Because of lighting, a lot of worship leaders and pastors feel like they have to stand in a very specific spot, on stage. It can make them feel locked down, focused on a spot rather than on their worship or the message. And while lighting-follow systems exist, they can be expensive and take a lot of time to set up. Because of these dilemmas, Lighting Engineer, Kristy Smith, who serves Flatirons Community Church in Lafayette, Colorado, agreed to try out the Zactrack Mini as part of a Church Production Road Test User Experience.
The Zactrack Mini has received the Church Production Road Tested Certification.
“With this system, we were able to use one of our moving lights instead of an actual follow spot to follow either a pastor or a worship leader while they're on stage,” Smith explains. “It gives them more freedom to focus on just being in the moment of worship and being a worship leader in that moment.”
Zactrack Mini comes in a briefcase sized carrying case with battery-operated components and wireless connectivity for fast setups. A master anchor/antennae is the Zactrack server, the wireless access point and a DMX Node.
“You can have it just do pan and tilt, you can have it do dimming, pan and tilt as well as zoom. If you have a multitude of different presenters and some don't like to move, some like to move a lot, it's great that you have that flexibility of ‘[As a lighting designer] I don't have to worry this week because [Zactrack] is just going to follow them. I don't have to make sure a light is actually on them,’” Smith continues.
She says it was easy to set up the five smaller anchors on the floor to set a performance area of 15x15 meters. The performer wears a small puck and Smith says the moving light then followed them very well. “We even noticed we would cover the tracker with our hands. They said, don't put it behind skin to block it, so, it was funny, we almost did a magic trick where we put our hand over it, walked to the stage, revealed it, and then it just immediately came straight to us to kind of test its reaction time, which was really great.”
Smith says another surprise was how well the system converted control of the lighting fixture back to the lighting controller once the tracker was placed back on the charger. “If you're like, I only want to use it during this part of the service, you could have them take the puck off, put it on the charger, and then light will be what it was before, which was actually, I was surprised. I didn't know it was going to do that, and that was very helpful,” she says.
To see the Zactrack Mini in action at Flatirons and hear more from Kristy Smith, watch this video.
