1 of 5
Bob Blair (left) and Don Rice (right) lead the tech teams at Raleigh, N.C.-based Hope Community Church. Senior Pastor, Mike Lee can be seen on the video screen in the background.
2 of 5
A Digital Projection eVision 8,000-lumen projector is used for the center screen, with two Panasonic PT-series 6,000-lumen projectors for the side screens. Da-Lite low-profile screens are used for the side screens, with a retractable ceiling-to-floor screen for the center screen. A projected image of Senior Pastor Mike Lee can be seen in the background.
3 of 5
The church recently opened its first permanent satellite location; a move that will improve production quality, save time and reduce demands on volunteers who do set-up and tear-down.
4 of 5
Campus Tech Director Don Rice is shown here at the location’s Midas Pro1 digital audio mixing console.
5 of 5
The audio system at the newly opened satellite campus includes powered X2 and X3 loudspeakers from Worx Audio. Subs are powered X115’s.
At Hope Community Church in Raleigh, N.C., the choice to go multi-site was a fairly obvious decision: staff simply couldn't pack any more people into the first campus at times when people normally consider attending church. Already delivering multiple services—Saturday evening and two Sunday morning—they looked to expand past their walls with a strategy called “Hope Where You Are” that would add campuses in communities with a sizable contingent of commuting attendees. The goal was to provide a new home for those willing to change their worship location, as well as to expand the church's reach deeper into those communities.
The second of those campuses, started as a portable church in a grammar school in the southwestern part of Cary, N.C., recently moved into a permanent space in the town Hope originally targeted with this campus: Morrisville, N.C. Located near Raleigh-Durham International Airport, the location 11 miles west provides greater access to those who call Research Triangle Park home, as well as to those in Durham and Chapel Hill.
“We want those attending Hope's services to have, as closely as possible, the same experience no matter which campus they attend,” says Bob Blair, Hope's technical arts director and a seasoned sound system designer. “With different sized rooms and different limitations, it's not possible to provide the exact same experience—but we try to maximize it as much as possible.”
“Accomplishing that can be almost impossible as a portable church,” adds Don Rice, the Morrisville campus's technical director. “The magnitude of space at the Raleigh campus, [and] the size and number of screens along with the sheer number of lighting elements, is just not do-able with the restriction of operating in a middle school auditorium with two hours to set up. So we did what we could to get as close as possible within the time-frame and physical environment we needed to work within.”
Blair says, “We desired to move into a permanent space as part of maximizing what we can do at this campus to create the same experience, but also because of the wear and tear on volunteers that the portable venue was causing. It's stressful under the best of circumstances to load in, get set up, rehearse, and be ready for the service on time. And at the school, we were at capacity in the space available to us.”
Hope recently leased space in a single-story building originally designed as a strip of office suites—outfitting one of the larger spaces into a sanctuary seating 635, as well as equipping numerous smaller youth-oriented venues.
Blair headed up the technical build-out, assisted by Rice, and the two had a history of working together before they were at Hope. This history reportedly helped them work well together in choosing solutions for the new campus.
“I worked for Bob at Raleigh-based ASP Integrated Systems back in the late 1990s,” says Rice, “so we developed a good working relationship at that time.” After that Rice did some touring, further honing his live sound skills. When the opportunity came along to work for Hope's Morrisville campus, it was a good fit.
Gear Selection
In selecting the AVL systems for the permanent campus, two philosophies played heavily into the choices made. “We have tried to be very consistent with equipment choices between the campuses,” states Blair. “The original idea was to keep everything as much in the same family of gear as the Raleigh campus. At the Raleigh campus we use the Ross Carbonite switcher; we put a smaller version of the same switcher in at Morrisville. For a lighting console, we use an ETC Ion in Raleigh, and an ETC Element, a smaller version from the same console family, on both of our other campuses.”
However, stewardship also played into the choices, and reusing equipment from the portable systems used at the school was also done where it made sense.
"We want those attending Hope’s services to have, as closely as possible, the same experience no matter which campus they attend."
Bob Blair
Technical Arts Director, Hope Community Church, Raleigh, NC.
“We use Panasonic video cameras at the Raleigh campus,” Blair says, “but have reused the Canon camera from the portable setup for Morrisville. Much of the lighting is also from the portable rig.”
The biggest deviation from the Raleigh campus is in the audio console. “We use Yamaha at the Raleigh campus, but Don wanted to look at the Midas family for the Morrisville campus,” states Blair.
“Part of what played into that decision is the desire to move away from using a personal monitor mixing system,” adds Rice. “We've put in a monitor mixing console in Raleigh with the goals of better fidelity, more reliable recall, and less hardware on stage for a cleaner look; for the Morrisville campus, we wanted to start with mixing monitors from front-of-house to save money. The Midas Pro1 console enables you to have multiple i-devices (iPads, iPods, iPhones) access the console at one time. I can assign an aux send to a specific i-device for mixing, and then that musician can control the aux send that feeds their monitor mix remotely. And I can still work with a musician's monitor mix myself, if needed—something that couldn't be done with the church's previous monitor mixing system. And the Pro1 was the best console with this functionality that we could buy at the under-$10K price point.”
