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"Originally the stage had a simple black box look which didn’t come across well on video. I wanted to create a clean, warm background that would feel more like home, and appeal to the cameras...." –Thayne Asaro, Production Director, Radiant Church, Battle Creek, MI
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"We like the consistency between all L-Acoustics boxes. They all sound the same. We also know the quality we'll have with L-Acoustics," says Gary Zandstra of Parkway Electric and Communications.
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Centered above the heads of those standing on stage and attached via snaps is a 28-foot-wide Draper front-projection Cineperm video screen with a cinematic 2.4:1 aspect ratio.
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"We originally wanted to go with two edge-blended projectors, but ran into an issue. The structure of the metal building shifts too much, which causes the projectors to go out of alignment." - Gary Zandstra, Business Development, Parkway Electric and Communications, Holland, MI.
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One of the few products carried over into the new system was an Allen & Heath iLive 112 digital audio console purchased almost six years ago. The church has found the console’s analog feel makes it quite volunteer-friendly.
As most church technical directors can attest to, stepping into a full-time TD staff position is both daunting and challenging, even if you've been serving in church tech for years as a volunteer.
So when Richland, Mich.-based Radiant Church's worship leader left to start a church plant in the summer of 2013, and the production director was sent out to a church plant in the middle of December 2013, intern Thayne Asaro was offered the position of production director. For Asaro, it was a pretty radical experience. With little experience and still learning and training himself, Asaro took on the responsibility. He notes, “Originally, it wasn't my objective to enter into technical production ministry. I was thinking more about going into youth ministry.”
Heeding the Call
Born in 1993, both of Asaro’s parents were heavily involved in ministry. Asaro’s father was a youth pastor and his mother the children’s director at a church of 150 people. At about 15 years old, Asaro went from simply living out his parent’s faith to developing his own. At 16, they moved to a new church in Battle Creek, Mich. With 750 attendees, it was huge compared to what he was used to.
“This new church challenged me in how I viewed church and God,” states Asaro. “I began attending their youth ministry, and became involved in serving. I felt a call into ministry, but thought it was to be youth ministry.” He interned at the church for about one year, and was able to observe how a church operates from the inside. At 18 years old, Asaro moved to Kalamazoo, Mich., to attend Western Michigan University. At that time, he made nearby Radiant Church, his new church home. He was volunteering in Radiant’s youth ministry, and he was introduced to an intern program later that fall by the church’s creative pastor.
“I really didn't have much interest in production at the time,” Asaro describes, “so that program somewhat put me through the ringer. The tech pastor wanted to help us grow in our abilities and pushed people of out their comfort zones. I was doing everything from staff training to technical training, including things like multitrack recording in order to do training on the sound system later in the week. Through all this, God started to change my focus on what I thought I would do for ministry.”
After the production manager left in December 2013, for the next two weeks the church leadership invited Asaro to join the staff in the production director role. “When that occurred, I went from being panicked about who I'm going to learn from to being in charge of the tech ministry. My first official day on the job was Christmas Eve, 2013, and [I] was 20 years old. I was very ‘green’ to be offered such a position.”
A New View
Having served at the church for more than a year as a volunteer and intern, Asaro had ideas on how to update the look of the sanctuary and improve the overall feel of the service. He met with the leadership team and presented to them the vision he had for the auditorium.
“The church’s goal was to move toward live streaming and video campuses,” Asaro reports. “Originally the stage had a simple black box look, very industrial looking, which didn’t come across well on video. I wanted to create a clean, warm background that would feel more like home, appeal to the cameras, initiate some upgrades to the overall video system, and clean up the audio system’s coverage and intelligibility issues.”
"I went from being panicked about who I'm going to learn from to being in charge of the tech ministry."
Thayne Asaro
Production Director, Radiant Church, Richland, MI.
Asaro had been introduced to Gary Zandstra of Holland, Mich.-based Parkway Electric and Communications early on in his work at Radiant Church, and trusted Zandstra’s expertise and integrity. Zandstra and Parkway were engaged to work on the renovations to the space, to be implemented in smaller phases instead of one large (and more intrusive) project.
The stage improvements began with creating a wood plank back wall finished in natural wood tones.
“We had to cover up the baptismal that’s recessed into the back wall,” says Asaro, “but the panels and screen are removable. With a little work and advanced planning, we can remove that part of the wood backdrop to use the baptismal.” Matching wooden planks placed horizontally along the back floor of the stage serve to hide the LED strip lights used to wash the back wall. Cord covers hide mic, lighting and instrument cables, adding to the clean look and reducing the tripping hazard of loose cords scattered across the stage.
