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"The [video] wall at Harvest weighed about 3,200 pounds, and required both ceiling support as well as a knee wall to take the weight that the building structure could not support." —Paul Motal, President, Matrix Visual Solutions, Orange County, CA
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"The added Dante signal backbone of the [Yamaha] CL/QL series, made the console of choice pretty clear. When they add a separate recording/broadcast console, it will simply be a matter of adding another CL surface to the system with existing infrastructure already in place." - Ken DeBelius, Installation Sales Manager, Spectrum Sound Inc., Nashville, TN.
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Absen LED wall, Sony cameras and switcher, Yamaha CL and QL Series consoles and loudspeakers from d&b audiotechnik.
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"I’ve worked in the entertainment industry and done the LA/Hollywood thing. But doing this for Jesus and being a witness to the eternal impact it has on people’s lives is much more fulfilling and rewarding." Ken Sanders, Video Production Supervisor, Harvest Christian Fellowship, Irvine, CA
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Video Supervisor, Ken Sanders (left) & Mike Smith (right) AV Tech Director decided to break the mold with Harvest's sixth and newest campus.
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"About a month after that crusade I volunteered to usher at the Harvest Crusade at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Calif. I found myself watching the camera crew and quietly saying to myself, 'I want to do that one day.'" - Ken Sanders, Video Production Supervisor, Harvest Christian Fellowship, Irvine, CA.
Many of us are familiar with the name Greg Laurie. His Harvest Crusade events, taking place throughout North America, Australia and New Zealand, have seen thousands of professions of faith in Jesus Christ.
“I was working part time at a retail store,” describes Harvest Christian Fellowship Video Production Supervisor Ken Sanders, “and my parents called me at work one Sunday to say they were going to a thing called a Harvest Crusade that evening. They asked if I would like to go and I said yes. After getting off the phone I was trying to figure out what a Harvest Crusade was and asked one of my co-workers. He laughed and said, ‘Oh geez, it's one of those Jesus things, like a big church service. Are you going to it?' ‘No, I'll get out of it,' I told him, and spent the remainder of the day trying to figure out how to avoid going. For a greater reason, which was unclear to me at the time, I was not able to avoid it. I mostly remember thinking how hokey the music was and my being very critical of everything that was happening.”
He continues, “Then they sang a song of how Jesus came from heaven to earth to pay for my sin, and that's when I started listening intently to everything. Pastor Greg got up and said he was going to talk on ‘What Happens After We Die' and my ears really perked up. This was very interesting to me because I had been thinking about this very thing all through high school. There were nights I couldn't sleep because the thought of just not existing anymore was very frightening. Then at the end of his message he asked, ‘Have you been wondering this very thought and would you like to have the assurance that when you die you will go to heaven?' I got up, not ever looking back at my family, and walked forward and prayed the sinner's prayer. After praying I felt the need to turn around and found my whole family was behind me.
This happened July 2, 1992, and it has been the best decision of my life.”
Laurie's ministry started with a small bible study that led to the formation of a church that he pastors to this day, beginning with Calvary Chapel in southern California. Then over time Laurie planted Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, Calif.
New Direction
“About a month after that crusade I volunteered to usher at the Harvest Crusade at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Calif.,” adds Sanders. “I found myself watching the camera crew and quietly saying to myself, ‘I want to do that one day.’ About a year later I started volunteering in the video ministry. Then in April of 2002, I was approached by the executive pastor about coming on staff as the first video staff person.”
“We met for a time at Free Chapel,” states Michael Smith, AV technology director for Harvest, “and people started expressing an interest in having a permanent campus. A small campus was built down the road from Free Chapel, and when that space became too small for the growing congregation, [its] current location in Irvine was built.”
Harvest continued to grow, adding satellite campuses in Woodcrest, Eastvale, South Corona, and its Spanish-speaking church, Cosecha, to extend the impact of the ministry. And recently, a new campus in Irvine has opened, bringing the reach of the weekly ministry back to its starting point. At the present time, Harvest sees an average weekly attendance of about 20,000.
“Our service style is pretty basic: bible study and worship,” Smith describes. “We bring in a guest artist every now and then. Services tend to run about an hour and 15 minutes. We do use hazers and moving lights, and try to keep things similar between campuses. However, with the new Irvine campus we’ve stepped out of that mold and have tried out some new technologies, and it has lessened the feel of the Riverside campus being the ‘main’ campus. Pastor Greg teaches from Riverside for the first two services on Sunday, but then drives to the Irvine campus and teaches from there for the noon service, transmitting the teaching part of the service back to Riverside from there.”
Video Displays
One of the biggest changes in outfitting the new campus, which resides in a remodeled industrial space, is in the video display technology.
Harvest continues to grow, adding satellite campuses in Woodcrest, Eastvale, South Corona, Irvine, and its Spanish-speaking church, Cosecha, to extend the impact of the ministry. At present, Harvest sees an average weekly attendance of about 20,000.
“At the Riverside campus we have a large video screen that drops down over the podium for video playback,” Smith reports. “For the Irvine campus, we started down the road of using projection. But after visiting a few churches in the Dallas area that were using LED walls, we looked into this as an option. My lighting designer had seen Absen LED panels at the LDI Show and was impressed, so I spent some time researching Absen as an option. What I discovered is that the LED walls were comparably priced to a projection system that would deliver a solid image for our space, and the LED walls were significantly brighter.”
