Tips for Achieving Vibrant Easter Production Lighting

Easter is an excellent opportunity to experiment with lighting and make the message come alive. Here are three tips and the pro-level tools to get the job done right.

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As every church lighting designer knows, Easter provides an opportunity to experiment with new lighting looks that contribute to a memorable worship experience. Of course, this doesn’t come without its challenges––especially these days, as churches continue to adapt to a hybrid worship model. To assist church techs with producing a meaningful experience for both, ADJ has compiled a few tips and tricks for success …

Lighting Tip #1: Expand Your Horizons

Extending the lighting scheme out into the auditorium contributes to creating an engaging Easter production. It blurs the boundaries between stage and audience, and draws worshipers in for a more intimate experience. Some houses of worship may opt to expand on this even further by applying their stage lighting look to their lobbies, fellowship halls, and exteriors, “immersing” visitors in the production from the moment they arrive.

For the auditorium itself, the ADJ COB Cannon Wash can be used to wash the congregation, pulling them in to the stage––ultimately, making them feel more connected to the worship leaders. Utilizing advanced RGBA COB (Chip on Board) technology, its powerful LED engine is housed in a compact casing. This high-output LED Par delivers smooth color mixing with no RGBA shadows, and is a practical solution for both permanent and mobile churches. Outfitted with a dual yoke that act as legs, the COB Cannon Wash can be set upright to wash walls and ceilings as well.

Battery-powered and featuring WiFLY wireless DMX, the ADJ Element HEX IP Chrome is an LED Par Series fixture designed as a hassle-free solution for positioning lights––either in spaces a church may not traditionally light, on the fly during quick set changes on stage, for outdoor services and events, or to punch up existing exterior lighting. The Element HEX IP Chrome is built with a chrome housing containing four 10-watt RGBAW+UV (6-in-1) LEDs. Its IP54 rating makes it ideal for outdoor applications, such as drive-in church.

Other solutions for outdoor services are the ADJ Hydro Beam X2, the Hydro Wash X19, the Hydro Beam X1, and the Hydro Wash X7. Each of these moving head fixtures are IP65-rated for outdoor use, and are thus protected from dust, sand, moisture, and liquids.

Lighting Tip #2: Pay Attention to Key Lighting

Ever since streaming services became a high priority for all houses of worship, it’s important to ensure that remote congregations enjoy the same quality experience as those worshipping on site. The challenge? Sometimes worship leaders, while clearly visible to the in-person congregation, are difficult to make out on a television, computer, or mobile device.

The good new is, adding extra key lighting eliminates this issue, and ADJ offers several products for engineers who are navigating the in-person/online balancing act in this respect. The ADJ Encore Profile Pro WW LED-Powered Ellipsoidal houses a 260-watt warm white LED light source that produces an even field of light with no hot spots. With a color temperature of 3200K, it outputs 10,000 lumens (when used with a 26-degree lens) and has a CRI of greater than 97, making it ideal to give the necessary clarity to key lighting. The LED engine boasts an average lifespan of 50,000 hours, minimizing maintenance issues considerably while at the same time decreasing power consumption.

For small to mid-sized worship centers, ADJ offers the Encore FR50Z Fresnel, featuring a 50-watt LED engine and a six-inch lens. Compact and lightweight, this fixture is well-suited for houses of worship with limited space, as well as portable churches that are setting up and striking before and after each service. Churches that require a more powerful beam can turn to the Encore FR150Z, with its 130-watt LED light source and eight-inch Fresnel lens––a surefire solution for large-scale productions.

Lighting Tip #3: Do Away With Dead Space

Once again, lighting designers and engineers must take into consideration the hybrid worship environment when it comes to backgrounds. This is less of an issue when addressing in-person worshippers (who have the advantage of being able to see the entire stage at any given time), but online viewers rely on the images that are being fed to them. If a camera is capturing a close-up of the pastor––and all that remote viewers can see behind him is a black curtain––it’s not exactly a visually engaging shot.

One way to liven up backgrounds is by projecting break-apart GOBO patterns onto the stage floor, or onto the backdrop in key areas where cameras will pick them up. ADJ’s Focus Spot 5Z LED-Powered Moving Head Spot luminaire helps lighting designers create more texture on stage by generating sharp GOBO projections in virtually any color. Designed specifically with houses of worship in mind, the Focus Spot 5Z features a Silent Fan mode, accessible remotely via DMX. During quiet portions of a service lighting operators can switch to Silent Mode, which dims the fixture’s LED to approximately 70 percent of its full output, which in turn slows the unit’s dual fans to the point where they can’t be heard at all.

ADJ’s Pixie Strip Series of LED-mappable pixel battens also offers lighting designers a versatile solution for creating dynamic backgrounds. The series comprises three different sizes of pixel strip bars (two meters, one meter, and 1/2 meter) that can be combined in any configuration, depending on the set design. Using the dedicated Pixie Driver 2000, designers may easily select solid colors and preset patterns or integrate strips with full pixel mapping via Kling-Net, Art-Net, or sACN. (Up to 2,040 pixels can be driven from a single Pixie Strip using Kling-Net; 340 pixels via Art-Net or sACN.)

Bonus Tip: Don’t Forget About Displays

Church techs who struggle with managing ambient light coming into the sanctuary from outdoors know that video projection systems don’t stand a chance against the sun. And in some cases, it’s not ambient light that’s the problem: high-output production lighting can also make it difficult for the congregation to see what’s being displayed on the IMAG projection screens.

LED video solutions, however, don’t suffer from these issues. ADJ’s VS Vision Series of LED video panels offers the ability to effectively display IMAG in ambient or high-output lighting production environments in a simple, easy-to-configure solution. The VS2 high-resolution video panel has a pixel pitch of 2.97mm with a 3-in-1 RGB SMD2121 LED configuration, and a brightness of 1,000 NITS. Each panel is comprised of four modules, facilitating service and maintenance.

While many houses of worship invest in additional gear to deliver engaging Easter productions, these tips and tools can also be applied to weekly services, special events, and, of course, Christmas. Not only does this increase return on investment, it also provides church lighting teams with more creative flexibility all year round.

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