Cinematic Video Experience
With the revision of the back wall of the stage, Radiant Church also started the upgrade to the video system. Centered above the heads of those standing on stage and attached via snaps is a 28-foot-wide Draper front-projection Cineperm video screen with a cinematic 2.4:1 aspect ratio.
“We use this screen for sermon support and lyrics for the typical Sunday morning service, with the side screens providing image magnification (IMAG) support,” Asaro notes. “However, once a year we’ve been doing an event called ‘At the Movies,’ where the sermon is structured around a recent block-buster movie. We usually shoot the message at one of the locations where the movie took place, and intersperse the sermon with parts of the original movie. It’s a huge attraction for the church, and our attendance can triple that weekend. For example, we used the movie ‘Moneyball’ for one of these events, and shot the sermon in the Oakland A’s dugout. Getting the permissions to both use the film as well as film at the location are huge challenges, and the license to show the movie isn’t cheap, but it’s been an effective event for us. The cinematic aspect ratio of the center screen works out really well for this event.”
“To fill the screen took two attempts,” states Zandstra. “We originally wanted to go with two edge-blended projectors, but ran into an issue. The structure of the metal building shifts too much, which causes the projectors to go out of alignment. Therefore, we scrapped the edge-blending plan and went with a Barco 2.5K projector, providing a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels.” The unneeded parts of the top and bottom of the picture are cropped out in Renewed Vision’s ProPresenter to obtain the 2.4:1 screen aspect ratio.
Blackmagic Design’s ATEM 2ME switcher allows the church to switch both center and side screens between ProPresenter, their two JVC GY-HM890U HD video cameras, and other video inputs, as needed. A Blackmagic Design Hyperdeck Studio SSD system is used for recording the service. Lighting wasn’t a part of this renovation, other than adding 30 American DJ WIFLY RGBA LED light bars to uplight the new wooden stage wall. Elation Opti Quad Par fixtures provide color wash, and ETC Source Fours provide key lighting. An ETC Ion console is used for lighting control.
Taming the Audio System
The audio system was a critical part of this renovation project, and a lot of thought and effort was put into making audio come out the best it could.
“We went with the L-Acoustics ARCS 2 speaker line,” states Zandstra. “The reason for this was balance between the price point and what we were able to achieve with it. We can get the SPL level that was required, and as a contractor, we like the consistency between all their boxes—they all sound the same. We also know the quality we'll have with L-Acoustics.”
Two L-Acoustics SB18 subwoofers are flown behind the ARC 2 boxes, and two SB28s are flown over the center of the stage to give us an extra octave of low-end power. “We wanted the SB28s on the ground, but the pre-existing concrete bunker in the stage floor was one inch too small,” Zandstra reports. “Unfortunately,” Asaro adds, “with the building being a metal building, all that low-end energy is causing some concern with the residential neighbors. The plan is to move these subs to the floor to help alleviate that. We want to be good neighbors in our community, and limit the use of the subs to the actual services and not use them during rehearsals.”
L-Acoustics requires the use of its own brand of amplifiers to power its speakers, as well as having an L-Acoustics technician come to tune the system. The church’s existing A&H iLive 112 purchased almost six years ago was retained for this renovation. “I like the control surface,” comments Asaro. “It has a very analog feel to it, and I like how it’s laid out. The patching functions are not as intuitive as they could be, and there are consoles with better pre-amps out there now, but the ease of use for volunteers makes it great for us.”
An Aviom system is used for stage monitoring, with all musicians using Sennheiser wireless personal in-ear monitors. Most of the band uses Westone triple- and quad-driver ear buds. Sennheiser G3 wireless mics are used for vocals, and Sennheiser and Shure are used for most of the instrument mics. The lead guitar amp is kept back stage in a guitar isolation box, with an SM57 and a Cascade ribbon mic to pick it up. To cut down on stage volume, the church uses a drum cage that was custom-built by church staff and is fully enclosed with LED lighting installed inside, as well as a small air conditioning unit. “We saved thousands of dollars by building it ourselves,” Asaro notes.
Additional acoustic panels from Perdue Acoustics in Amarillo, Texas, were added to augment the existing wall panels. And when the building was first constructed, acoustics were taken into consideration with both the shape of the room as well as in the use of acoustic blocks forming the rear wall of the auditorium.
Community Networking
“One of the things I love about working at Parkway Electric and Communications is the freedom they give me in how I do my job,” Zandstra reports. “Most of my clients become good friends as well, because I take the time to get to know them as people, and get to know their ministry.”
“Gary’s been great at building a community between the tech directors in the area churches,” adds Asaro. “He’ll sponsor church tech tours where we go around to different churches to see how they do things and have a chance to meet each other. I’ve established some great relationships this way, and we all help each other out when we have problems.”
