for the band.
Managing the wireless microphones in any large production with lots of performers is a challenge. SBC had tech volunteers stationed back stage to make sure that the right performers had the right mics at the right time. For those situations where the hand-off time between performers was short, the performers handed off the mics directly to the next performer needing it.
Community Support
While creating an opportunity to present the gospel is the main focus of the Christmas production at SBC, they also use it as an avenue to support other outreach to the community. Each year, SBC picks a non-profit organization to partner with and gives the people attending the Christmas production an opportunity to contribute.
“This past year we chose Christian Family Care,” says Peterson, “which serves families and children through adoption and foster care in Arizona. The goal was to provide bikes and scooters to the children of the families they help. From a collection received during intermission, we raised enough support to provide over 300 bikes and scooters. The cards and photos we received back from the families were just overwhelming.”
Summing it Up
“The environmental projection that was added this year made a huge impact on the production,” Palomo says. “You could hear the reactions from the audience as we changed the backdrops for each segment of the show.”
Peterson adds, “What's really great about it is that it's not that difficult or expensive to do. We needed three edge-blended projectors to cover the front of our room because of the size, but a smaller church may only need one projector and a computer to provide the media to the projector. It can be done rather inexpensively.”
