Christmas is a time when many churches pull out all the stops, doing their very best to create a fun, welcoming environment for the many anticipated first-time visitors to their campuses. A big part of the visual experience in any church service is created through the lighting, so it’s no surprise that churches put extra effort and resources into lighting their stages well for Christmas events and services.Lighting, however, can’t be done in a vacuum. Light needs to shine on something, and therefore your stage design is as important to your lighting as the lighting equipment itself. And lighting, or stage design for that matter, is never the end in itself—its goal is to support what’s taking place on stage in a way that augments the action and message.“It's all driven by our creative team,” comments Mark Wray, technical arts ministry leader for Red Rocks Church in Denver.
“Color is important in a Christmas lighting design—or sometimes, a lack of color….” - Mark Wray, Technical Arts Ministry Leader, Red Rocks Church, Denver, CO
“The creative team makes the big decisions on the look and feel, and as techs … it’s our job to find ways to support the team’s vision.”Depending on precisely what your church’s vision for a Christmas service is, you don’t need the fanciest equipment to achieve compelling looks. “Color is important in a Christmas lighting design—or sometimes, a lack of color,” says Wray. “A moonlight look, utilizing dark blues, light blues, and white light can be very effective. We've gone with more of a candlelight lighting feel in the past, creating a more somber feeling. A star gobo look is great for Christmas. If you can do a little haze in the room, those look even better. If you’re using moving lights, the less movement you have, the better—Christmas Eve doesn't usually lend itself to a lot of motion per se.”
Tips for Tone and Feel
These looks can be achieved by using standard theatrical fixtures with gels for washing the stage with color, and an ellipsoidal fixture can be fitted with a star gobo for putting that pattern on the stage, walls or ceilings. LED color wash fixtures can make washing the stage with color even easier. And while awesome beams of light shining through haze are usually associated with moving lights, a fixture that can project a pattern or well-defined beam (such as an ellipsoidal fixture) can produce the same result.Lighting can get even simpler for some styles.
“We have used strings of simple incandescent bulbs—the old-style Edison bulbs. And we’ve used lots of rough wood textures to add to our warm staging looks. You can also build nice, warm-looking set pieces out of pallet wood, or stained Poplar, that typically goes great with Christmas trees,” says Evan Rodecap, systems engineer at Northview Church in Carmel, Ind. Old pallets can sometimes be obtained for free from stores or companies that would otherwise throw them away. “Snow machines can be a fun addition to a Christmas service, with the snow passing through beams of light,” says Nicholas Palomo, director of production at Scottsdale Bible Church in Scottsdale, AZ. “Also you can create great Christmas looks by putting lots of trees on your stage and decorating with standard incandescent Christmas string lights. (Note that LED Christmas lights do not dim well.) Or, put a wash light on a tree to turn it a different color.”Of course, if you have access to moving lights or can rent some for your service, lighting your service becomes a lot easier and more flexible in many ways. But it’s not necessary to look for the hottest new fixtures available.
Creative Solutions
“We don’t use the latest and greatest lights,” says Palomo, “because it’s more expensive than the standard lighting that's available in rental. For us, going with an older fixture gives us more fixtures and that enables us to do more. We'll rent lights from a place called 4Wall; we’ve rented from Clearwing in the past, as well. We typically add 20-30 fixtures for our Christmas productions—we sometime rent Vari-Lite VL4000s to augment our existing rig.
We often look for some fixtures that would give us a different look from our regular Sunday services, such as Clay Paky B-Eyes. That helps us build the looks that we want to build. And if you can find a hybrid fixture that can do double-duty as both a wash fixture and a spot, that gives you even more flexibility.”Wray also looks for a hybrid fixture when possible.
“We typically like a warm, comfortable feel witha modern kick around Christmas.” - Evan Rodecap, Systems Engineer, Northview Church, Carmel, IN
“Last year we rented 12 Martin Mac Axiom hybrid fixtures. They gave us the option of a wide variety of looks. For our opener we used them as beam fixtures; for worship, we used them as spotlights projecting a subdued star gobo effect. They let you change up the look significantly.”Not everyone can go rent that many fixtures for an event, however. But even adding a handful of fixtures can make a big difference. And there can be other ways to get great light effects as well.“When we didn't have those resources, we have used different means to achieve similar results,” Palomo continues. “Environmental projection (video projectors to project images on surfaces) can be used to put patterns on stage and generate effects. We’ve also used LED video tiles as scenic elements—those need to be planned out with your lighting so they work well together.”Part of solid lighting and stage design consists of hiding those things that are not particularly attractive, such as risers or the back wall of your stage. Appropriately lit set pieces can go a long way in dressing up your space.
“Last Christmas, we went with an art deco look,” Rodecap says. “We used a company that has a CNC router (a router that’s controlled by computer and can cut out designs based on a CAD file) to create elaborate Christmas tree patterns in large foam-core panels. We lit it with RGB front wash and uplit a flat panel placed behind it differently to give the tree pattern some depth. Layers like this can add a lot to a stage design.”Rodecap continues, “Then, we had a similar art deco pattern printed onto Coroplast (a corrugated plastic sheet material) by another local company, and used that to cover the front and sides of the various stage risers. For additional Christmas trees, these were also cut from foam core purchased from a local home improvement store, and painted white. We then lined them with RGB Pixel tape and powered with the Enttec Pixelator. This created a really nice, modern Christmas look when paired with the traditional Christmas trees placed around the stage. And lastly, for a somewhat small detail that had a huge impact, we had our Christmas series branding printed on an 80-foot by 30-foot piece of vinyl that was placed and stencil cut on the stage floor. This gave the people in balconies something nicer to look at than a plain old black stage floor.”
Crafting Texture
Texture was an important part of Northview Church’s lighting looks, Rodecap notes. “While we utilize various Clay Paky, Martin and Vari-Lite moving lights to accomplish these looks, something as simple as an ETC SourceFour RGBA ellipsoidal outfitted with wide beam angles and utilizing breakup gobos would work, as well. You still get the aerial textures in the haze, and they add a lot to the floor and scenic elements.”
“I look for the emotional and transitional parts of the music, and use lighting to accent those parts of the song. Lighting design is really about playing with one's emotions.” - Brad Lyons, Lighting Designer, Tabernacle of Praise Church International, McDonough, GA
Another way to add texture is low-lying fog effects created with a dry-ice machine. “We utilized two of them one year, positioned upstage and shooting out towards center stage,” says Wray. “Fog like this should stay low and avoid triggering smoke detectors. However, we had to build barriers around guitar amps and floor pockets to avoid electrical issues. It was a lot more work in the end compared to the newer low-lying fog effects.”
Programming your lighting is also an important part of achieving good lighting effects. “I listen to each song and program for the song specifically,” says Brad Lyons, lighting designer for Tabernacle of Praise Church International in McDonough, Ga. “I look for the emotional and transitional parts of the music, and use lighting to accent those parts of the song. Lighting design is really about playing with one's emotions.”Christmas is one of the best opportunities to connect with the unchurched visitors to your campus. Being intentional about lighting your service can have a big impact on how these visitors perceive the Christmas message.