“To achieve what they desired using projection, they would have needed two 20,000-lumen projectors for the center screen, costing probably about $140,000,” says Paul Motal, president of Matrix Visual Solutions in Orange County, Calif., the contractor hired to do the LED video wall design and installation. “The product cost of the LED video panels comes in at about the same cost as projectors. However, installation costs are higher. The wall at Harvest weighed about 3,200 pounds, and required both ceiling support as well as a knee wall to take the weight that the building structure could not support.”
While the installation costs are higher, Motal says that this cost is quickly made insignificant because the maintenance costs are significantly lower. “Within three years, the installation cost is absorbed, and after that, the total cost of ownership drops below the cost of projection.”
Harvest was originally planning on using projection for the two side screens, but after seeing the impact of the Absen center screen, staff decided to go with LED video walls for the side screens, as well.
Audio Systems
For audio, Smith is a diehard fan of d&b audiotechnik loudspeakers, and all of the campuses utilize d&b cabinets.
“D&b loudspeakers sound very natural and musical,” states Smith. “And all of their stuff sounds the same, no matter what line of cabinets you’re listening to. In our Riverside space we have the first installation of the Q series cabinets, and we’ve never had a component blow.”
Spectrum Sound based in Nashville, Tenn., did the detailed design and installation of the audio system and video infrastructure. “We have used Spectrum for years,” adds Smith, “and they provide the live audio for our crusades. They've done most of our AVL work, both large and small.”
“For the new Orange County worship center we picked the 10AL line array from the xA Series in a left/right configuration,” describes Ken DeBelius, installation sales manager for Spectrum Sound. “This line array element has the appropriate output for the size of the new room. [Since] the room shape is asymmetric, we also needed some high output fill loudspeakers, and the new Y-Series Y7P from d&b worked great for that. The subwoofers are B2 dual 18-inch under the stage in bunkers. The 8S loudspeaker rounds out the system for the stage-mounted front fills. The sound quality, pattern control, output capability, and reliability of d&b exceeds expectations.”
Yamaha audio consoles have been the standard at Harvest for many years, and the church took advantage of a recent trade-in offer from Yamaha to standardize on the CL and QL series of consoles. A CL5 serves at FOH for both the Riverside and Irvine campus, and QL5s for monitor mixing.
“With the added Dante signal backbone of the CL/QL series,” DeBelius says, “this made the console of choice pretty clear. When they eventually add a separate recording/broadcast console, it will simply be a matter of adding another CL surface to the system with existing infrastructure already in place.”
“Spectrum’s customer service is second to none,” adds Smith. “They are great at communicating with other firms involved in projects. They have a good idea of what we do and need, so they can match equipment to our needs really well.”
Lighting Design
For lighting, Rick Corley, systems engineer with Entertainment Lighting Services (recently acquired by 4Wall Entertainment Lighting) in Sun Valley, Calif., performed the design.
“Because of Harvest's heavy use of video cameras at both the Riverside and Irvine locations simulcasting portions of the service to the remote locations, it was important that the lighting look of the new space closely match the existing Riverside campus,” Corley reports. “We worked closely with Harvest's resident lighting designer, Chris Eguizabal, to create infrastructure that, despite a new stage orientation and much higher trim heights, would allow them to seamlessly integrate video shot at each location.”
To that end, an ETC Sensor3 dimming system with Paradigm architectural controls provides power for ETC Source four and Source Four PAR conventional fixtures. Harvest has been a long-time Martin Professional Lighting customer, and a variety of Martin intelligent fixtures are in use at the Irvine campus, including Mac Quantum Profiles, Martin Rush MH1s, and Martin Rush PAR1s. A Martin M6 console controls the lighting in the auditorium.
“We’ve had a great relationship with Martin over the years,” says Smith. “They have taken good care of us from a customer service perspective, and their fixtures look great.”
Corley adds, “The biggest challenge was designing and installing a truss and rigging package that would meet the needs of the space. For this new space it was determined that, for both aesthetic and practical reasons, the truss for this space would be 100% ceiling mounted.” To this end, Corley and his team partnered with both structural engineers with extensive experience in entertainment-style lighting as well as top rigging installers to seamlessly get everything installed as part of a tight construction schedule. We specified truss and hardware from Total Structures, primarily because their manufacturing facility is local to Southern California, so we were able to save both time and money getting the truss on site.”
Live Video
For live video, the video system from the church’s previous Orange County campus location was repurposed in the new building. Sanders relies on a Sony MVS-3000A switcher for primary video control. “I like this switcher because it is easy to program and it is simple to train the volunteers on. Another plus to using this switcher is that we find it in most production trucks and in the sports arenas/stadiums where we hold our Harvest Crusade and Harvest America events across the United States.”
He continues, “For cameras we use the Sony HXC-100K. We’ve always loved the picture quality that Sony cameras have. When we decided to transition to high definition we did side-by-side demos with three other cameras and the Sony cameras stood out.”
Other video equipment that supports the live video ministry are a For-A HVS–5000 video router, Grass Valley T2 DDRs for time-slipping the sermon at the satellite campuses, and AJA KiPro video recorders. A Blackmagic Design Atem switcher resides at the FOH position for switching graphics.
“I’ve worked in the entertainment industry and done the LA/Hollywood thing,” Sanders sums up. “But doing this for Jesus and being a witness to the eternal impact it has on people’s lives is much more fulfilling and rewarding. I love it.”
