Bright Cross

[snyder68]

Hey! So I am the lighting guy at a church and we are prepping for Easter. Our creative guys came to me and asked me to think about this and am not coming up with much of anything. Here is what he gave me. The back drop is a foresty kind of backdrop with a few other trees on stage as well. What he also wants is for there to be giant cross in the midst of all that but it is almost invisible until hit with light correctly at a certain time in the service. The premise of it is the cross is the light in a dark world world. They want it to be almost bright enough that make people look away but not quite. He used words like iridescent or prism. I was thinking well maybe just make one out of prisms and shoot light at it from different angles but not able to find a prism that is bigger than 1ft. So do you guys have any ideas? I'm stuck....

 

[MarshallPope]

Have you thought about LED tape?

 

[techieman33]

Maybe do something with video wall?

 

[snyder68]

Have you thought about LED tape?

Do you mean the stuff that has LEDs on one side and like the 3M adhesive on the other side?

 

[MarshallPope]

Yes, exactly. You may be able to get some of the black-backing tape that would disappear onto a tree or something.

 

[JChenault]

If you don't have the drop yet, you might consider using a scrim for the drop, and positioning a cross with built in lights behind it. Appropriately painted and lit, the drop looks opaque. Turn on the cross and it would appear as if by magic.

Second choice would be to use a translucent muslin drop with a light box behind.

Note. The trick to making this work is proper painting. You must mot fill the weave of the scrim / muslin with paint.

 

[Robert]

You could try a UV paint. It does come in clear, but you would need to hit it with black light and dim the other light on the drop. The more powerful the black light the better. I've seen some cheaper knockoffs, but they have a warm-up time. Other ideas could be to use a gobo pattern of a cross from the front or rear. To make it seem too bright to look at, try to establish the cross however you do it and then augment it with some powerful audience blinders from above it.