When leadership at fast-growing Action Church in central Florida decided to transform an older building into the ministry’s new broadcast location, they chose to light the space using an Elation Professional intelligent lighting system designed by AVL integration company Crown Design Group (CDG).
Action Church opened the new campus, its fourth, in Winter Park, Fla., this past fall. As a dedicated broadcast location, the main sermon takes place at the new facility and is then fed live to Action Church’s other locations, one smaller location and two mobile sites that are set up and torn down each weekend that CDG has also outfitted with Elation gear.
As one of the fastest growing churches in the U.S., the multi-site church has opened four locations in just over four years. Contacted nearly two years ago to deliver a comprehensive AVL solution for the new site, CDG was excited to be involved from its very beginnings and subsequently handled design, integration and installation of the house and environmental lighting throughout the building, as well as the LED wall. The project was completed earlier this fall with first services held in early November.
“Every Action Church location has live music and a pastor host, but this is their first large, non-mobile location,” says CDG co-founder Ben Graham, whose passion is to see churches inspire and grow their congregations through the use of AVL technology. “They required a versatile system that could cover both house and stage lighting and because all locations take a live feed from the Winter Park site, they needed lighting that could easily transition for use in the sermon broadcast.”
Needing a versatile color-changing house lighting solution for the 1000-seat main room, CDG found it in Elation’s LED downlighting Colour Pendant. “They wanted control of the house lighting to project any color and to match with the background they have on screens so we use the Colour Pendants to shade the room and bring color from the stage out into the audience,” Graham states, adding that Colour Pendants have also been installed in the church lobby to greet attendees when they enter the building. As a color matching unit, the RGBW fixture projects fully blended colors or variable shades of white light and operates flicker free when the church records for broadcast.
For color wash on stage, CDG turned to Elation’s Fuze Wash Z350 LED wash moving head, a single source PAR luminaire with zoom, along with SixPar 200 LED Par lights that allow for a wide range of color shades (SixPar 100 units are used in a children’s ministry room).
Lined vertically beneath LED screens and risers are Pixel Bar LED strip lights, pixel-controllable bars used for background decorative effects designed to look great on camera. Cuepix Blinder WW4s, an LED-based white light unit that gives the classic look of a four-lite blinder at a fraction of the power requirements, are used for low-end color temperature looks and audience lighting. Graham says the church maintains a competent technical staff and was able to do much of the stage lighting installation themselves.
The new lighting system is used on multiple weekend services broadcast out across the Orlando area and also provides a dynamic environment for concerts and other events that take place in the sanctuary space.
