We all know that lighting can add a powerful means of expression when presenting your Easter production. Although some churches spend thousands of dollars on sophisticated automated lighting and projection equipment, in these difficult times of constrained budgets it is more common for the worship lighting designer to be working within modest lighting expenditures. This article is aimed at the designer who must make due with what's available. Or, for very little money, supplement the church's lighting equipment to create powerful lighting moments.
In understanding how to approach your lighting design, you must first understand your lighting budget. Assuming that your church has a small amount of money to spend on your production, there are strategies that you can use to achieve powerful dramatic lighting effects with a small number of fixtures. These include using the style of the production to emphasize lighting atmospheres, incorporating the church's architecture to enhance the power of the production, considering the church's size to intensify the dramatic experience, approaching the lighting atmospheres in a simple, naturalistic manner, using color as a powerful mood enhancer, incorporating gobos to suggest time and place, adding video projection to supplement your lighting design, and renting simple inexpensive accessories.
When first approaching your design, the first question to ask is what will be the performance style? Will your production be primarily theatrical, or be presentational and inclusive of the congregation? If you are including the congregation, then you should consider how the architectural lighting of your church adds to the overall mood of the production.
Consider architectural design
Some of the churches I design incorporate varied mood lighting within the architectural design. This includes changing the color and angles of the lights used to light the walls, ceiling, and congregation. You can always change the color of the lights by placing gels in front of them. (Just be careful that the lights are designed for color filters, otherwise you may be creating a fire hazard.) You may also light the architecture with traditional theatrical lighting fixtures and projectors. Personally, I love churches with light colored walls and ceilings. I make it a point to light these surfaces to manipulate the theatrical space, create focus, color the walls, and alter the mood of the moment.
For churches on a very small budget, I have seen very simple effective designs where the designer just dims and intensifies the architectural lighting. As the lighting over the congregation dims, it is natural for the congregation to quiet down and be drawn into the message of the moment. As the lighting intensifies, the congregation becomes more active-and involved in the moment. It is a time for shared worship.
You should also consider the size of your church. Remember, the farther away your congregation is, the more you depend on IMAG for the congregation to see. If you are in a large church and do not have video to project the live images to the congregation, then it is even more important to light the production with enough intensity and contrast for your congregation to see and focus in on the moment. Dimming the architectural and congregation lighting helps focus. If the congregational light is low, then the contrast between them and the action is high, and much more effective.
Whether your church is large or small, it is important to remember to approach the lighting for the scene in a very direct and simple way. Thinking out of the box can solve even some of the most complex challenges. For instance, there are many special lighting fixtures available that can create the appearance of flickering candlelight. But anyone can rent an effects projector to do this. Why not think about what the essence of the quality of candlelight is, and recreate it? Sometimes, color and angle is enough.
Color heightens drama
You could take an existing light and place it on a low lighting position, simulating an offstage flame that is table height. Choose a color that matches the color of flame. Depending on the intensity of the lamp, a very light amber color may suffice. You can then vary the intensity of the light with a dimmer, creating a very subtle flicker effect. Add a second light right next to it and alternate the intensities of the two lights. You will see the shadows of the actors shift slightly on the wall behind them, simulating a real candle's shifting light source. This simple solution incorporating conventional lighting fixtures is very effective. It also solves the challenge without having to purchase or rent additional lighting gear.
When creating the mood of a scene, don't forget that color is one of the most powerful qualities of light. Color is the most flexible and quickest way to create mood. For lighting solemn, quiet scenes I normally use blues and low intensity ambers. For instance, the crucifixion could easily be lit in somber moonlight blue, with soft amber highlights on the cross. In contrast to this, you could light the resurrection with a high intensity, amber downlight. These colors have a psychological energy, therefore exciting the congregation. The use of contrasting colors allows you to create a composition of lighting over time. This intensifies the dramatic moments of your production.
If you are creating specific dramatic locations, then the use of gobos can be a very convincing method of creating sunlight and moonlight through trees, buildings, windows, and other natural and man-made objects. In conjunction with color, gobos can help create clear delineation of time of day and location. A simple window pattern created by a gobo, with a light blue gel, can communicate to the audience the sense of an interior room in the moonlight, even with no actual window on stage.
Less can be more
Gobos can be overused as well. Think of the natural lighting of the scene, and use gobos sparingly and effectively to achieve this atmosphere. If there is only one large window, then use a gobo that replicates that window. If there is an actual scenic window on stage, then forget the gobo and just aim a light through the window itself, projecting a real pattern on stage. There is truly nothing like the real thing.
The simpler the approach, the more effective the lighting atmosphere is. Less is truly more when lighting a scene. And the good news is that less usually means fewer lighting fixtures.
However, there are times when it becomes necessary to rent extra lights in order to achieve the desired effect. But again, if you think what the essence of the lighting effect is, you can save a lot of money by not ordering a sophisticated moving light to approach a challenge that a single conventional light with an accessory can solve.
It is true that a moving light with two rotating gobo wheels can create a pretty convincing water effect. But a leko with a twin gobo rotator can do the same thing for much less money. The moving light rents for $250 a week, and the gobo rotator rents for $25 a week. Which one would you choose?
That being said, renting a few moving lights can add an enormous amount of flexibility to your design. A moving light can serve many purposes. They can help solve some vexing challenges when you need multiple gobos to delineate several locations. They can also serve as powerful tools to create focus and selective visibility. You should carefully consider if renting these lights, along with a controller to program them, is worth the expense.
Light and video
Video projectors are also very useful when lighting a production. I now use video all the time in both large and small productions. Sometimes I use projectors to give a sense of movement onstage. For instance, I may project a video clip of moving leaves onto the floor and walls to give that sense of a dynamic moving atmosphere. I also use water projections for flowing water effects.
You can also use projectors to project static images on stage. This can be a powerful tool in telling a story and establishing location. There are many sites on the Internet where you can find royalty-free video clips to use in your productions. There are also sites that sell their clips for a very reasonable amount of money.
Although consumer-level video projectors may be readily available to you, their relatively low intensity has difficulty competing with conventional stage lighting. So be careful not to focus your stage lighting where you expect to see projected images. This is where sidelight comes in handy. With sidelight you can light the people on stage without wiping out projected images on the back wall.
Finally, remember that the primary role of the lighting designer is to assist the performers in telling the story. The story of Easter is powerful, and creating appropriate lighting atmospheres amplifies the meaning of the word. Don't look at the amount of equipment you use as a limitation to your creativity. Think simple, and powerful ... use the power of the moment in telling the story. After all, the earth is lit by one light source. Why not follow that great example?
