Design Need small lightset advice for portable church in movie theater

[NickScalan]

Hi,

First a brief introduction. I'm the lead tech volunteer for a contemporary format church plant in the Austin, TX area. I have a Bachelor's in Radio-TV-Film. I've run sound for the past 8 years at one of the host churches, a traditional format service.

We have been having monthly preview services since early Spring and are heading towards a full launch in Sept. I'm now quickly learning about newer areas of tech production, worship software(ProPresenter, MediaShout) and need a bit of help with our simple lighting needs. My current church just has standard commercial(non-theatrical) spot lights mounted high up in the sanctuary controlled by wall mounted dimmers.

Our previews have been in a conf room in a city rec center with large east facing windows(plenty of natural morning light). Our final preview service will be in our new location, a 100+ seat arena styled movie theater.

One final thing we are needing are lights to brighten the "stage" area down by the screen. The area at the bottom is about 30'wide x 8'deep x 7'high(to the bottom edge of the screen). We are also thinking of building some ply-wood based platforms to raise the pastor and WL to make them visible at a better angle for the theater seats.

You can see people down there but their faces just don't have much light on them. The wall sconces don't really fill the room enough. They are just really accent lighting so movie-goers don't trip and spill their drinks. The overhead utility fluorescents just make the place look ugly.

There is a large crossover/landing in the middle of the theater for disabled seating and wheel chair parking. We are thinking that could be a good place to put some lights on stands(and still provide required accessibility). It is about 20' from the stage area with about 4 rows of seats in front of it.

One thing we are not completely sure is how much power is available from the outlets in the theater after we hookup PA, projector and notebook. Incandescent lights might pop a breaker.

I was thinking LEDs(because of lower power pull) but I understand they will cast a wide fill light and might washout the screen(which we're using). Can you put barndoors on LEDs to direct the light or will the light disperse around them? Is there a different solution that might help?

Any advice would be great. Again, I'm just a sound guy and heading into uncharted territory here with lighting.

Thanks,

Nick Scalan

Lead tech volunteer/Audio eng.
LiveOak Church - Leander
http://www.liveoak-church.org

 

[shiben]

Well, if you dont have much money, LEDs are going to be a bit of a problem. Ones that look good on people tend to cost a lot of money. You will most likely also need some form of control. Is this theatre your new home? Will you be able to make any modifications? You said its a contemporary service, will you need/want to expand to flash and trash on the band eventualy? If you are going to be buying stands/lights/control, how much are you looking to spend on this project?

 

[NickScalan]

It's a new movie theater we are renting weekly, so no modifications to the facility. We need something we can setup and take down pretty fast. I'm not sure what we have left for lighting budget. I'm going to say less than $300. We are not looking for any flashy displays just to get some light down there but something a bit better than utility lights from Home Depot.

 

[seanandkate]

That's not a lot of cash to do what you're proposing. As shiban said, LEDs are totally out. For lighting instruments, you might want to get a couple PAR cans, or older ellipsoidals. You could get an even better price if you buy old rental stock. Match the beam angle of the bulb with your proposed throw distance. If you get 1K lamps, you'll probably be safe plugging them in to existing outlets so long as you don't plug them in to the same circuit. If you can't, then lamp them at 750. Oh, and make sure that you don't plug them into a circuit that your sound gear is drawing from.

Do you have a place to hang lights without stands (an additional expense that you probably don't have the money for)?

 

[CSCTech]

Like others said it is a pretty small budgest but I a package like this may help you out,

4x of these par cans (Pretty cheap on this site) Par 64 Can Silver Aluminum | Used Lighting - Used Stage & Theatrical Lighting Equipment, LED, Trussing

1 of this stand unless you already have a mounting place 9' Black Tri-Pod Light Stand with cross bar

1 of these (You will need a lightly used circuit to plug this into and will need to swap out the connectors on the par cans for edison Universal 4 Channel DMX Dimmer Pack

And this- Chauvet Obey 10 DMX Lighting Controller


With this system you can even control the lights which is always a plus and should easly light the stage, and more par cans can always be added for the small price. And with that dimmer pack you can even double up and dim you existing fixtures.

Even though the products are Chauvet and DJ quality, for the budget and use I think they will do fine. I have an Obey 10 controller and used to use it to do some effects in our theatre when we use our old Status that couldn't do much anyways. I also use it for my DJ rig.

Total price- ~$318 (Plus connectors that need be swapped, a few dollars at a hardware store. And a DMX cable. Plus any gels or barn doors needed)

 

[shiben]

Like others said it is a pretty small budgest but I a package like this may help you out,

4x of these par cans (Pretty cheap on this site) Par 64 Can Silver Aluminum | Used Lighting - Used Stage & Theatrical Lighting Equipment, LED, Trussing

1 of this stand unless you already have a mounting place 9' Black Tri-Pod Light Stand with cross bar

1 of these (You will need a lightly used circuit to plug this into and will need to swap out the connectors on the par cans for edison Universal 4 Channel DMX Dimmer Pack

And this- Chauvet Obey 10 DMX Lighting Controller


With this system you can even control the lights which is always a plus and should easly light the stage, and more par cans can always be added for the small price. And with that dimmer pack you can even double up and dim you existing fixtures.

Even though the products are Chauvet and DJ quality, for the budget and use I think they will do fine. I have an Obey 10 controller and used to use it to do some effects in our theatre when we use our old Status that couldn't do much anyways. I also use it for my DJ rig.

Total price- ~$318 (Plus connectors that need be swapped, a few dollars at a hardware store. And a DMX cable. Plus any gels or barn doors needed)

This is actually pretty close to what I would reccomend, unless you have some contacts in the area that can get you old ERS/PAR instruments for cheap. I would say 2 stands (the cheap aluminum ones will be fine for now) (one on each side), 4-8 ERS or PARs and your good to start. Also, I might get taken to task for this, but dont discount using some Home Depot flood lights. Your talent will not be giving you hugs and kisses all the time, but they are bright, and throw a pretty even beam. Also, they are cheap. One thing I have done for smaller groups as the only light is 150W construction floods on the floor, 2 per person, on dimmers to varry them. You could definately use construction floods to shape the people on stage, either from the foot front or foot sideish sort of places, and then fill from the with a par or two. Overall, I would recomend having some sort of control, even if its a cheap DJ board. 300 bucks wont give you much, but if you can start budgeting in a few hundred a year as your church grows, soon youll be able to have some cool LEDs and whatnot.