For the main front-of-house loudspeaker system, the pair selected WorxAudio for several reasons. “Relationships play into my gear decisions in a significant way,” Blair states. “And that was part of the reason for going with WorxAudio—a long-standing relationship. It matters to me what a company is like to work with. Are they responsive? Are they reliable? Being able to trust a company based on the relationship that's been developed has a big impact on the end result of a project.”
The auditorium at the Morrisville campus also has a challenging acoustical environment, with very low ceilings—12 feet, six inches at its lowest point. Worx Audio X2 and X3 loudspeakers provide the pattern control needed for the challenging environment.
“The Worx speakers sound great in this room—we get a very natural sound,” Rice reports. “There are no audio issues here that would be improved by going with a more expensive brand of loudspeaker. One of our guitar players recently walked the room to evaluate the sound, and he was quite happy with what he heard. If your guitar player is happy, it must be good.”
For microphones and in-ear systems, both AKG and Shure provide wireless systems. Audix mics are used for the drum kit, and while Hope likes the sound and how they attach to the drums, they picked them for an unusual reason: “When we were configuring a portable system,” Blair says, “Audix was the only drum mic kit that was complete and all in one case—all the other kits would have needed something else added to [them]. This aided with simplifying setup and teardown in a portable environment.”
Lighting Decisions
In addition to the ETC Element lighting console, most of the fixtures were repurposed from the portable rig. ETC Source Four Junior provides much of the front white light, with Chroma-Q LED lighting for stage washes.
“For dimmers, we went with Lightronics instead of ETC at this campus,” says Blair. “ETC requires they engineer every project they do, and we didn't have time to go through all that. Going with Lightronics saved us both time and money.”
Moving lights from Elation Professional have been used at the 1,500-seat Raleigh campus for a while, and staff was happy with that choice. So a small package of Elation Platinum 5 moving lights was picked for the new Morrisville campus.
“We used to have the lighting setup from a fixture and patch perspective such that the core lighting package at the Raleigh campus was similar to the core packages at the remote campuses,” describes Blair. “The show file from the Ion console in Raleigh could be brought over to the Holly Springs and West Cary campuses, and it would just work—the extra fixtures used to dress up the stage at the Raleigh campus that weren't in the satellite campus systems were just ignored by the Element consoles. However, the Raleigh lighting system has changed significantly, and we now have higher-capacity volunteers at the satellite campuses who can program the systems themselves, so we no longer operate in that mode.”
Video Moves
For video, the Ross Carbonite was chosen for the relationship with Ross Video, for its functionality, and for consistency between campuses. “Ross is an industry-respected name,” Blair states. “They understand the church market, and it also doesn't hurt that the factory representative for this area lives in Raleigh.”
To deliver the sermon via video to both satellite campuses, a Doremi V1 hard-drive video recorder is used for both recording and playback of two simultaneous video streams. “We use two synchronized video streams at each campus—one for the center lock-down shot of the pastor, and the second for the side screen IMAG projection with sermon notes,” Blair reports. “The challenge was always how to deliver two perfectly synchronized video streams, and we utilize the 3D capabilities of the V1 to handle this. Instead of one 3D video signal, however, we record the center and side screen shots to the left and right ‘eye' inputs of the recorder. One challenge, though, is that the Doremi won't record if the two signals aren't perfectly in sync. Even though our signals are genlocked, this doesn't always keep the signals synchronized tightly enough. So we run the two signals through a frame synchronization system before it hits the Doremi to give it added stability.” A Digital Projection eVision 8,000-lumen projector is used for the center screen, with two Panasonic PT-series 6,000-lumen projectors for the side screens. Da-Lite low-profile screens are used for the side screens, with a retractable ceiling-to-floor screen for the center screen.
Digital Signage Prioritization
Hope Community Church shares a number of announcements with its attendees, and communicating as effectively as possible is a priority for church leadership. To that end, staff recently implemented a cross-campus digital signage system that enables them to schedule what message through what media format is presented on any given screen throughout all campuses. “Our display systems are really pretty straightforward,” states Hope IT Manager Bill Morrison. “We use a lot of off-the-shelf televisions of various sizes depending on the location and intended purpose.”
Historically, digital signage systems have been pretty expensive. Hope, however, discovered Rise Vision, a digital signage system where the base software platform is free. Rise Vision makes its money by selling add-ons and advanced services, but as Hope discovered, a completely usable signage system can be implemented using the basic free platform. Widgets such as Twitter feeds, Google maps integration, calendar integration, and touch-screen surfaces can be integrated into the solution.
“We're able to go in via a web browser and program when to display what content,” says Morrison. “Every Wednesday it's programmed to switch over to our blaringly annoying signage for the evening middle-school program, and when that's over, it automatically goes back to the regular signage.” Each TV needs something to run the Rise Vision media player, and what they use varies depending on how they intend to use the display. “In some areas we just have small displays used for wayfinding, and we're not going to run anything fancy on those displays—just basic JPEG images. For these, we have $35 Raspberry Pi systems running Linux. Seriously, it's just $35. However, for playing HD video, you need a more powerful system, and we've used some of the $225 Cenique boxes for that.”
Using Rise Vision, the IT group at the Raleigh campus can control and configure the signage at all three campuses with minimal effort.
Next Steps
For the future, Hope Community Church is looking to move its Holly Springs campus into a permanent facility as well, and to implement live streaming of the message to its other campuses. “Our pastor feels he could connect better with each campus if the sermon were streamed live,” Blair says. “It's something we're looking into.”
